Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
At Sandals Church, our vision is to be real with ourselves, God and others. This channel features sermons and teaching from Pastor Matt Brown and other members of the Sandals Church preaching team. You can find sermon notes, videos and more content at http://sandalschurch.com/watch
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 January 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.
Pastor Fredo Ramos: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.
Dani Crowley:We continue our journey through the Psalms today by reading Psalm 54. Read along with me. It says this. Come with great power, oh God, and rescue me. Defend me with your might.
Dani Crowley:Listen to my prayer, oh God. Pay attention to my plea, for strangers are attacking me. Violent people are trying to kill me. They care nothing for God, but God is my helper. The Lord keeps me alive.
Dani Crowley:May the evil plans of my enemies be turned against them. Do as you promised and put an end to them. I will sacrifice a voluntary offering to you. I will praise your name, oh lord, for it is good. For you have rescued me from my troubles, and you helped me triumph over my enemies.
Dani Crowley:The psalmist is sitting in, I think, this very real place that sometimes we find ourselves in waiting for the justice that we wanna see, waiting for God to answer our prayers, waiting for God to move, but having hope that he will. And I think that this is such a great representation of what real faith looks like. Real faith is not everything's fine. The world is totally crumbling around me, but it's fine. God's good.
Dani Crowley:It's no. It's holding the space between. God, I need you. I need you to show up, and I'm asking with faith that you would, that you would come, that you would help me, that you would bring justice. And I trust you.
Dani Crowley:And I will continue to worship you in the waiting as as I believe with anticipation and full confidence knowing that you will because you're a God who's faithful because I remember how you've done it for me in the past. And I think that this is something for us to take into just our day and into our lives is where in that where are we holding that space where we're waiting to see God move and we're trusting that he will, the space of faith, in the real moments of our lives. So God, we just, we ask that you would renew our faith today. God, in the places where we are waiting to see you move, and we know and we are desperate for you to do so. God, that you would give us a new confidence in just who you are, in your character, in your nature.
Dani Crowley:God, that you are somebody who listens to our prayers. You don't dismiss us. You don't look down on us in the moments of trouble and remain idle or passive. But God, sometimes we wait for a long time. And so I pray that you would renew our faith today, that you would give us courage and the strength to continue to ask for your help, to ask for you to move on our behalf.
Dani Crowley:God, we trust in you. And even though sometimes we don't understand what is happening around us, we know that you are a good God and that one day you will make all things right. And so we ask that you would, just renew our faith again today. And we pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.