When you cry out to God, what is your prayer?  The psalmist cries out to God asking God to receive his prayer and hear his prayer.  He asks God to give him understanding of God’s holy word and deliverance according to His promise.  He praises God because God teaches him His holy word, and His decrees are righteous, and they give the psalmist delight, and they sustain him.  

God gives us His holy word.  He gives us understanding of His holy word.  He teaches us His holy word.  He delivers according to the promises set forth in His holy word, and His holy word provides delight and sustenance.  God continuously pours Himself into us, and we know His holy word, yet we stray.  Like sheep, we come and go and wander.  Acknowledging this tendency, the psalmist pleads with God, asking God to seek him.

Considering the totality of the passage, this is quite an audacious plea.  The psalmist acknowledges that God pours His holy life into him, giving understanding, delivering, teaching, helping, saving, sustaining, and he has the audacity to ask for more because he still struggles with his sinful nature.  It’s as if he says, I know you have done all this, but will you also come and find me when I stray?

Paul struggles with the contrast within him between his sinful nature and God’s holiness.  He knows that the Holy Spirit dwells within him and he is on the path leading to sanctification, but he is far from perfect and his sinful nature still dwells within him also.  So a battle is going on within him, and us.  Similar to the psalmist, Paul writes,

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!  So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.  Romans 7:21-25

We know that Jesus urges us to ask, seek and knock (see Matthew 7:7), suggesting the burden is entirely on us.  However, we also know that Jesus came to seek out and save the lost (see Luke 19:10), and He is the Good Shepherd (see John 10:11), and He stands at the door knocking (see Revelation 3:20), so He also is actively involved in the process.

When you cry out to God, what is your prayer?  Please take time to meditate on the passage above, pray for God to open your eyes to see with clarity, and make the prayer recorded in the passage your own prayer.  May God continue to fill you, sustain you, transform you and reveal His glory through you.  Amen.