1.21.2026
Not long ago I heard someone say, “There’s no way I’m telling God how I really feel about [whatever the situation they were dealing with was].”
I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you what’s wrong with that! The good Lord already knew what she was thinking! Second, the good Lord wants us to be honest with him – even when it think our feelings about something seem “improper.”
I remember back when I was young hearing people praying with the most amazing King James Version “thee’s” and “thou’s,” while their regular conversation was peppered with “ain’t” and all manner of southern colloquialisms – as if they needed to impress God with their sanctity.
The Ancient of Days has been listening to his children’s prayers for a long time, and he can handle anything we feel like we need to say to him! If you have any doubt about that . . .
Read the psalms!
While we normally think of the psalms as praising God, not all do. Some of them express extreme outrage for whatever the psalmist was going through in life. If you doubt me, look at Psalm 137:9.
I am not going to quote it.
Reading the psalms teaches us to pray by giving us the vocabulary of prayer. Eugene Peterson, translator of the The Message, wrote, “The psalms are necessary, because they are the prayer master . . . We apprentice ourselves to these masters, acquiring facility, and using the tools by which we become more and more ourselves. If we are willfully ignorant of the psalms, we are thereby not excluded from praying, but we will have to hack our way through formidable country by trial and error and with inferior tools.”
Instead of struggling to find the right words, the psalms give us an entire thesaurus by which to address God. Look at the way God is described in these verses:
Psalm 25: 10, “All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness . . .”
Psalm 33:4-5 “For the word of the Lord is upright, and all his work is done in faithfulness. He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.”
Psalm 86:15, “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
Psalm 103:17, “But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children’s children.”
What words are repeated over and over? Steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness . . . and these are just a few samples! There are many more! Did the psalmists just snatch these words out of thin air? No!
They learned them from God himself! A passage you should know very well by now is Exodus 34:1-8. Moses is in the cleft of a rock on Mt. Sinai with God passing by declaring who he will be for his people: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, yet by no means clearing the guilty . . .”
Israel’s faith and Israel’s prayer are grounded in this self-revelation of God on Mt. Sinai. And all throughout the psalms we see Israel praying these words of God back to him in one of two ways:
When life is good, the psalms celebrate God’s steadfast love and faithfulness, like here in Psalm 145:8-9, “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his compassion is over all that he has made.”
Israel also prayed God’s own words back to God when things weren’t going the way they were supposed to. In those days when “life is terrible,” the psalms insist that God be the God he said he would be. For example, look at Psalm 86:
86:14 describes the psalmist’s current situation: “O God, the insolent rise up against me; a band of ruffians seeks my life, and they do not set you before them.”
86:15 the psalmist reminds God of who he promised to be back on Mt. Sinai: “But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.”
86:16-17 finally, on the basis of God’s promises, the psalmist makes this petition, “Turn to me and be gracious to me; give your strength to your servant; save the child of your maidservant. Show me a sign of your favor, so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame, because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”
And where did Israel learn to pray to God with such boldness? From Moses in Numbers 14. In these verses, Israel has been unfaithful and God is ready to destroy them! But Moses prays:
“And now, therefore, let the power of the Lord be great in the way that you promised when you spoke, saying, ‘The Lord is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, forgiving iniquity and transgression, but by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the parents upon the children to the third and the fourth generation.’ Forgive the iniquity of this people according to the greatness of your steadfast love, just as you have pardoned this people, from Egypt even until now.” Then the Lord said, “I do forgive, just as you have asked.”
Pretty bold! But we can pray with this same boldness. God has promised us his steadfast love and faithfulness, his patience and his forgiveness and times come up when we might find ourselves reminding God of those very promises! Don’t be timid!
Pray boldly this week!
Blessings,
Pastor Terry