“In the midst of chaos and upheaval, I learned an immensely valuable lesson: God can handle my mess.”
This week’s devotion is written by special guest Pastor Ryan Beagle who most recently served for thirteen years as the Lead Pastor at Hillcrest Church in Mount Vernon, Washington.
Here is a quick quiz for you:
Which one of these does biblical prayer accuse God of?
The Lord has rejected his altar and abandoned his sanctuary
The Lord has abandoned his people over to the enemy
The Lord refuses to speak to those who speak for him.
The Lord is like a bear waiting, or a lion hiding, who dragged me from the path, mangled me, and left me without help.
Trick question: the answer is all of them!
Have YOU ever prayed: God you have dragged me from the path, mangled me, and left me alone? My guess is probably not. Can we say that to God? The Bible does! (Lamentations 3:10-11- Look it up!) Here’s what I love about Psalm 139. It insists that we can’t hide anything from God. As the Psalm so poetically demonstrates, nothing is beyond the knowledge of God:
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
The Psalms are dear to me because of their presence in the most trying moments of my life. On July 4th 2015 I found myself clutching the bathroom wall as the world spun around me. I was rushed to the hospital, where eventually it was determined I had suffered two strokes in the “Manhattan Island” of brain real estate. How do you pray when everything you had hoped about your life is in doubt, you can’t see, you can’t walk, you hiccup every five seconds, and you can’t remember more than three numbers in a row?
Through those days and my early recovery, I leaned on praying the Psalms. In the midst of chaos and upheaval, I learned an immensely valuable lesson: God can handle my mess. All the mess. I don’t need to tidy up before I come to the Lord. Wearing your Sunday best can be an honoring practice- but there is no need to dress up our prayer for Jesus. The Psalms taught me to pray more honestly, more boldly, and gave me a vocabulary for prayer I did not have.
As Psalm 139 assures us, God knows everything about us. Even the parts that aren’t ready for public consumption. The doubts, fears, sins, and vanities. The shames, the suffering, the injustices. Here’s what we discover in the Psalms, all of life, the good, the bad, the ugly- is fair game for conversation with God.
When we bring our honest selves to prayer, instead of cleaning ourselves up a bit and guarding our speech, the Psalms teach us that any prayer is an act of faith. By trusting God with our true selves we demonstrate faith that Jesus is Lord over all of life.
Therefore, let us be like the Psalmist who does not fear God’s knowledge or hold back their inmost thoughts. Rather, the Psalmist concludes the prayer with an invitation for God’s intimate personal knowledge to become part of their relationship- and thus fertile ground for God’s transforming work:
23 Search me, God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thoughts.
24 See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.