Pastor Fredo Ramos: For whatever reason, I have always struggled to pray. And so as this new year begins and as many of you think about new routines that you wanna give yourself to, especially for those of you who follow Jesus, I wanna invite you to learn to pray the Psalms with us. It's a practice I picked up years ago that really saved, my ability to learn to pray, to speak to God honestly about how I was feeling and what I was thinking. And so every single day on sandalschurch.tv on YouTube, we're gonna be releasing, praying the Psalms, a Psalm a day. We started in Jan.
1, and every day you're gonna get a new Psalm with the opportunity to read the Psalm with us, to reflect on a phrase, and then to respond to God in prayer, how to pray through the Psalms. This has been a gift to me in my own journey with Jesus. I pray that it's a gift to you, and so would you join us. Grace and peace.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: As we continue praying the Psalms, we come now to Psalm 36. David writes, sin whispers to the wicked deep within their hearts. They have no fear of God at all. In their blind conceit, they cannot see how wicked they really are. Everything they say is crooked and deceitful.
They refuse to act wisely or do good. They lie awake at night, hatching sinful plucks. This is quite the description David is offering. Their actions are never good. They make no attempt to turn from evil.
Verse 5. Your unfailing love, oh, Lord, is as vast as the heavens. Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds. Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains. Your justice like the ocean depths.
You care for people and animals alike, oh Lord. How precious is your unfailing love, oh God. All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings. You feed them from the abundance of your own house, letting them drink from your river of delights. For you are the fountain of light, the the light by which we see.
Pour out your unfailing love on those who love you. Give justice to those with honest hearts. Don't let the proud trample me or the wicked push me around. Look, those who do evil have fallen. They are thrown down, never to rise again.
I love in Psalm 36 this stark contrast between David's description of wickedness and his description of God's love. You notice that, sin is described as this kind of cancer. Right? It opens with a whisper into our ear, and then it, leads us to have no fear of God. It causes us to become blind.
The things we say become crooked. And then even at night, we lie awake and plotting. Right? There's this kind of like crumbling in on ourselves that sin has the ability to do. But then in verse 5 when he turns to this, description of God's love, everything becomes spacious and open.
And he begins to describe God's love as as a feast, as a way that the the world is cared for, including animals. There's an abundance that we get to enjoy and eat from. Like, this is great contrast. And I think this is important for us because at any given moment of our days, we might feel like David and wanting to describe, like, the wickedness we see. Like, look at them, Lord.
Look at what they do. Nothing good comes out of their mouth. Like, you know, we might say that about our bosses or about people in our families. Right? Like, we just we naturally have that disposition from day to day.
And though it's important to to be able to name that before God, I would say it's even more important to meditate and pray through the love of God and and how, unfailing it is and how it feeds us today. And to consider that invitation from Jesus, to, in prayer now, reflect and receive God's love. God, we are prone at times to only focus on what we see other people do and to feel frustrated. God, help us in humility to realize that that could be us as well. Help us to see that our own sin is and can become a cancer in our bodies and souls and to cut it off.
And help us to do so by the way we receive your unfailing love, your steadfast love today. God, your love feeds us. Your love is a shelter for us today. And so in light of what we have to work through, in light light of the relationships we have to face today, would you help all of us to take shelter and to find refuge in your love, and to be satisfied with the abundance of what you give to us there in Jesus. We pray these things in his name.