Pastor's Ponderings: Old Testament bible study of Psalm 30 (September 11, 2025)

September 11, 2025:  Thursday Bible Study on Old Testament of Psalm 30

Blessings and Peace to you this morning. Please keep the family and fans of Charlie Kirk in your prayers. He was a conservative Christian man who was assassinated in Utah yesterday as he was in the midst of a college campus gathering of his fans. Please pray for his wife and young children, who are now without their husband and father. May the LORD hold them in His care and Comfort as they live with this terrible loss in their lives. No one should lose their life because of their political stance, or their faith. I must say that even one of my young adults in the house was following all of this. Today please also keep Steve in your prayers as he has a bladder tumor removed. Pray for the LORD'S guidance for the surgeon and staff as this surgery proceeds and pray for a quick recovery. Also pray for Larry and Joyce. Larry has been moved nearer to his attending doctor and is now housed near NW Hospital. His care in this new setting is going better. May God bless both Larry and Joyce in this unexpected journey following Larry's surgery.

Of all the things that we perhaps feel the least qualified to do, praying often seems to be a struggle. Am I doing it right? Will I offend God? What if God doesn't deem my prayer worthy of His ear? Can I pray for myself in addition to the others I pray for? When is the best time, and is there a particular form I should be using? Who am I to feel bold enough to have this conversation with God? In our Psalm for today, 30, we are led into the way that David found helpful. We technically have the first part in Psalm 16. David's choice is to always start with praise to God. Think about it, isn't that the way that the Lord's Prayer starts? And though we are a little uncertain about why David feels that he has been set aside in his relationship with God, what we really have is David's confession of sin and brokenness, and how deeply he has felt the distance between himself and God during those times.  So far, we have given praise to God for His immutable holiness in all of creation, and perhaps most especially, in the petitioner's life. Yes, that is the next step in prayer. I guess we can call it the asking section. It is the time and place in our prayers when we appeal to God for His inbreaking in life itself, both ours and others. In the Lord's prayer we have these parts too. We ask God to forgive us for our sins (trespasses), and to guide us away from the myriad of temptations which pull us away from God! And then, we ask! Lead us not into temptation. Deliver us from evil. David petitions too, are to not be set aside in his relationship with God, but instead to be brought back into the fold of all who give praise to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. David's prayer, and ours, ends with yet more words of praise and thanks, power and glory, letting our own hearts and minds end our prayer with the comfort of knowing that the God of all things Cares, and will answer! In some respects, prayer is like prophecy. It may, and usually does, take some amount of time for us to know how God has answered our asks. In prophecy, the only way to know if the words that have been spoken have been heard, is if the prophet's words come true at some time in the future. I have had many prayers answered over the years of my life, and some I am still waiting to see what God has in mind for me with regards to them. But, like David, and so many others of us, we come to discover that constant prayer means keeping at it until God's resolution for our prayer petitions takes place. I am certain that David got a few no answers to his petitions. I know that I had a few of those too. But I think they may have been halfhearted prayers, softening each part, watering it down, and then failing to maintain a prayer posture in my life until the answer has been given. In all of this we must know that God's answer, yes or no, is right and good and just, even when it seems to us that the answer is not what we wanted. When those unwanted answers come, our faith and trust in God must take over, because we must admit that God knows what He is doing, with us, with others, and with the future!

May this weekend be special and wonderful for you.

With Christ's love, Pastor Kim