Psalm 64

Writing a daily blog on the Bible has forced me to read the Scriptures in a whole, new way. No longer can I simply “read over” the Bible; I am—chapter by chapter—forced to think about what I have just read and try to discover what it reveals about God.

I must say, taking this tack with things has put a brand new light on Psalms—one that I don’t much care for. I mean, I have read Psalms a number of times in my life, but I must have just been “reading over” them before, because never have they seemed to say the same thing over and over and over.

We’re not even halfway through the book yet, but at this point, I think I can pretty safely say that the majority of the psalms could fall into this outline:

1. God, I’m in trouble. Listen to me.

2. My enemies are all over the place. They are evil.

3. Help me. Defeat them.

4. God preserves the righteous.

5. I will trust in Him.

I can’t tell you how many times I have read that psalm in the past 64 days. Didn’t David have anything else to say?! That was my first thought… and then I realized that David had no idea he was writing “inspired” literature when he wrote these songs. He was simply pouring out his heart to God. Sure, he poured out the same thing over and over again, ad nauseam. But don’t we tend to do the very same thing?

Really. Think about it. The next time you pray, think about what you’re saying. Is it basically the same thing you’ve said in prayer for months, perhaps even years? Do you keep repeating the same phrases, using the same clichés? Do you even realize what you’re saying? Paul told us to pray without ceasing, not pray without thinking!

It might be easy to conclude that God could get bored with us very quickly. But even though David wrote the same thing over and over again in the Psalms, I believe God loved every single one of those songs. And even if we’re at the place where the only prayer we’re comfortable saying is The Lord’s Prayer, God will gladly listen to it a thousand times.

God loves us as we are, and that means that He’s interested in us as we are. If the only thing on our minds is how we’re being hounded by the enemy, God wants to hear about that. And if our entire life is eclipsed by that one co-worker we can’t get along with, God wants to hear about it.

David didn’t try to write a new song every time He sang to the Lord. He didn’t think, Gee, I sang about those enemies last time. I’m sure God won’t want to hear about that again. No, he sang what was on his heart. He wasn’t worried about originality. He was worried about honesty. David may have said the same thing over and over, but for him, it wasn’t a meaningless mantra. It was his life.

God loves you as you are. He’s interested in what’s happening in your life. And even if you come to Him with the very same prayer 64 days in a row, God treasures and remembers those prayers. He certainly treasured David’s prayers—look where they ended up.