TAGGED PRAYER, PRAYER REVOLUTION IN US, SPIRITUAL LIFE, WHAT WE NEED
On the “About” page of this website, you will find the text of Psalm 51, which is captioned in the Bible text as being “To the choirmaster. A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.” This psalm is basically the lyrics to a song about the day when David was caught up in the consequences of his sin of adultery with the wife of another man. David, as King, not only betrayed the man by sleeping with his wife, but she became pregnant and because of this, David further sinned by sending that man, one of his loyal soldiers, off to the front lines, in the hopes that he would die in battle.
These are the lyrics to a great psalm about personal repentance, which is a model for us today, since we also need to face the consequences of our own rebellious state. We have not walked as we should. We have strayed from God as families, as churches, as a nation. But the most fundamental straying that we have done has been as individuals. On the most basic level, each person has failed to take up the calling of love to God that Jesus said was the greatest commandment. Because we have failed in that greatest commandment, we have also failed in the one that Jesus has called the second greatest, which is to love our neighbors as ourselves.
And [Jesus] said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:37-40 ESV)
When we as Christians—Christ followers—go off in all directions, seeming to care about the Kingdom of God, but in reality are primarily concerned with the externals of our Christian practice, our church programs, our religio-political strategies, and our extra-Biblical narratives, then, even if what we think we are doing is Christian and advancing God’s plans, we are actually getting in the way of His accomplishing His purposes. True, sometimes He actually calls us to involvement in programs, politics, and practices, but such things are only building God’s Kingdom and doing His work if we are first doing these things as an outflow of our love for Him and the insight that we have received from a personal call from His Spirit.
When David sent this song off to the choirmaster, we don’t know who else was going to hear that song in David’s time period. Perhaps no one in the temple heard it because it was a private contemplation for the king alone, or perhaps everyone heard it. However, in the days since, we all have heard this cry of the psalmist for cleansing and restoration; because of David’s openness in penning it, we, too, can use these words in a renewed focus on the Lord. The Lord can use these words to thereby start a revolution in our souls, a revolution that, one can hope, will spread beyond each individual, to reach the world that needs so much help.
Such is the most important prayer revolution of our day: a personal prayer revolution.
—Susan LaVelle
Trinity Church 