During a difficult time a couple of years ago, many of my posts on this site had a similar theme. I was crying out, filled with the rawest of human emotions. I felt oppressed, depressed, afraid, and more. What I also felt was a closeness to God that I hadn’t felt ever before. My prayers were specific, continuous, and genuine, and I was often moved to tears.
My last post talked about living with passion. The focus today is praying with passion via the assigned chapter, Psalm 17. This chapter reminds me of the passionate prayers I had a couple of years ago and serves as a reminder for us to open our hearts to God every time we pray – earnestly, honestly, and intensively. In prayer, we are conversing with the God of the universe, our Creator, our Father in Heaven who loves us more than we can comprehend and knows us better than we know ourselves so there is no point in trying to hide anything from him.
Psalm 17 also reminds me of Christ and his passion on the cross. We are sinners in a sinful world but Jesus never sinned, he didn’t deserve the torture, hatred, punishment and judgment yet he faced it knowingly and willingly. All of the things David sought refuge from (deceit, violence, wickedness, arrogance, deadly enemies, ambush, and more) were directly experienced by Jesus as he became the substitute for our sins.
Whatever you are praying about today, seek the face of Jesus, envision to the best of your human mind the horrific impact of your sins, then praise him for what he did to erase those sins forever.
Let these words from Psalm 103 be the exclamation point to our praise and gratitude:
For his unfailing love toward those who fear him
is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.
He has removed our sins as far from us
as the east is from the west. (Psalm 103:11-12)