Pastor Fredo Ramos: Continue praying the Psalms, and today, we come to Psalm 64. Oh, god. Listen to my complaint. What a way to start your prayer. Protect my life from my enemy's threats.
Hide me from the plots of this evil mob, from this gang of wrongdoers. They sharpen their tongues like swords and aim their bitter words like arrows. They shoot from ambush at the innocent, attacking suddenly and fearlessly. They encourage each other to do evil and plan how to set their traps in secret. Man, these are not people I care to be with.
He goes on verse five. Who who will ever notice, they ask. As they plot their crimes, they say, we have devised the perfect plan. Yes. The human heart and mind are cunning.
So verse seven, notice the change. But god but God himself will shoot them with his arrows. Suddenly striking them down, their own tongues will ruin them, and all who see them will shake their heads in scorn. Then everyone will be afraid. They will proclaim the mighty acts of God and realize all the amazing things he does.
The godly will rejoice in the Lord and find shelter in him, and those who do what is right will praise him. Notice the bookend of Psalm 64. Oh, God, listen to my complaint At at the end, Lord, we will rejoice in you. This is an interesting picture here of you see someone who is in a life with God learning to complain, but listen now, allowing his complaint to drive him to prayer and to God. I say that because I think there is a way for us today to complain in a way that drives us further away from God and to actually kind of view our complaining and our desire and our want to complain, from a lens that's only our perspective, like our POV.
Here's why I'm complaining. And yet, David in this prayer, I think, is beginning to inform us that there's a way to vent to God, not from our perspective, but from his. Because he's, you know, facing and and observing the things that are not right in his world, that are not right in his life. And there's a way to kind of take that complaint and only see it from your perspective. But David's zooming out through prayer and saying, God, you will handle these things.
As bad as they are, you will handle them. And so I think by way of invitation, Jesus, we hear you inviting us today to find the freedom to vent and to complain, but to do so in a way that comes from your perspective. Not from our broken notion of what we think is fair, not from our own narrow point of view, but god we ask that your grace would give us eyes to see the world as you see the world. So that we, like David, can say in verse seven, but God will deal with them. So we open our hands in submission, and though we might sound like we want to complain, and even though we might feel like we want to complain today, would your spirit help us to land in a place of joy and rejoicing?
Because you are the God who sees all, and you will deal with all, and we hope in you now. In Jesus' name we pray, amen.