Psalm 22
April 28, 2024
Our Father, you sit enthroned in heaven, and you do whatever you please. We have heard the stories of your great deliverances, your mighty miracles, your compassionate love. We stand in awe at your great works.
And, like David in this psalm, most of us have all experienced times where we begged for your deliverance and did not experience it. Instead we heard silence. We have felt abandoned, our prayers unanswered. Perhaps some of us this morning stand here currently.
But Your Son, Jesus, also claimed the words of this Psalm. He suffered the ultimate scorn, the ultimate suffering, the ultimate silence from heaven when he asked for this cup to be taken from him, but submitted to your will.
For those of us who are in the midst of suffering, doubt, and discouragement this morning, help us to entrust our souls to You, our faithful Creator and Savior, and to continue to do good. May we rely on your character and your promises, find hope in your faithfulness throughout history, even while we hold the tension of so much suffering and so many unanswered prayers all around us, and echo with the psalmist (and with Jesus), why? Why are you, at times, so far from our deliverance and from our words of groaning? Why are you silent? Why do you wait?
We pray, Lord, for you to answer our prayers. We pray for your protection, your provision, your rescue. We pray this so that all the ends of the earth might see that You truly are God and that you care for your people—that our children would serve you, and the next generation yet to be born would declare your goodness.
But even if, as the psalm reminds us, we can’t keep ourselves alive, may we kneel before you and trust that you see what we cannot, that your love is unshakable, and that in the end you will bring full deliverance to your people—and the cross and resurrection of Jesus is our undeniable proof of that.
We want to lift up Catherine this morning and her work at Wycliffe. We pray that you continue to energize and equip her for this good work. We pray for many more people to join Wycliffe in their work of Bible translation around the world, and that your Word would go forth with power to the ends of the earth, bringing many people into your kingdom as they hear the good news in their own languages.
We also want to praise you for the almost 3,000 students at District Blitz last weekend who heard the gospel and enjoyed the community of your people. I pray for those who heard your word and whose hearts responded. Father, would you cause their roots to grow deep in you—that the enemy would not carry away the word that was sown, the trials and difficulties, the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of wealth would not choke it and make it unfruitful, but that it would bear fruit and multiply throughout their lives.
Thank you, Father, that you save, that you speak, and that you walk with us through all that life brings. We offer to you our prayers and our hearts this morning, in the name of your son, knowing that if you have given your son to us, you will graciously give us all we need. And all God’s people said, Amen.