This hit home for me recently when I was watching a movie called, “The Book of Eli” starring Denzel Washington in the title role. Eli is a lone-wolf, nomadic wanderer in a post-apocalyptic world where civilization has been shredded. The landscape is a gray-brown dust bowl of rusted metal and broken down buildings. It is a violent world of anarchy and death. But Eli has a mission. Supposedly, he has in his possession the very last remaining Bible on the planet. All other copies have been destroyed, he’s got the only Bible left and a divine voice has instructed him to take this Book to a special place where later on you discover there are people rebuilding civilization who are eagerly waiting for a Bible to appear. But the bad guys want the Book, too, because they think it will give them the power to conquer their enemies. So they are hunting Eli to get the Book. Along the way Eli is joined by a young woman who has never even seen a book. She doesn’t know anything about the Bible at all. She doesn’t understand what makes the Bible so important that people would fight and die to posses it. At one point she asks Eli to read her something from the Book. So what does he choose? What passage would best summarize for her the entire message of this mysterious, powerful, sought-after book? Eli stands and begins to recite Psalm 23.

The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.  

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

He leads me beside quiet waters,

He restores my soul.

He guides me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake.  

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I will fear no evil, for You are with me;

Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.  

You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies.  

You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.  

Surely goodness and mercy will follow me all the days of my life,  

And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.

                I was amazed by that scene. I am not recommending that you see the movie because it is pretty violent, but I was amazed by how it treated the Bible with respect – even awe, and that’s something you rarely if ever see coming out of Hollywood. What hit me most was that it put Psalm 23 closer to its original context, it’s original feel; the dry, dusty, semi-arid world of the ancient Middle East where your lips area always parched and you sleep with one eye open. The Psalm was written by King David in a time when he was surrounded by violence, intrigue and death. And what I hope I can get you to see this morning is that Psalm 23 isn’t so much just a Psalm of comfort as it is a Psalm of defiance. Defiance. Let me explain what I mean.

To really understand Psalm 23 you have to get inside the skull of King David as he formed the words in his mind. It was probably written when David was an elderly man after he had been King a long time and his life had gone through many serious ups and downs. David knew one important thing; life is a contact sport, a full contact sport. In life you bump into other people – hard – and you will get bruised, battered, even injured. Sometimes the injuries come from the people who are closest to you, your family members. They are the ones who cause the most damage. But unlike sports, in life there is no time out, no half time. You have to learn to play injured. You have to keep playing despite the pain. You have to keep going even though it hurts.  So, what you do with your pain is important; where you put it, how you handle it, how you deal with the bruises and even the broken bones – that is what makes the difference in life. How do you handle your pain?

In writing Psalm 23, King David is looking back over his life as older men will do, going back to his roots as a shepherd boy; his youth, those formative, pre-adolescent years. That awkward age when you not really a boy, but not yet a man. I don’t care how old you get you always carry that boy inside the man, that young girl inside the woman. We don’t ever really outgrow that young person we used to be – and we carry the pain of those early experiences. A few years ago a woman in her late 70’s was visiting the area from Pennsylvania and decided to come to worship. I must have had something in my sermon about the pain that can be experienced in families because during the coffee hour she sought me out and the very first thing she said to me was: “When I was 14 I wanted to kill my stepfather for what he tried to do to me, but my mother hid the gun. So I ran away from home and never went back.” It is hard to know where to go in a conversation after an opening line like that. Here she is In her late 70’s and she is still carrying the pain of her early years. Even when we’re old we carry that little boy, that little girl inside of us. We never really lose that person we used to be.

So go back in your mind’s eye to when we first we hear of David in 1 Samuel 16. The nation of Israel is fighting for its life, its very existence. Their king, Saul – well – his life, his leadership was in ruins. He had disobeyed God and had been rejected as King over Israel. The Lord directed the Prophet Samuel to go to Bethlehem to anoint a new king. He was to pick from one of the sons of a man named Jesse. So, Jesse brings his sons and parades them before Samuel like prize heifers at the county fair. It is like the auditions for ‘American Idol’.  Who will be selected? First, there is Eliab the eldest –  a kind of swaggering bully. Hulking and brutish – he is used to getting his way by brute strength. He dominated everything and everybody but Samuel passes him by. Then there’s Abinadab, a kind of a snob – arrogant, self-possessed. It was not him either. Then there was Shammah. Well, you get the idea. After third son the Bible stops naming them. The tension is heating up. Who will Samuel choose? All seven sons passed before Samuel. Each in turn is rejected. Each one is humiliated. And then the show was over.

Then Samuel asks: “Jesse – are these all your sons?”

The question was like a kick in the stomach to Jesse. “Oh yeah, there is David. I forgot about him. But you can’t want him. He is the baby of the family? You can’t be serious?”

And that is where we begin to understand the pain in David’s life. He was born when his father Jesse was quite old. It was a second marriage for both his mom and dad. They each had a long string of children from their previous marriages and some of them were all grown up before David was born. David had nieces and nephews who were older than he was. And there was a serious rift in the family between these two lines of offspring; lots of jealousy, even hatred.  And David, as the youngest product of this mixed marriage, took the brunt of the conflict. He was the runt of the litter, the bottom of the food chain, the odd duck, and the neglected child, the most likely to be forgotten in all the family drama. He was always the baby, always the kid brother, the nuisance, the one the others resented. He was, in fact, expendable. The family didn’t need him. The older brothers didn’t want him. You can imagine the bullying, the ridicule, the beat-downs he suffered from the hands of his older brothers. And he’s not protected by his mother. She’s never even mentioned. She is completely absent from the story. At best David is neglected, and at worst he is physically abused.

So, they gave him the job nobody else wanted. It was the job where he could do the least damage, where he would be out of the way, out of sight, out of mind. He lived out in the wilderness with the sheep for long, lonely periods of time. David was just an ordinary kid. There was nothing outstanding about him to the naked eye. He wasn’t qualified for anything so he wasn’t even invited to Bethlehem party. He was just a 12-or-13-year-old love-starved, insecure, mixed up, cast-off kid. So when David wrote in Psalm 27:10, “Though my father and mother forsake me, the LORD will receive me.” You can tell he wrote that out of the pain of his own family. And yet God picked him.

As if that wasn’t enough, it turns out that this kid is a genius. He is brilliant. We discover over his lifetime that David has the musical talent of a Beethoven; the literary skill of a Shakespeare; the hand-to-eye coordination of an A-Rod; the political wisdom of a Winston Churchill; and the military genius of a General Patton. He could do it all. You mix all that talent together in a boy who lives in a home where the favorite musical instrument was the bass drum. Imagine a Nobel Prize-winning poet growing up in this family of lug-nuts and barbarians. No one saw his potential. No one cultivated him. No one mentored him. No one gave him a chance. He was on his own from the get-go yet all that was wrapped up in one lonely shepherd boy. And God picked him.

What does it do to a young person who is denied his or her sense of belonging? Who is pushed to the bottom of the pile? They learn to fight. They either fold up in defeat or they learn to fight. David was a fighter. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t  win. He was so much smaller. All the others were bigger, older, and stronger. Can you just imagine him trying to get his share of food at the dinner table? He came out swinging, and he kept on fighting. Kick – punch – scratch – claw – bite – grab – tear – wriggle – squirm. And he also learned to use his head or he would just be their punching bag.

The home David grew up in was tragically loveless, so where did he go to find any kind of love? Well, like a lot of rejected kids, they find solace in having a pet – a dog, cat, or a gerbil. A relationship with a pet can fill the emptiness that such a neglected child can suffer. And so David took to his sheep. He loved his sheep; loved them so much he would fight for them. You can imagine how he felt if a mountain lion ever got one of his sheep. To see a sheep’s torn body, shredded and bleeding would have twisted his stomach into knots. He was half the size of a bear or a mountain lion, but he had learned to fight in a family full of bigger people so he wasn’t afraid.

Plus, he had his rod and his staff, and he knew how to use them. In the Middle East every shepherd carries a rod and a staff. The rod is a hand made club. They take a young sapling and dig it from the ground. Then they carve down the knot where the trunk joins the root. It’s shaped into a smooth rounded head of hard wood. The young shepherd boys spend hours practicing with their clubs, learning how to throw it with amazing speed and accuracy. It becomes their main weapon of defense and protection for himself and for his sheep deriving away predators like wolves, stray dogs, mountain lions and bears. Even to this day, the Bedouin shepherd fights with his rod in every circumstance and situation.

The shepherd’s staff was a long, slender stick with one end curved into a crook, or a hook. When lambs are born or if a lamb wanders away from its mother the shepherd does not want his scent to be on the lamb lest the ewe reject her offspring. So, he uses the staff to push the lambs closer to the mother. The staff is also used for guiding. It is gently laid against the side of the sheep to prod it in the right direction with a gentle pressure. The shepherd will walk with his staff touching the sheep simply as a sign of special attention; of reassurance that he is near so that the sheep knows they are in touch with each other. And sheep do get into trouble. They are notorious for wandering off. It happens so often, it was a problem everybody understood. That’s why Isaiah could write, “All we like sheep have gone astray. We have turned each one to our own way.” (Isaiah 53:6). When they wandered they would frequently fall down a crevice or get stuck on a steep ledge. That is where the hook comes in.  The shepherd would get them around the neck or around a limb and lift them to safety. Jesus used this image in the parable of the lost sheep. Going and searching for the one who has wandered away, is God’s heart, and it was David’s heart, too.

And how was this lonely kid banished to the wilderness, and how was he going to fill his time?  With his genius IQ he couldn’t just talk to the sheep all day. He dreamt the dreams of a homeless kid who lives outside, under the stars with no roof, no bedroom of his own. So, he dreams of green pastures instead of the rocky soil he is used to. He dreams of mountain streams and the home he never had. He makes up poems and sets them to music. He sings and strums away on his homemade lyre. There is no one to make fun of him, or to tell him that his voice stinks or his ideas are stupid. There were no critical comments, no one to step on his dreams. He dreamt big dreams. He put words together. He sang; and somehow he connected with God in special way. And God chose him.

I want you to see this young man on a rugged hillside, barely a teenager, trying to find his identity, trying to feel some sense of security and longing to be loved. If you were to sit next to him, I think you would want to say something like this: “David, I can tell that you love your sheep and they are safe with you. You care for them but, what about you? Who looks after you?”

You can see his young face tighten and maybe you see the beginnings of a tear in the corner of his eye that he quickly wipes away. Then he stands and says boldly to the world:  “You know, they think they can beat me down. They think I’m just a problem. They think I won’t ever amount to anything. But you know what? Yahweh – He’s my Shepherd. The Lord looks after me.  He is the one leading my life. He will guide me to greener pastures, just you wait and see. And He will look after me when I’m down. I am not scared. Not with God beside me. I don’t care if He leads me through the most dangerous and weird experiences you can think of. He will still be with me. And if I can look after my sheep with my crook and my club, think what protection God will give me as He guards me with His weapons! I am not afraid – not one bit. He will keep me safe. Right now all I get are leftovers. But you know what? Someday, someday He will set up a huge banquet table just for me. The table will be groaning with food. The wine flasks will be spilling over, all the wine in the world just for me. And my enemies – all my enemies – they will just have to squat in the corner and see it and smell it, and they don’t get to taste a single bite. And all the days of my life God will take care of me. I know it will be hard. But He will surround me with kindness and goodness. His love will go ahead of me everyday. It will wash over me like perfumed oil.  There’s more to me than people know – but God knows, and I’m going to do something with my life. And God, God will get me a home. And when it’s all over Yahweh will welcome me into HIS home. He’s the father I never had – and I’ll live with him forever.”

And wouldn’t you want to say: “David, write that down! Write it down for other kids, other people – struggling – disturbed – lonely – unwanted – misunderstood – rejected – stepped on – trying to hold it together. Write that down for people whose homes are tragic, or who have lives that are empty. Write that down for people who spend their time in court rooms or clinics, or foster care, or who are alone. Write that down for people who wrestle with guilt or addictions. Write that down for people who are stubborn, self-willed, trying to be self-sufficient. David, write it down for them. Write your words of defiance so that they don’t give in and they don’t give up. Write it down for everyone to read because it doesn’t matter if you’re mixed up or well adjusted – it doesn’t make any difference here. The only thing that makes any difference is knowing there is a Shepherd who loves you, who wants to guide you, who wants to watch over you, who wants to welcome you home.

Psalm 23, a boy’s simple but defiant words about his relationship with God, written down when he was old, but composed in his heart when he was quite young, written down so that they can be your words as well.

“The Lord IS my shepherd, I SHALL NOT want.” Amen.

*Credit goes to John Hercus and his book Out of the Miry Clay for the insights on David’s early life.

Psalm 7

8/8/10

I got back from vacation just in time for “Shark Week” on the Discovery Channel. Any ‘shark-week’ fans out there? Think about that – a whole week devoted to nothing else but sharks, especially the Great White Sharks. Why is that? What is it about sharks that capture the imagination of so many people? Maybe it is because a Great White shark can eat you. When it sees you in the water it is thinking ‘pay-back’ for all that sushi you’ve eaten and all those trips to Red Lobster. That could be part of it. Or maybe it has to do with the fact that the Great White Shark is at the top of the food chain. In the ocean it has no natural enemies; nothing to fear. Nothing messes with a Great White Shark. It is a powerful, merciless, eating machine. Smaller sharks may have to worry about a killer whale or a school of dolphins, but when a Great White swims by, everything else gets out of the way.

No natural enemies!  Wouldn’t it be great to live in a world where you never had to worry about facing any kind of enemy? A world where you never had to look over your shoulder?  Where you never had to worry that somebody was out to sabotage your work, your life, your relationships, or your reputation? But I know you are not naïve enough to think that is possible. There are going to be times when you bump up against people who, for one reason or another decide to be your enemy. Now I don’t mean just someone who irritates you, or who rubs you the wrong way. I am talking about someone who intentionally seeks to harm you. To harm you physically, like the playground bully or a rival on another sports team who’s just waiting for a chance to give you a cheap shot. Other instances would be someone who wants to harm you emotionally like a false friend who spreads gossip about you; or someone who wants to harm you financially, or a person at work who stabs you in the back and takes credit for your accomplishments, who steps on you to advance his or her career.  Maybe someone has it out for you like a split in the family where no matter how hard you try the other personal intentionally distorts your words and creates even more misunderstanding. We all wish we could live in a world without enemies, but it is a reality. There is evil in the world and there will be people who seek to do you harm. It is the way things are.

                That is what David is praying about in Psalm 7. His situation was more extreme. His enemies wanted him dead, literally. But I think what he has to say to God about his enemies can instruct us on how we should deal with the enemies that cross our path. Here’s God’s Word from Psalm 7.

A shig-ga-ion (a song of strong emotion) of David, which he sang to the LORD concerning Cush, a Benjamite. “O LORD my God, I take refuge in you; save and deliver me from all who pursue me, or they will tear me like a lion and rip me to pieces with no one to rescue me. O LORD my God, if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands – if I have done evil to him who is at peace with me or without cause have robbed my foe – then let my enemy pursue and overtake me; let him trample my life to the ground and make me sleep in the dust.  Selah

                “Arise, O LORD, in your anger; rise up against the rage of my enemies. Awake, my God; decree justice.  Let the assembled peoples gather around you. Rule over them from on high; let the LORD judge the peoples. Judge me, O LORD, according to my righteousness, according to my integrity, O Most High. O righteous God, who searches minds and hearts, bring to an end the violence of the wicked and make the righteous secure. My shield is God Most High, who saves the upright in heart. God is a righteous judge, a God who expresses his wrath every day…” then verse 17 “…I will give thanks to the LORD because of his righteousness and will sing praise to the name of the LORD Most High.”

                The number one topic in the Psalms is about the worship and the character of God.  Number two would be your relationship with the Word of God. But the third topic of the Psalms – surprisingly – is about what to do with enemies. Right alongside the prayers of most intense passion for God are all these prayers about enemies. If you take the book of Psalms seriously as the believer’s prayer book, you discover that people who pray have a lot of enemies; and they spend a lot of time praying about what to do with them. I guess that shouldn’t surprise us because most prayers begin because of some kind of trouble. Trouble is what gets prayer started. Trouble is what ignites the heart to pray. And the trouble with an enemy – that hurt, that stress, that resentment, that fear – it wakes us up and forces us to step into the presence of God because we want help. We want to know what to do with this person who is out to get us. We want God to prove that we are in the right.

                There is a whole genre of Psalms that are now called Imprecatory Psalms. To imprecate means to invoke evil upon, or curse. So these Psalms contain cries out to God for him to punish the psalmist’s enemies. For example, Psalm 55: “Let death take my enemies by surprise; let them go down alive to the grave.” Psalm 58:6, “O God, break the teeth in their mouths.” Psalm 109, “May his children be fatherless and his wife a widow.” Psalm 139, “How blessed will be the one who seizes your infants and dashes them against the rocks.”

That is serious stuff. That is raw emotion. A superficial spirituality would say we should be bigger than that. We should be able to rise above this kind of imprecatory desire for revenge. We should be so secure in God’s grace that we can live above the fray.  And besides, doesn’t Jesus teach that we are not supposed to have any enemies; that we should  just love our enemies and forgive them and then everything will turn out right? Shouldn’t we just be able to get along with everybody? Isn’t that what Jesus taught?

                No. That is what a superficial spirituality might say. And that is why it is important not to leap-frog over the Psalms and jump to the New Testament. Don’t rush to the ‘love your enemies’ answer so fast. If you’ve got to deal with an enemy in your life you need to spend some time in the Psalms. If you skip over the Psalms I don’t think you can ever get a good handle on what Jesus was talking about or how to do what Jesus asked. If you skip the gritty reality of the Psalms you end up with a shallow, smiley face Christianity that doesn’t hold up under pressure and leaves people feeling guilty – feeling like a failure and still feeling mad at their enemy!

                The first reality in dealing with an enemy is that you’ve got to admit what really going on inside of you. When David prays he has these volcanic eruptions of outrage, unfiltered anger and even hatred. David is totally honest. The Psalms are brutally real about how much having an enemy can get under your skin. That is why we like them so much. We feel our own emotions in the emotions of the psalmist. And enemies create a lot of emotion. Admitting your level of emotion before God is a way to lance that boil and let the puss out. There is too much dishonesty in our prayers, too much pretense. The Psalms teach us to lay it all out for God to see. He knows it anyway. What we really need is an honesty with ourselves before God and that is difficult to journey through. If you are honest, you might be surprised at the level of real anger and hatred you’ve got stored up in your heart.

When we admit the level of emotional intensity we also begin to see that the reason we’re so angry is not just about what that other person may have done to us, but it is also about wanting a sense of  justice in the world. We want the other person to pay for what they did to us. We want a sense of vindication so everyone knows we were right and he or she was wrong.  We long for retribution and want  God to bring judgment here and now. Think of a murder trial as the defendant is led away found guilty as charged. That verdict isn’t enough. Someone – maybe a member of the victim’s family –  leaps to his feet and yells, “Just let me get my hands on that pig. Give me one minute alone with him!” There is a longing for retribution! We want God to act, and part of our anger might be that God isn’t doing what we want Him to do. We want to see that enemy groveling in the dirt – humiliated – shamed – but in this life things rarely turn out that way. If you get stuck there – in wanting retribution – then you will never get to the point of forgiveness and freedom and all those emotions just keep churning and churning.

David could admit his emotion. This Psalm mentions a specific event in David’s life. Something to do with a guy named Cush. We don’t know who he was, but he was from the tribe of Benjamin and that gives us a clue. You see, Saul, the King whom David deposed, was from the tribe of Benjamin. Many in that tribe weren’t too happy to see David ascend to the throne or succeed in ruling Israel. They resented him. They saw him as a power hungry up-start, a pretender to the throne. And they were busy doing everything they could to undermine his leadership. Later on during a rebellion led by one of David’s own sons, Absalom, another enemy from the tribe of Benjamin named Shimei heaped insults on David as he fled from Jerusalem.  “The Lord is paying you back for all the bloodshed in Saul’s clan. You stole his throne, and now the Lord has given it to your son Absalom. At last you will taste some of your own medicine. For you are a murderer.” (NLT) 2 Sam 16.8. There was no love lost between the tribe of Benjamin and King David, and Cush was a part of that action.

David’s enemies literally wanted to cut him up into little pieces and feed him to the dogs. What did David do in response? He writes a poem? Not what most of us would do when faced with a homicidal foe. David wrote passionately emotional lyrics because he was brimming with fear, anger and resentment. I mean that’s not all he did, but in those moments of confusion he gets honest and admits what is in his heart. It was sort of a personal catharsis for David. And as he writes he looks at his own heart. As David prays he is open to the reality that he might be complicit in some way. He might be responsible. He wants to own whatever part of the problem was his fault. He prays: “if I have done this and there is guilt on my hands – if I have done evil to him.” Ben Paterson, former pastor of this church wrote, “When you ask God to set things straight around you, be willing to have yourself set straight too.” We have to be concerned about what WE become when we face an enemy. What WE become when we hate. Fear causes OUR emotions to stampede and you might create enemies needlessly. You lash out. You cause hurt. You become just as cruel or as wrong.  Can you ask yourself: What part of this is mine? What part do I need to own, to own up to?  When you get before God honestly you recognize that you may be part of the hate equation. Psychologist Carl Jung once wrote, “The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” Admit – What it is that this situation doing to you!!!

The second reality we learn from David is that we have to take all of that and submit it to God. This is not the soft, romantic God who always tolerates, who only forgives. The raw speech of the Psalms invokes a God of justice. It displays a confidence that God will act, that God takes this seriously. But with that is a willingness to submit to how God will act. God’s going to act God’s way, with God’s timing. Not as we wish or hope. And it is tough to submit to God’s way.

The apostle Paul picks this up in Romans 12:17-20 "Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ says the Lord. On the contrary: ‘If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.’"

Submitting is what moves you on to the path of freedom. You have to leave the outcome up to God. Leave it in his hands and let go of your need for vindication. This is very hard to do because it really gets down to revealing what you really believe about the character of God. IF you don’t really believe God can be trusted you will cling to your need for revenge or vindication. That keeps you stuck in constant misery. Unfortunately I’ve seen this too frequently in divorcing couples that just go at each other for months and months, even years. They say they just doing what they are doing for the kids or for some other reason, but they end up spending all their assets on legal bills and dig themselves into a deeper hole. Why? Because they are looking for a sense of vindication. They want people to know it is not their fault. They want to hurt that other person who has wounded them. They can’t let go –  even if it drags them under.

Your submitting means you recognize that the ultimate destiny of that person is in God’s hands. David writes that though the wicked dig a pit for others they often fall in it themselves. But whatever happens to them is above your pay grade. You’ve got to submit to God’s way and God’s timing.

And that’s what leads to the third movement. You’ve got to live it. This is the step of Jesus in Matthew 5:44, “But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” Jesus is saying YOU have to be the one who lives differently. You have to be the one to break the chain of revenge and hatred, the cycle of ‘payback’. Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. echoed Jesus when he said, “The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing wars – must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”

You have to live it. How can that happen? Author Tim Brown tells a story about how one day he was finishing up a lunch at McDonald’s with his family when a man walked in with his wife and children and plopped down at a nearby table. The man was someone who had hurt Tim very deeply in the past. They faked pleasantries and hellos, but Tim could feel his blood begin to boil as his thoughts replayed what the man had done to him. He was surprised at how much hurt he still felt and how quickly those old feelings bubbled to the surface. As his family gathered up their trash he heard "his enemy" and his wife arguing because neither one had brought any money to buy their food. Their kids were screaming for their Happy Meals, the parents are arguing. Tim could tell the couple was embarrassed and his first thought was, There is justice in this world. He deserves every bit of embarrassment he’s feeling, and I’m so glad I got to see this.

But suddenly God got Tim’s attention and he remembered the verse from Romans. “If your enemy is hungry, feed him.” Tim knew God was saying to him: “Here’s your chance to be set free of your pain and overcome your hurt. Here’s your chance to break the chain of bitterness that is wrapped around your ankles.” So, somewhat reluctantly, he reached into his wallet, pulled out $20, and gave it to this man who had been his enemy. "Please have lunch on me,” he said and then he left with his family. He didn’t wait for a reaction, a thank you or anything. Living it doesn’t mean that loving your enemies or praying for your enemies will always turn them into your good friends. That may not happen.  Living it isn’t about what the other person does or doesn’t do. They may still be out to get you. Living it has to do with finding God’s peace in your own heart, and that’s what it did for Tim.

I hope you’re fortunate enough not to have any enemies this morning. But these three movements can apply to many areas of struggle. Admit it – submit it – live it. Until we are honest in prayer we are not teachable, we are not reachable. Prayer isn’t about putting on our ‘Sunday best’ to try and impress God with how holy we are. It is easy to be honest with our hallelujahs. It is more difficult to be honest with our hurts. So, raw speech works. We pray who we really are, not who we think we ought to be. Don’t try to cover up your unlovely emotions. Don’t try to make them appear respectable. Expose them to the Lord. Join the angry psalmists. Get honest about your behavior and your emotions. Submit your need for justice and vindication to the Lord’s greater wisdom. Begin to take simple steps to love and pray. Things will change – starting inside of you. AMEN.

PCNP Praise Night Video

PCNP Praise Night