If you'd like to follow along
in the Scriptures, you can turn back to Psalm 40. I know that
some do like to follow along in the Bible as the preacher
is preaching, but I know that also some are like me. And if
you start following along in the Bible before long, you're
not listening to the preacher anymore. You're off on some rabbit
trail. So, you just handle it however
you would like to. As I mentioned earlier, this
is one of those portions of Scripture with which I can very easily
identify. It's like Brother Tim James said
to me once after I preached a message. I came down out of the pulpit
and he and I were both preaching in the same conference. I came
down there and I was standing next to him as they were getting
ready to sing the last hymn and he leaned over and he said, I
think you've been reading my mail. And when I read what David
wrote here, I want to say, David, you've been reading my mail. But you know, I guess there's
some differences among us, natural differences, but the fact of
the matter is, every believer can, to a greater or lesser degree,
identify with what David says in this psalm. They know something
about the slimy pit and the miry clay. They've experienced some of it
just in the day-to-day experiences of their lives, but most of all,
they know what it was like or can recall what it was like to
be dead in trespasses and sins, to be lost and without hope. As Paul described it, without
God and without hope in the world. And they can look at other things
that are written here and see that their own heart would confess
to them. What I want to focus on is in
verse 17, Yet I am poor and needy, may the Lord think of me. But we'll work our way up to
that and then it will be easy to lay out a few things about
those in that final verse. Now this psalm as much as any
other psalm shows to us that union that exists between the
believer and the Lord Jesus Christ. For as we read this psalm, we
can read it, as I mentioned, and say, yes, I know about that.
I've been there. I've said these things in my
heart. And yet, if we look over here, actually beginning in verse
six, sacrifice and offering you did not desire, and in the next
two or three verses, those are quoted in the book of Hebrews
and put directly in the Lord's mouth. And so we find here that the
experiences that we have were also experienced by the Lord
Jesus Christ, maybe for different reasons. Nonetheless, this is
one of those scriptures where we, as it were, sing a duet with
our Lord Jesus. Now, I think a week or two ago,
I made the remark, the Lord doesn't sing duets. But I was talking
there about in the salvation of sinners. He does that all
by Himself. But because we are united to
Him, our experiences are His, and His experiences are ours. Particularly in those matters
of trouble. I cannot recall the exact place in the scriptures,
but I remember a verse that says, in all their distresses, he was
distressed. Speaking of the people of God
and God. And it may seem remarkable to you that in your distresses,
the Lord himself is distressed. And yet we'll see how this is
so. I waited patiently for the Lord. He turned to me and heard
my cry. He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and
mire and set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand.
He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God.
Many will see and fear and put their trust in the Lord. Now
we know what that's about, don't we? We have been in the pit and
we have had God pull us out of the pit and set our feet upon
the rock. We were lost in sin, beyond our ability to remedy.
We were in a pit, and this is a reference to those old kinds
of jails. I say jail, they didn't have
jails all the time. Do you remember how it says that
when Joseph got his brothers all aggravated at him, they dug
a pit and threw him in it? That's how they used to hold
people captive until they figured out what to do with them. And
they would just dig a hole in the ground and stick them down
in it. They just leave them down there.
They got no breaks. They didn't get to come out.
And so you can imagine the place became disgusting to be in. As
they were there in their own filth. It was awful to be put
in a place like this. But that's what it was like with
you and me. We were in the filth of our own sin. It was a slimy
and disgusting pit. Mud and mire. It was too steep
for us to dig out of. Not only that, it had become
slimy. We could not get a grip. And
there we were, without any hope of being able to get out. But
the Gospel, somebody had spoken the Gospel down to that pit.
And the Spirit of God gave us power to understand it and to
believe it. And our hearts were awakened within us and we had
a hope. We thought, maybe the Lord will hear me. And we called
upon His name. And it may have been some time
before the Lord answered us in a way that confirmed in our hearts
that He had heard us. But we had been taught to wait
upon the Lord. And indeed He came. He turned
to me. I believe in the King James it
says He inclined His ear and someone said it's as though we
prayed and the Lord from heaven went like this and listened. And why does the Lord listen
so intently? Because so often our cry is so
feeble. We hear about people, I've heard
people called prayer warriors, as though somehow or another
when they pray, there's real power in their prayers. Folks,
there's no power in prayer. Any power associated with prayer
is the power of him who hears prayers. And our prayers are
not answered because they're clever. Our prayers are not answered
because we have prayed well or we have prayed with confidence.
I dare say my best prayers have been those when I could barely
work up any encouragement to pray. When the only reason I
prayed is because I couldn't think of anything else to do.
And my prayers were not so much filled with hope as they were
prayed out in desperation, and they were not so much bold requests as they were feeble, as though
I were almost embarrassed to make them. But such is the grace of our
God. He listens for that prayer. A
man is at the wall of the temple. And it said he would not so much
as lift his eyes toward heaven, he was so broken. And I'm sure
his prayer was not loud. He may have been surrounded with
people, but so far as he was concerned, he was the only one
there. And he said, God be merciful to me, a sinner. And in all reality,
no one else heard that prayer. There were Pharisees milling
about the temple that day and not a one of them heard him say
a thing. There were others there making their prayers and didn't
hear a thing. There were priests carrying out
sacrifices, they didn't hear him. There was all the noise
associated with the business that goes on around the temple.
Maybe this was one of those days when the money changers were
there and those that sold sacrificial animals. making merchandise in
the Lord's temple. Everybody's busy, nobody's paying
attention. And this tax collector makes
his way to the temple, broken hearted, and he says,
God, be merciful to me, a sinner. Nobody else heard him, but God
did. He was in this pit, and God heard him and lifted him
out. You and I, we can identify with
these words, but here's the remarkable thing. The Lord Jesus Christ
also embodies these words. For he was not born in the pit
like you and I are, but he was thrown in this pit. And it was
filthy with sins that he had never did. Nonetheless, they
were charged to him. And he bore them and he cried
out to God. And while he was not delivered
from those sins in the same way that you and I are, yet God did
hear his prayer, and once he had made himself an offering
for sin, and born within himself the full punishment for all those
sins, God brought him out of the pit, brought him out of the
grave, and set his feet upon the rock. And here's the remarkable thing,
verse three, the last part, many will see and fear and put their
trust in the Lord. Many of you here have seen the
Lord's suffering. Many of you have in your hearts
heard him cry out, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? You have read where he said,
into your hands I commit my spirit. And you have believed that God
raised him from the dead. With God-given faith you have
seen, and it has worked in you that fear of the Lord, and you
have put your trust in him. Blessed is the man who makes
the Lord his trust, verse 4, who does not look to the proud,
to those who turn aside to false God. Many, O Lord my God, are
the wonders you have done, the things you plan for us, no one
can recount to you. Were I to speak and tell of them,
they would be too many to declare. These are the words of God's
people about the Lord Jesus Christ. And I have no problem saying
that in many respects these are the words of the Lord Jesus Christ.
We who love Him, we desire to be like Him. We admire Him that
much. We want to be like the Lord Jesus
Christ. We want to be like Him in His
righteousness. He said, I do always those things
which please my Father, and we sure wish that that was the way
it was with us. We wish we always did the things
that God delights in. And it's our hope that someday
we will. We would that we were like him in understanding of
the things of God. At 12 years old, he had such
understanding of the things of God that he was a wonderment
to the religious authorities of his day. Don't you wish you
understood things like he does? But you know one of the things
that I don't hear often mentioned, because we normally don't think
of the Lord in this way, but I wish, I would pray, that I was as amazed by God as
our Lord Jesus Christ is. You say, well, He is God. I know.
Once again, we run into that mystery of the Trinity. We're
not going to try to unravel it. We're just going to go Whenever
we're in any particular scripture, we're just going to go the way
that scripture goes. Many, O Lord my God, are the
wonders you have done. You and I ought to be in constant
wonder at what God has done. His creation is wonderment enough.
The more scientists learn about this universe, the more amazing
it is to think that He spoke and it was, He commanded and
it stood firm. Amazing that our God, actually
the Bible says He spoke, but we realize at the time that He
spoke, well that's what they call an
anthropomorphism, talking about God as though He were a human.
He thought, and it was. He willed, and it was. That's amazing. But I'll tell
you something else. Amazing grace, how sweet the
sound, that saved a wretch like me. How many wonders of grace
has the Lord done for you? Well, count up your sins, if
you can. Tally them up. and realize the forgiveness of
every one of them is an amazing act of the Lord's grace. But
it goes farther than that because our salvation is more than simply
us being no longer responsible for our sins. By amazing works
of grace, He revived life in our hearts. We were dead. We were separate from Christ. We were aliens to the commonwealth
of Israel. We were not people of the covenant,
so to speak. We were without hope and without
God in the world. And let's face it, we were quite
happy to have it that way. We would never have changed that
situation. And He came in grace to us while
we were yet enemies, while we were yet dead in our trespasses
and sins, while we weren't seeking Him, while we weren't calling
on Him, when we were maybe being quite religious, but we were
really not interested in His grace, not even aware how much
we needed His grace. And in a wonderful work of His
grace, He came to us and gave us life. While we shook our fist in his
face, he, by grace, just put it down like you might a little
child thrown at temper tantrum. And he said, that's enough of
that. You're my child. And he changed
our hearts. And we whom we hated now became
the object of our love. That's an amazing wonder of grace. How about this? Through many
dangers, toils and snares, I have already come. Tis grace hath
brought me safe thus far, and grace will lead me home. You know me, I'm kind of obsessed
with counting time. And we're coming up on 30 years
of being here in Iowa. Some of you were already believers
when we got here, and about six months later, some more of you
professed faith in Christ, and then some others came on board.
So some of you have been spiritually alive for 30 years and more. Isn't it amazing you still are? Isn't it amazing You've walked
with this little church now for 30 years. You've endured my ministry
for 30 years. Isn't it amazing that we're here? Many, oh Lord, my God, are the
wonders you have done. And you know something? He's
not done yet. He's not finished. There shall be more. For as long
as you live, He shall do more wonders of grace to preserve
you and to keep you. Until that time when He calls
you to Himself. And then you'll stand and look
over your history. And you'll see works of grace
that you hadn't seen while you were here. Didn't realize what
was happening. I don't like to get all wrapped
up in demonology and all that kind of stuff. People like that,
I think, because it's a spooky story to them, and folks like
a good spooky story. And I don't think we're supposed
to become particularly concerned about it, but here's something
I do know, that there is a spiritual world, which we do not sense
that it's here, but it is. And this spiritual world, a good
deal of it, hates us. The leader of them certainly
does. Malicious spirits. And just like those angelic spirits,
the Bible says they're sent to minister to those who shall be
heirs of salvation. These demonic spirits are sent
to trouble those who are the heirs of salvation. And you and
I have no idea at the present time how much trouble we are
being protected from. There's a war going on around
us and we don't even see it. The devil came to the Lord God
and said, well, the Lord had said to the devil, you notice
my servant Job, what a fine fellow he is. And the devil said, well,
no wonder you've put a hedge around him. I can't get to him.
Take the hedge down and he'll curse you. He said, well, you know, I've
not had to face much. You know why? God put a hedge
around you. The reason that the devil hadn't
had you for lunch, so to speak, is because God hasn't let him. Now God took the hedge down,
but even when he took the hedge down, he still put limits on
the devil. And he said, all right, you can touch what he has, but
you can't touch him. And so the devil went that far.
And then the devil said, well, that's not enough. You haven't
let me do enough. So the Lord said, okay, you can touch his
health, but you can't take his life. Understand this, whatever
happens to you, it happened to you only because the Lord permitted
it. And the only reason more doesn't
happen to you is because the Lord doesn't permit it. Many
wonders of grace. So much so, if we were to tell all of them,
there's just too much to talk about. We'd never get done. And
I bet we never will. I bet you part of what heaven
is, is you and me reflecting on what God has done for us and
praising His name for it. And no sooner will we get to
what we think is the end of the works that we did for us, more
shall be made known to us. We will realize that there were
things we didn't even realize. And we'll realize more and more. And we will declare more and
more of the Lord's works of grace to us. John said this, many other
things did the Lord Jesus Christ, which if they were all to be
written down, he said, I suppose the world would not contain the
books. And that's just the things he
did while he was here. Think of all the Lord is doing
for you now. And then it goes on, and I'm going to have to
pick up the pace here. Sacrifice and offering you did
not desire, and so forth there through verse 8. These words
are ascribed to the Lord Jesus as a declaration how God was
not satisfied with all those sacrifices and offerings of the
Old Covenant. How many thousands or millions
of lambs and bulls and pigeons were offered there upon Israel's
altars, and yet the Bible says that not one sin was ever put
away by any of them. Think of that now. You know,
the temple was not a pretty place. It was a magnificent building,
but it wasn't a pretty place. It was a bloody place. It was
a place with a constant stream of people bringing in sin offerings
and sacrifices of sheep, having their throats cut and the blood
poured out and their bodies burned up. It's not like when you and I
go to church, you know, we go here and we dress up as fine
as we can and we try to make everything a pleasant experience.
The temple was not, it was not that kind of place. Yet for all
of that, nobody's sin was ever put away. And so the Lord Jesus
Christ said, comes to the world saying to the Father, you were
not satisfied by these sacrifices and offerings. Then I said, here I am, I have
come. It's written about me in the scroll. I desire to do your
will, oh my God. Your law is within my heart. Because those sacrifices and
offerings never did please God, the Lord Jesus Christ came and
he did please God. He pleased God in his life and
he pleased God in his death. The Lamb of God has come, and
as John said, He actually did take away sin. The first and
only sacrifice that ever did that. These are His words. And while
we can't take them to ourselves as though we did it, these are
the words we proclaim. Is this not the gospel we believe?
And as much as we believe it, is this not the gospel we proclaim?
That Jesus Christ came and did the will of God. In the religion of my youth,
they were constantly on us to find God's perfect will for your
life. And then we were supposed to
do the will of God. Really now? The Lord Jesus Christ has already
done that. He has already accomplished the will of God. Verse 9, I proclaim righteousness
in the great assembly. I do not seal my lips as you
know, O Lord. I do not hide your righteousness
in my heart. I speak of your faithfulness
and salvation. I do not conceal your love and
your truth from the great assembly. The Lord Jesus Christ came into
the world and his first work in this world was the work of
a prophet to declare the things of God and he wasn't silent about
it. He never did withhold the truth out of fear of how people
would accept it. When He first began speaking,
there were some who liked what He said, but the more time that
went by, the less people there were that could tolerate His
message. And by the time He comes to the
cross, All his disciples have forsaken him and fled, says the
scripture. And when he died, in all the
world, there was just one person who understood who he was and
what he was doing and was willing to openly profess him. And that's
the thief to his right. But the Lord Jesus Christ did
not alter his message. in order to gain converts, because
converts to an altered message are not converts at all. He told the truth. And you know
something? If we're born of God, we do the same thing. I proclaim
righteousness. We don't seal our lips. What
do y'all believe down there at that church? Do you try to find
some smooth way? Some way you think won't offend
them to tell what you believe? Verse 10, I do not hide your
righteousness. You and I are not declaring our
righteousness, are we? We don't have any. We declare
His righteousness. We speak of His faithfulness.
We talk about His love and His truth. Verse 11, do not withhold your
mercy from me, O Lord. May your love and your truth
always protect me for troubles without numbers surround me.
My sins have overtaken me and I cannot see. I have read that
that might be more accurately translated. I cannot look up.
In other words, it down in kind of like down in that pit and
so burdened you ever been that you're so burdened you don't
even have enough hope in you to look up when you pray. bent
over, I cannot look up. My sins have overtaken me, there
are more than the hairs of my head, and my heart fails within
me." Now you and I have may, we may have been there to some
measure, but no one has experienced this like the Lord Jesus Christ
did. And here is the remarkable thing We think about our sins,
we know about them, and we might think to ourselves, how could
it be that these words could be put into the mouth of the
Lord because He says here, verse 12, for troubles without number
surround me, my sins have overtaken me. How could the Lord ever say
that? He had no sin. He knew no sin. In Him is no sin. How can it
be that He says, my sins have overtaken me? Because our sins became His sins. All we like sheep have gone astray. We've turned everyone to his
own way. But the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. None but the Lord could do it
and not even the Lord could do it were not the Lord Jesus Christ
willing for it to be done. For it would have been an unrighteous
thing for God to charge him with our sin were it not that the
Lord were willing for that to happen. But he was willing. And so much were our sins united
to him that they were considered to be his sins. As the hymn goes,
he took my sins and my sorrows. He made them his very own. I don't know how to explain this
and I'm not going to try to. But on the one hand, Christ died
for our sins according to the scriptures. He bore our sins
in his body on the tree, says the scriptures. And yet while
he bore our sins, they were made to be his sins. He took them in all of their
wretchedness and wrote his name upon them. He took them in all their awfulness
and in all the wrath that they deserved. And he held them close
to himself. And we might say, like a little
child who is so selfish he won't share a toy, but holds them close
and says, mine. God took our sins and he held
them close to himself and he said, mine. Mine. I will own them. I will suffer
for them. I will die for them. And I will
put them away. Now if God gives you any understanding
of that, you will add that to that list of wonderful works
of grace that our God has done. The Lord Jesus Christ cried out
under the burden of my sin, yet as he cries out, he does not
call them my sins, he calls them his sins. And he says, there are more than
the hairs of my head and my heart fails within me. Be pleased, O Lord, to save me.
O Lord, come quickly to help me. May all who seek to take
my life be put to shame and confusion. May all who desire my ruin be
turned back in disgrace. May those who say to me, aha,
aha, be appalled at their own shame. May all who seek you rejoice
and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation
always say the Lord be exalted. It may be difficult to reconcile
these words with what our Lord said on the cross when he says,
Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. And it may be hard to reconcile
this with our attitude that we do not desire the damnation of
anybody. We shouldn't. We shouldn't. I am not upset over anybody the
Lord saves. So how can we reconcile these
words with our Lord Jesus saying, Father forgive them and even
with our attitude that we desire and would be happy for God to
save anyone and everyone if he was of mind to do it. The only
way I can put these together is simply this. While we would
be glad for God to save any and all, it says in 1st Timothy that salvation,
1st Timothy, I believe it is chapter 2 verse 4, that God desires a salvation
of all kinds of people, not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to an acknowledgment of the truth." It was to save
all kinds of people, to the acknowledgment of the truth. That acknowledgment of the truth,
I looked up the word there, and it's more than simply coming
to a knowledge of things, but rather it's an intense form of
the verb and indicates actually coming into contact with it or
the truth coming into contact with us. It's contact knowledge. And the best I can describe it
is this. Someone's got a hot iron, and
you can see it glowing red. And you look at that thing and
say, man, that's hot. That's one kind of knowledge. You're
right, it's hot. That's another kind of knowledge. Let them touch
you with that iron. You have an entirely different
kind of knowledge about the heat of that iron. And that's the
kind of knowledge that the saving knowledge of the gospel is. It's
contact knowledge. And salvation is always connected
with that contact knowledge in the Bible. And so we are happy
and would be happy for anyone to have that contact knowledge
of the truth and believe the gospel to the saving of their
souls. But we have absolutely no desire that heaven be filled
with people who are still in rebellion against God. If a man
wants to persist in his unbelief, if they want to mock the suffering
of the Lord Jesus Christ, if they want to heap guilt upon
the people of God, saying unto them, aha, we caught you, you're
worthless, God doesn't want anything to do with you. If they want
to persist in that, then let the Lord deal with them according
to His justice. Brethren, heaven will be no heaven
to us if it's full of people who still hate God. Is that hard? It's hard only
in this, that we are willing for people to receive what they
insist on. We preach the gospel, and oh
may God be pleased to save many through the preaching of the
gospel from this church. That'd be wonderful. But if they refuse,
and if they continue to refuse, until they face God in their
refusal, then may God deal with them as their refusal deserves. You say, well, you would have
deserved the same thing. That's right, that's right, I would have. If
God had not overcome my refusal, but that doesn't change the reality
of it. Let those who die in hatred to God remain that way forever. And let them be put to shame
for their hatred, for their hatred of Christ and for their hatred
of his people. And may all those who seek you
rejoice and be glad in you. And may those who love your salvation
always say the Lord be exalted. And that's one way we can detect
who it is that's received the Lord's salvation. When there's
glory to be given for that salvation, they heap it upon the Lord. They
take none to themselves. I realize you all didn't grow
up in the same kind of religion I did, or hardly have it anywhere
near you. But I was raised, and I tell
you, they had you doing all kinds of stuff. And people go, are
you saved? Oh yeah, at such and such a date
I walked the aisle, and I did this, and it was I did that,
and I prayed through. And I repeated of my sin and
I did this and it's I, I, I. You find someone whom God has
saved and he says, let the Lord be exalted. I was a sinner. I was a rebel and I should have
gone to hell. He should have left me alone
and if he had, I couldn't bring any charge against him for doing
it. But blessed be his name. He reached down from heaven,
grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and said, that's far enough.
You're mine. I'm not going to let you die. Yeah, but didn't you agree with
him? Not till he grabbed me. Not till he changed me. He did not stand afar off from
me and call me to himself. He didn't ever say to me, this
is as far as I'm going to go. You've got to come this far.
He ran me down. I ran, but he ran faster. I sinned,
but he had more grace than I had sin. And he chased me down. He threw
a rope around my neck like a cowboy on a steer. And he brought me
to bay. And he put his brand on me. And he said, you're mine. Let
the Lord be exalted. And now, as time is nearly gone,
we finally get to the verse I wanted to look at. But it won't be hard,
now that we've set everything up. Yet I am poor and needy for
all this. For all the ups and downs. For
all the descriptions of the horribleness of his former estate. and all
the glories of the Lord's salvation, yet David comes to this, yet
I am poor and needy." Do you realize, brothers and
sisters, we're still poor and needy? You say, oh, but we have
the unsearchable riches of Christ. Sort of. But it says in the book
of 1 Samuel, when Hannah is singing her song of praise, it says that
he takes the poor man poor man from the dust, and the needy
man from the garbage pile, and sets him at the table with the
nobles. Now, the dust, in another place that word is
actually translated ashes, and remember how it is said of Job,
that in his suffering he took ashes. And then we hear about
people being in such sorrow, they are dressed in sackcloth
and sit in ashes. And then there where it talks
about, I believe in a King James, it says dung heap, but it means
a garbage pile. The needy, where do they find
food? We talk about people dumpster diving. The homeless, they go
looking through the dumpsters to find food. Well, what if you
went out and you found one of these homeless people digging
through a dumpster, and in the filth of his own life, and you
said, come home with me. And you gave him some clean clothes,
just went to your closet, and there you had some clothes the
same size as him. You said, take off those filthy things, get
a bath, here, put these on. And then you sent him down to
a feast at your house. Now brethren, he is wearing nice
clothes and he's eating good food, but he's exactly the same
man you found dumpster diving. Because if you quit giving him
clothes and quit feeding him food, he's just as poor as he
was before. He does not become a rich and
prosperous man because you put clothes on Him and set Him down
to a good table. He may be allowed to live like
one. He may be experiencing the blessings of being rich and prosperous,
but He's living on your riches and your prosperity. And brethren,
that's what we're doing. God found us in ashes and dust
and filth. He found us dumpster diving in
religion. Trying to feed ourselves off
of the pollution of our own righteousness. And He said, come home with Me.
And He dressed us in His clothes. He made us clean, washing us
in His blood. He set us at the table, filled
with a feast of good things. And we ate. And we lived like
kings, but we are still beggars. We are still the same people.
And we will be until He transforms us. Don't ever get over the idea
that you're poor and needy. And it's a good thing to be poor
and needy because the scriptures say, blessed are the poor. Blessed are the poor, the poor
in spirit. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness.
You can go into churches today and spiritually speaking their
belly is full of their own righteousness and they don't hunger for righteousness
because they think they have it. God's people hunger for it,
they thirst for it. I'm poor and needy and here's
our hope. Here's the hope of the poor and
needy. May the Lord think of me. We like to think that the powerful
think of us. Politicians are always telling
us they do. I tend not to believe them. I don't think any of them actually
know who I am. And that's fine. I don't expect
them to know everybody, but every one of them during campaign season,
I'm thinking of you. I'm fighting for the people.
Then they go back to Washington and do whatever it is they want
to do. May the Lord think on me. And
brethren, if the Lord thinks on you, it doesn't matter who
else does or doesn't. What was it that thief on the
cross asked the Lord to do? Did he say, Lord, get me off
this cross? Did he say, Lord, I realize I got to die, but could
you relieve the pain until I die? He said, remember me, think on
me. Why? Because he knew if the king
of the kingdom was thinking about him, Everything would end up
okay. We spoke somewhat about prayer
in a Bible class and how difficult it can be to pray. And our prayers
get so scattered and our mind is so scattered when we're trying
to pray and usually we get done and we say, oh, I wish I'd have
said this. And I don't know why we don't just go ahead and say it right
then once we think of it. Nonetheless, do you realize that
all prayer is condensed in that one phrase, may the Lord think
on me. And sometimes that's better than
a laundry list or maybe a Christmas wish list that we give in our
prayers. Because when we say, may the Lord think on me, what
we're saying is, may he see my need, and then may he act according
to his wisdom and power. We pray for things, but you know
much of what we pray for isn't the best thing. We say, Lord,
heal me, and sometimes it'd be better if the Lord would leave
us sick. Sometimes the things we want,
maybe most of the time, the things we want would be harmful to us.
But if we could learn this, Lord, look at this. Look at me.
Think about me and do what you think is best about that. You
know the problem better than I do and you know the solution
better than I do. May the Lord think on us.