Making Prayer Easier When Life is a Struggle (Psalm 143)

Life is a struggle sometimes.  Prayer can be a struggle.  It doesn’t have to be.  When prayer seems hard I turn to the Psalms.  I’ve done that for nearly 30 years since I was a young single man living far from home in a foreign land and the Psalms have led me closer to God.  Through centuries and millenia God’s people have used the Psalms to express their cries to him.  I shared the following psalm (143) last Sunday with my family a day after my oldest son left home and landed on the other side of the world and now I’m sharing it with you.

1 Yahweh hear my prayer. Give ear to my requests.  In your faithfulness and your righteousness answer me!

2 Do not enter into judgment of your servant, for no one living can be upright before you.

3 For the enemy pursues me and crushes me to the ground.  He  makes me dwell in darkness like those who are long dead.

4 So my spirit is overwhelmed inside me and my heart is desolate within. 

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Pray and don’t give up!

Why do we give up on a prayer? Is it discouragement? We ask for something and don’t see results. Or we don’t like what happens and assume God isn’t listening or at least not giving a favorable answer. In Luke 18 Jesus tells his disciples a short parable about prayer that challenges us to persist.

There is a judge who doesn’t fear God or care about the opinions of others. In other words, he’s not very open to persuasion.

A widow in the city keeps coming to the judge asking him to hear her case. In Jesus’ world, women didn’t have the rights and protections that they have today. Without a patron–a husband or a powerful relative–she wasn’t likely to have her case even heard. Judges decided their own docket, whose case they would consider and who they would turn away. The judge gave the woman a cold shoulder.

But she keeps coming. And coming. Showing up and asking to be heard.

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