Pastor Fredo Ramos: As we continue praying the Psalms, we come today to Psalm 141. Oh Lord, I am calling to you. Please hurry. Listen to when I cry to you for help. Accept my prayer as incense offered to you and my up, my unpraised hands as an evening offering.
Take control of what I say, oh Lord, and guard my lips. Don't let me drift toward evil or take part in acts of wickedness. Don't let me share in the delicacies of those who do wrong. Let the godly strike me. It will be a kindness.
If they correct me, it is soothing medicine. Don't let me refuse it. But I pray constantly against the wicked and their deeds when their leaders are thrown down from a cliff. The wicked will listen to my words and find them true. Like rocks brought up by a plow, the bones of the wicked will lie scattered without burial.
I hope to you I look to you for help, oh sovereign Lord. You are my refuge. Do not let them kill me. Keep me from the traps they have set for me from the snares of those who do wrong. Let the wicked fall into their own nets, but let me escape.
By way of reflection, two places that I wanna draw your attention to up there in verse three, where David says, take control of what I say, oh Lord, and guard my lips. And then in verse five, let the godly strike me, it will be a kindness. You know, so often we, struggle to accept correction. And even in our maybe frustration with the way things go in our lives with those who are different from us, who don't live like we do, there's a slippery slope into becoming the very things that we dislike. And I appreciate David sensing in his own heart how he can drift towards evil.
He says, don't let me drift towards evil. And so in your day to day, be mindful of the temptations that might come your way and learn to pray as Jesus taught us. Lord, keep me, from temptation. He says, take control of what I say, guard my lips. What an opportunity for us to be mindful of the speech we carry today, knowing that the way we're feeling right now can very much dictate what comes out of our mouth later.
And I love the picture there in verse five where it says, if they correct me, it is soothing medicine. You see it is within the Christian faith that outside counsel, though it oftentimes is correcting us, is a form of restoration and medicine. And so perhaps you're just sitting with the reality of things that you know you need to change. Maybe someone has, brought something to light in your life. And this is an opportunity, as David said, to receive his medicine, to receive it as a kindness.
And Jesus, we hear you now inviting us in to maybe acknowledge those things in our life that we know we need to change. Maybe it is lips that need to be guarded. But whatever it is, God, we believe it is a kindness from you. And so would you lead us now into life today? Would you lead us now by your love today?
We pray in Jesus name. Amen.