Prayer

How long, Lord? Will you forget me for ever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Psalm 13:1-2 NIVUK

This is the “How long” Psalm. Just a few verses but profound in its message. “How long” appears four times in the first two verses, so it must have been a phrase significant in David’s mind when he wrote this Psalm. In the first verse he questions God’s silence and accuses Him of forgetting him. In the second he turns inward and asks the same question of his soul. He must have been an impatient and demanding man at times!

We too get caught up in “How long” situations. How long will I have to put up with this illness? How long will I have to work at this job? How long will I …. (fill in your own problem). In Western society we are very much wired into expectations that we want delivered instantly. Instant coffee. Turn on a tap and water comes out instantly. Even though, rationally, we know that “instant” is not always possible, it doesn’t stop the expectations of immediacy from rolling in, nagging us with their strident demands. Some want to lose weight. Or learn a foreign language. Or play a musical instrument. Or get a University degree. Instantly! Right now! We want to download a film from the internet instantly and pursue the fastest broadband solution to get as close to instant as we can. We want an electric car (when we can afford to buy one!) to charge up – yes, you’ve guessed it – instantly. The opportunities for the demands of the “How long” generation are endless. Frustration builds and dissatisfaction permeates our minds and corrupts our very souls when “instant” cannot be delivered.

David wasn’t caught up with ancient Jewish gadgets though. Or the faucets in the palace plumbing. Rather, he was in a hard place, once again, because of his enemies. And obviously he was getting impatient with God for not dealing with them. Note that he wasn’t saying that the issue was too hard for God to sort out. He was instead trying to twist God’s arm into helping him out of his predicament sooner rather than later, as we can see in his demanding prayer in verse 3.

The worldly spirit of urgency also has a pervasive influence on our Christian lives. We want an immediate answer to prayer. We want to see church growth straight away, by Sunday, or perhaps the next, God, if you can’t organise it earlier. But we worship a God whose timing in everything is totally spot on. Never too late. Never too early.

Many years ago my daughter was hospitalised with a serious, and at the time possibly terminal, illness. The prognosis was grim. And around the world good Christian people prayed for her. A well known itinerant preacher with a proven healing ministry prayed at her bedside. The church Elders anointed her with oil. The family held a daily vigil, each day and most of each night. I personally rattled Heaven’s gates asking God to bring about a breakthrough. But one day halfway through her four months in hospital, I was summoned from my office in Glasgow to her bedside in Edinburgh, the medics fearing the worst. And half way along the M8 motorway I was crying out to God, yes – you’ve guessed it, “How long” God? And amazingly I heard this voice from the back seat say, “Trust Me”. God in His mercy heard my anguish and gave me something that has stayed with me ever since. A reminder that He is in control of all situations and His timing will be perfect. There were further crises in her remaining hospital stay, but we were eventually allowed to bring her home to commence a long, but successful, convalescence. God healed her, not instantly as we would have liked, but nevertheless He healed her. And those two words, “Trust Me” turned me from being a “Believer” into being a “Knower”.

David finished his Psalm with a declaration of his trust in God’s love, in faith rejoicing in the coming rescue, proclaiming the goodness of God. We don’t know how long David had to wait for God to sort out his enemies. But perhaps, as David lifted his thoughts into Heavenly places, the importance of his problems dimmed, replaced by the comforting arms of his Lord and God, and that still small whisper, “Trust Me”

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers, but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on His law day and night. That person is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither – whatever they do prospers. Psalm 1:1-3 NIVUK

Have you ever attended or watched a military parade, particularly of those nations who favour the “goose-step” mode of marching? Hand picked men and women march flawlessly, totally synchronised in their steps. Their polished boots, identical uniforms, marchers all in line, make an impressive spectacle. To someone like me, never good at keeping in step with anything, such a sight I can only watch in amazement. But the Psalmist, right at the start of the first Psalm of the Book of Psalms, straight away declares a counter-cultural way of life. One in which personal blessings can be found only by avoiding the temptation to march in step with the society around us. You see, most of the Western world system in this age is anti-God. Our society and culture is becoming increasingly secular and adopting the Psalmist’s description of being “sinners and mockers”, and keeping in step with such a way of life, doing the same things, thinking the same thoughts, neglecting God and His ways, leads to destruction, as the Psalmist writes in the last verse of this Psalm.

The Psalmist encourages us spend our time in God’s presence, reading His Scriptures, hearing His voice, aligning our thoughts to His thoughts, whenever we have the opportunity. And by doing so we will be “blessed”. God’s blessings are priceless, and they lead to a prosperous and healthy life. The psalmist uses the analogy of the blessed person being like a tree planted next to a stream of water. In his society, desert regions and parched land with stunted tree growth would have been common. But the fortunate tree planted next to a stream never failed to provide all that a tree should – imagine the fruit in season – possibly figs or something similar. The blessed person also produces fruit in the seasons that God has for him or her. Fruit appropriate for God’s Kingdom.

What is this fruit? In the early days of the Charismatic Renewal I once heard a message in a Christian Conference from an international speaker warning against the dangers of being caught up in the excitement of what God was doing in His church, but failing to produce the fruit of a renewed life in God. What is this fruit? What is the spiritual equivalent of a fat, juicy fig? We read about the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:22-23, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” But there is also the fruit of fulfilling Jesus’ command in Matthew 28, of making disciples. So we can see that today’s equivalent of meditating on the Law of the Lord will involve personal renewal, a personal orientation towards the Kingdom of God in a way of life appropriate to being a spiritual tree next to His streams of living water.

This year the Elim Movement in the UK is encouraging people and congregations to do a spiritual reset, where they evaluate their lives to see if they are growing fruit or just a few leaves. But we don’t have to be an Elim member to re-evaluate our spiritual lives, checking out how we measure up against God’s demands. In my morning prayer walk today I observed a dead tree, no longer producing fruit as it decayed to join the detritus on the forest floor, helping fungi to grow as it did so. Around it is a thicket of saplings, growing tall and strong. And I said to God in my prayers that I don’t want to be a dead tree amongst such evidence of God’s grace.

Lord, Please help me always to have my roots deeply embedded in the life-giving streams of Your Spirit, this day and forever. Amen.

How Long?

I’m a Tree