Psalm 52
July 17, 2022
Oh Lord, Your steadfast love endures all the day, and we can trust in it. As we’ve studied in Romans over these past few weeks, You are sovereign over all that happens and all of us are in Your hands. And God, that is good news because we know that You are always good.
We are all the more thankful that we can trust You with our lives and with the future when we relate with the psalmist to evil and destruction all around us. Whether it’s in the news or on social media or in conversations with neighbors and coworkers, we hear people boasting of evil. We hear plots of destruction and workers of deceit and people who love evil more than good and lies more than truth. We confess that at times it can lead us to feeling overwhelmed or discouraged, giving up hope that we’ll see much change. At other times it can lead us to fear, especially when we see our children or those we love buying into sin’s deception. But Father, we do not want to be like the wicked who sought refuge in themselves and trusted in their abundance instead of making You our refuge. Give us faith to rest our full confidence in You, that You have already won the war against evil and deception. While we await the day we will see Your final triumph, we know that already You have done it. Help us, Father, to live in confident, joyful obedience knowing that in You we have nothing to fear.
As we hit the midway point of summer, many of us are feeling how fleeting the remaining weeks of are. We ask that You help us to number our days rightly, whether it’s in the seasons of our lives or the seasons of the year. Help us to maximize the time with kids home from school and neighbors outside in the yard. Give us freedom from the need to fill all of the time with fun and instead to carve times to rest and to serve, to connect and to get away. Help us to be able to build relationships with neighbors and family over the summer that we can build on as fall comes and to build habits and rhythms into our lives that reflect Your pace and priorities.
And in the midst of the craziness that is so often a part of life, help us to keep forefront the commission that You’ve given us to make disciples. We pray that through the collective life of our church people would come to meet you for the first time over the next year, and that You would invite each of us into new depths of intimacy with You and of stepping out in faith, and that with all of that we experience greater delight in You.
We ask this in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and all God’s people said, Amen