My pulpit message notes - Honest Prayer

Honest Prayer

My Pulpit Message Notes are extracted from the sermon preached at the Nairobi Baptist Church (NBC) Ngong Road on Sunday 8th May 2022. Preacher: Mrs. / Elder Caroline Krhoda. Topic: Honest Prayer (David) Scripture: Psalm 51

Many of us have difficulty in prayer. A large percentage of professing Christians spend little time in sustained prayer, especially private prayer.

Why? Maybe due to doubt that anything will happen at all if we prayed. Maybe we have prayed about something for so long and have not seen any results. Or we have prayed something important and the opposite has happened e.g. a loved one who was ill, you prayed and they passed on, or a job that seemed perfect, you prayed and failed to secure it. Maybe you have had experience with prayer that led us to the conclusion that it is pointless.

Very often when we settle into private prayer we lack that sense of nearness or realness with God. It seems unnatural to talk to a God that you can neither hear, nor see. There are circumstances in life that can drive us to prayer, but there are times when life just seems manageable and can lull us into some kind of sufficiency, adequacy, or it is a sin that we are entertaining that keeps us too guilty to pray.

Psalm 51 titled; A psalm of David. When the prophet Nathan came to him after David had committed adultery with Bathsheba.

This very well known Psalm, that is now public was once a cry of a man in private to his God. The events leading to this Psalm recorded in 2 Samuel 11 and 12.

Summary

David had stayed home when kings went to war. One random evening he spotted Bathsheba bathing as he walked on the roof of his palace. The Bible describes her as very beautiful. And that is why David inquired about her and was informed who she was including her parents and whose wife she was.

One would think that David, a man after God’s own heart would shut the matter down, but no, he arranged to sleep with her and return her to her husband where things mighthave stopped, except that she conceived.

David is now in a bit of a quandary, he is the king after all and now there is proof of what has happened. He tries every way to get Uriah to come home to his wife, even getting him drunk, but he fails. So in the end he has him killed and after the mourning period he brings Bathsheba to his palace and she has the baby. Nine months at least between the event and Nathan’s visit to him was no less than nine months. The time from conception to the birth of a child.

Was David praying? Was the greatest worshipper of all time worshipping? We read in Psalm 38 what he would have been like if he was. Guilty, angry, troubled, overwhelmed, pierced, mourning, pained, his strength failing, light before his eyes, abandoned by friends, routed, even physically ill, like one cannot hear God, forsaken like God is far away. That is how David would have felt if he was maybe aware of that sin.

While the sin was still fresh, maybe that is how he felt. However as you know you and I with time, when not dealt with, a conscience can be numbed, a sin can be suppressed, the voice of God silenced and we can get used to the distance. However, the thing that David had done displeased the LORD.

And He sends Nathan with a story. There were two men, a rich one with many sheep and cattle and a poor one with one little ewe lamb that he loved. The rich man to feed a traveller who came to visit him and instead of taking one of his own, took the poor man’s lamb, had it prepared for his guest. And David’s anger was stirred, his spirit’s response was immediate. “As surely as the LORD lives, the man who has done this deserves to die and he shall restore the lamb fourfold because he did this thing and he had no pity.” To which Nathan declared, “You are the man”. You are the man who deserves to die. You are the man who shall restore the lamb fourfold. You are the man that had done this thing. You are the man that has had no pity.

It is difficult to see a stain when there is no light. The closer we get to the light, the clearer we see the stains. It took the light of God for David to see himself. He had sinned in murder, in adultery, in covering his sin and in hardness against repentance.

And now shaken from this, he came in great honesty and brokenness before God. “Have mercy on me O God. God please do not treat me as this sin deserves. Do not punish me for the guilty verdict. Instead, please pardon me for it.” The prayer of a man who knew he had sinned and stopped all self justification. David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the LORD”. No excuses.

Verse 3,

“For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me, 4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight; so you are right in your verdict and justified when you judge. 5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”

I have sinned. I deserve the judgment of death. The grace of God’s light pointing out to him that he was the man, brought him to the place of honest prayer.

I remember a point in my life when all was not going well at all. A loved had been unwell for a while despite constant and earnest prayer, our house had no tenant, I had no job and I was generally, completely directionless and I was on Mombasa Road on my way to a shop to buy a toilet for my tenantless house and as I was thinking about my directionless life I got a phone call from my friend who embarked on telling me just how well things were going on in her life. God had done things for her.

And I rejoiced with her ‘praise the Lord, hallelujah, great’. As soon as I placed the phone down, the taps were open, tears. I cried all the way to the shop, pressed pause when I reached, got the toilet and went back into the car and pressed play. Cried all the way to the house

where I proceeded to lay on the carpet and prayed cried some more. And I told God, “This is not my portion. I have served You all my life. Look what I have to show for it.” And I cannot remember how long I had gone on and on when as clear as day I had an impression in my spirit about my prayerlessness in the days before. God saying to me, ‘Do you know, but for my mercy, It would have been worse.”

“You are the man.” And instantly my prayer changed and I prayed to God, “Have mercy on me. and thank You that it wasn’t worse.” You see there are things about myself that I would never know, except God reveals them to me. Stains in my life that I would never see except, I held them up against God’s light. David understood and accepted his condition.

Could part of the dishonesty in our lives be an impression like that of the church in Laodicea?Thinking they were rich and prospering and in need of nothing when in actual fact they were wrecked, pitiable, poor, blind and naked.

One writer says, the result of being known by God and listening to God is that we are woken to the truth that we are in fact very low. For God speaks to us about our sin, our guilt, our weakness, our blindness, our folly and He compels us to judge ourselves hopeless and helpless and then to cry out, ‘Have mercy on me’.

An accurate view of ourselves leads us to honest prayer.

Jesus told the story of a Pharisee and a tax collector in Luke 18 to demonstrate the folly of those who are confident in their own righteousness. The Pharisee pontificating how he was not like other people, “I fast twice a week, I give a tenth of all I have.” The tax collector meanwhile stowed at a distance and would not even look up to heaven, but he beat his breast and said, ‘God have mercy on me a sinner’. And Jesus said, “I tell you that this man rather than the other went home justified before God.”

But you know, we would never ask for mercy from God if our God was merciless. It is the very fact of His mercy and grace that allows us to come. So Psalm 51:1b “According to your unfailing love have mercy on me. According to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions. Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.” Other translations say, “accordingto your lovingkindness”, and “according to the multitudes of your tender mercies.”

Because as great as the multitudes of our sin is, even great is the multitudes of God’s grace and mercy. It is because he knew God to be merciful that he dared to come.

David was arguably at his worst at this moment, but he still appealed to God for mercy because he know God to be merciful. He knew God’s love to be unfailing. He knew God’s compassion to be great. He knew also that only God could blot out his transgressions. Cancel it, deregister it. Only He could wash away all the iniquity and cleanse him from sin. God was the solution to his deficit.

So have you ever wondered how David knew all these things about God so as to appeal to Him? How can we really know that God is compassionate and kind and holy and sovereign and eternal, unchanging, merciful? Where did David get his theology from?

God, the Almighty Creator, the Lord of Hosts, the great God before Who the nations are but a drop in the bucket, Who in fact holds that king’s heart in his heart in his hands and wields it this way and that, comes to man and talks to man, He opens His heart to him and He makes friends with Him, He enlists him onto His staff, makes him a partner, a fellow worker. God in sending Nathan to David was speaking to him as He speaks to us in His word.

Jeremiah says,

‘Let not the wise boast in their wisdom, or the strong boast in their strength, or the rich boast in their riches, but let the one who boasts, boast about this, that they have an understanding to know Me, that I am the LORD who exercises kindness, justice, righteousness on earth, for in these things I delight.

And David lived by this mantra. David knew God. See him tap into God’s ability to rescue him from the jaw of the lion and the paw of the bear and kill them both. See him tap into the name of the Lord Almighty, the God of the armies of Israel whom Goliath the Philistine had defied and gain victory over him with a sling and a stone. See him tap into God’s counsel and save Keilah. See him realise that Saul was God’s anointed and spare his life when he had a chance to kill him. David knew his God.

In numerous Psalms we hear him cry out to God to teach him his statutes, to open his eyes so that he would behold wondrous things out of God’s law. David’s supreme desire was to know and enjoy God himself. To understand God’s truth so as to be transformed by it and conformed to it. His cry that his ways would be directed to keep God’s Word. David sought to keep company with God and God who from the beginning has always wanted to keep company with man obliged him.

To know God is to tap into His inexhaustible resources for our fallen state. We are so much the poorer for not searching, seeking, following hard after God, for not calling out like Paul, “Lord I want to know you.” God’s stands ready to reveal Himself to us.

In the same way as God revealed Himself to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob and to Joseph because they heard Him speak, they saw Him, they related with Him as He orchestrated events, as He weaved in and out of their lives, we too can form impressions of God from His Son Jesus Christ. We can have an accurate view of God through His words and by His actions.

If we open our eyes to see Him, by the power of the Holy Spirit, Lord help me to see You with the first breath I take each morning. Help me to see You in the trees and the flowers and the beauty that is around me. Help me to see You in the family and friendships that I have, in the events of my life, but most of all in the passages of Scripture. Lord help me to see You. An accurate view of God leads to honest prayer.

Can we know God? Certainly, but not entirely because God is infinite and can only be known to the extent that He chooses to reveal Himself. Certainly we can seek Him. We can yearn as David did to keep company with Him. We can take note of His words to us and His actions towards us in the events of our lives. David first came to a clear understanding of who he was, what his state was, then he appealed to God who was his Saviour. And this formed the basis for his prayer for transformation, for growth, for sanctification.

“Blot out my transgression,” David prayed. The man who had remained for nine months, seemingly without an acute knowledge of his iniquity and sin now sensed his need to be cleansed, “Yet you desired faithfulness even in the womb. You taught me wisdom in that secret place.” The ASV says, “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom.”

Sinful from birth God has always wanted to accomplish in David faithfulness in the inward parts. Not just superficial reform. His sin may have been external, but it originated from a heart that was desperately wicked. It is James who says that ‘we are tempted when we are dragged away by our evil desires and enticed after desire has conceived it gives birth to sin and sin when it is full grown it gives birth to death.’

So David continues to pray,

“Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. 8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice. 9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. 11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit,”

David was calling to the only One who could do surgery to his inward parts, God Himself. This prayer would have been incomplete had it stopped at have mercy on me. It had to move on to God’s goal for all of us which is transformation in the inward parts. That is where sanctification happens. In the mind and in the heart. That’s the process by which God transforms us on the inside and makes us more like Him.

Hyssop was used to apply the blood of the Passover lamb and was also used to sprinkle the priest purifying water. It was an instrument for purification. David essentially understood that it would take God to apply the blood of the Passover lamb to purge him from his sin and sanctify him. Heart surgery can only be done by God Himself in answer to honest prayer that emerges from a revelation by God of our true state and then an appeal to His inexhaustible resources.

God speaking to the church in Laodicea, Rev. 3:17

“17 You say, ‘I am rich; I have acquired wealth and do not need a thing.’ But you do not realize that you are wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.” You are the man, that is your true state. “18 I counsel you to buy from me gold refined in the fire, so you can become rich; and white clothes to wear, so you can cover your shameful nakedness; and salve to put on your eyes, so you can see.”

So that you can truly become what you thought you were.

Such is the power of the sanctifying work of God. It makes clean. It washes whiter than snow. It causes bones that have been crashed to rejoice. It renews a steadfast spirit, a right spirit within us on the inside. The end of the process would be a restoration of the close relationship he had with God. David had seen God take His spirit from Saul and he cried out, “Please don’t take Your Spirit from me.

We cannot remain the same when we pray an honest prayer. A prayer that comes from a clear understanding of our state, that, only God can show us. That taps into God’s inexhaustible resources as our Saviour, that prayer will lead to our sanctification, into our growth to Christ-likeness.

Honest prayer leads to transformation. You heard it said that prayer changes things. Before that, prayer changes us. Heart surgery. I recently removed Twitter App from my to insulate myself from politics and all the vitriol that is there. It has worked only to the extent that I stay away from the news. As soon as I watch the news, I am again triggered, because I made a behavioural change when what I really need is heart surgery.

Not David. He asked for changes from the inside, but after God changes him

from the inside would issue into actions on the outside. A correct understanding of our state, a look to the Saviour will lead to our sanctification and it would prepare us to serve.

David says in Psalm 51:13-15

“Then I will teach transgressors your ways so that sinners will turn back to you.14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, you who are God my Saviour, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness. 15 Open my lips, Lord, and my mouth will declare your praise.”

In the dark days of his sin before he confessed, there was no way David would have been able to teach transgressors his ways. This restoration was his way back to his ministry. God leads us in the paths of righteousness so as to enable us to fulfil his purposes.

After he himself had been restored, then he could be an effective instrument in the transformation of others. After he himself had been delivered from the guilt of bloodshed, then he would be enabled to sing aloud again the praises of the Almighty.

What’s the end of the matter? First with God’s help, see myself that I am weak, that I am sinful, that I am hopeless, that I am wretched and poor and blind and bankrupt in desperate need of a Saviour, of God. Then see God as a merciful, compassionate, faithful kind Father without Whom I can do nothing at all and yet with whom I have everything. The great Sovereign God the all sufficient God Who has inexhaustible resources to answer my great need. Then be sanctified, become like Christ, be changed and then serve.

Honest prayer prepares us for service.

Psalm 51:16 is like a summary

“You do not delight in sacrifice,” or David would have brought it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings” David would have brought that too. “My sacrifice O God is a broken spirit. A broken spirit and a contrite heart, You O God will not despise.”

That, God will not despise. And all the rest as they say will fall in line.

If you are thinking all that sounds like some pretty lofty stuff, all I need right now is a job so that I can pay my rent, pay school fees, so I can live. All I need right now is this thing that is close to me for God to fix it. But God has a unique, tailor-made, bespoke, development plan for your life and mine. God has a unique plan for your life and mine that involves using and orchestrating the ordinary events of our lives to show us our state. To show us His character. To sanctify us and then to send us.

Do you remember? It was while I was going to pick a toilet for my house that it happened. It is the ordinary events when we are driven to our knees that He uses. Everything about our life right now is for the sole purpose of making you and I like Jesus Christ. The best king is the one who is most like Christ. The best student is the one who is most like Christ. The best lawyer, doctor, business person, teacher, politician, stay-at-home mum, pastor, evangelist is the one who most like Christ.

So what prayer would I want us to pray? Search me O God and know my heart, see if there is any wicked way in me and lead me in the way of righteousness. And if you have not even come to Christ as yet, that would be the place to start. Just to realise that you need the Saviour. That you and I are sinners and we need the Saviour. If you feel a tagging in your heart, that is the Holy Spirit revealing to you your state, revealing your need for Him.

Then, God teach us Your way, teach us your statutes, help us to know You. Who to know is life eternal. Sanctify me and make me more like Christ and then I will be able to teach transgressors your ways, then I will be able to sing your praises. I want to be a seeker of Your heart.