Wednesday, May 24, 2017

Dial Daily Bread: A "Prayer Book" Provided by the Holy Spirit

Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread,"

Have you ever been opposed, misrepresented, misunderstood, and as a result, pained? Welcome to "David's Club"! The Holy Spirit has provided for you David's "Prayer Book," wherein you can find encouragement for every problem life brings to you.

You know that you are unworthy to pray David's prayers as though they were your own, for he was "the anointed of the Lord," and you have this deep feeling that you are not. But God invites you to do exactly that--to identify with David in his prayers. And here's the reason why it's so:

King David had a Son, a distant Descendant, who so immersed Himself deeply in David's Psalms that He earned the title, "The Son of David." And it is He who invites you to identify with David and pray his Psalms as though they were your own prayers, because that is what He did and they became His prayers. God has "predestined us [you] to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, ... by which He has made us [you] accepted in the Beloved" (Eph. 1:5, 6). Jesus invites you to pray in His name, so that all the encouragement He Himself derived from the Book of Psalms He wants you to absorb also.

You will find this difficult to grasp, that one so unworthy as you know yourself to be should be thus exalted, but you ever afterwards "walk softly" before the Lord and before your fellow humans. David suffered opposition, misrepresentation, even hatred from the people who prided themselves as being God's people, David's fellow-Israelites.

You may suffer problems in your family (so did David, and so did Jesus), or at work, or even (could it be?) in your church--the place where you expected peace and harmony. A wise writer has reminded us that there is a "supreme court of the universe, from whose decision there [can] be no appeal." David often appealed to that Supreme Court, and so can you. Then you can find rest unto your soul, confident in the decision of that "Court."

--Robert J. Wieland

From the "Dial Daily Bread" Archive: June 24, 2000.
Copyright © 2017 by "Dial Daily Bread."