Pray as David teaches us

April 9, 2025

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In times of trouble, may the LORD answer your cry. May the name of the God of Jacob keep you safe from all harm. May he grant your heart’s desires and make all your plans succeed. May we shout for joy when we hear of your victory and raise a victory banner in the name of our God. May the LORD answer all your prayers. Psalm 20: 1, 4-5 NLT

We read this in church last Sunday.  Later that afternoon, I read Psalm 20. What a powerful encouragement to any believer. This psalm also offers me a model for when I petition the Father on behalf of all our leaders, both within the Church and in society.

Using this prayer song, the people of Israel make several requests to God on behalf of their beloved king, David. The people are pleading for what is best for the public good.  David, the warrior king who loves God, wrote this psalm for his people. With it, he actually instructs the people to pray for him in ways that glorify God.

All of a sudden my thoughts flitted forward in time to the Bathsheba and Uriah tragedy.  With that chapter of David’s life in mind, I don’t believe David is unaware of his potential to sin. Certainly he doesn’t want the people to ask God to grant every desire that he might entertain.  But what they are to ask for, is that their king would do all in the name of God, to include defeating their common enemy.         

I, too, want and pray to the Father for Him to defeat His and our enemy, Satan, and all whom he manipulates. For sure,  an enemy of the Lord is my enemy. When I pray for God to be victorious, when I think about our leaders who shepherd the Church and ask for their protection, I want King Jesus to deliver us and the Kingdom from evil. It’s what I most desire.

So, Father, grant this deep desire of mine and alert me to when I crave or long for something that doesn’t glorify You. Without Your protection from Satan’s temptations, I can easily fall into doing something evil, without much thought.

A prayer for any situation

February 8, 2024

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Moses said, “Please show me your glory” Exodus 33:18 NIV

This morning with a cup of coffee at hand, I opened up to Psalm 20. I needed God’s word to shape my mind for this day.  I’m in the truck with Mike right now as we travel to Asheville to say goodbye to Mom who is dying.

The first part of Psalm 20 is a petition, asking God to grant his people several marvelous gifts of help and sustenance. Then comes verse 4 (NLT): May he grant your heart’s desires….

I paused and said to myself: Just what IS your desire, Maria, in this situation that involves Mom, her two sons, Mike and Steve and you?

I was about to form a response with details of her passing and the ‘boys’ grief, when what popped into my mind was Moses’ petition to witness God’s glory!

Not what I was expecting. But it thrilled me.  I saw it as evidence that bit, by bit, I am growing more like Christ.  I DO have ‘the mind of Christ’ (1 Corinthians 2:16).  Not completely, but each less-clingy, less-desperate detailed request is a way I can release control over my life and hand Jesus the reins. It’s a way of praying like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane when he submitted to the Father’s will.

I don’t know what the weekend holds, but I do know that we have a Good Shepherd to lead us by the hand as we walk with Mom through the dark valley of death.  He will bring us to the other side.  May we see his glory!

Can we know God’s will?

September 1, 2022

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For it is [not your strength, but it is] God who is effectively at work in you, both to will and to work [that is, strengthening, energizing, and creating in you the longing and the ability to fulfill your purpose] for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:13 Amplified

May He grant you your heart’s desire and fulfill your whole plan! Psalm 20:4 NASB

Have you ever prayed to know God’s will about a matter BEFORE you ‘did’ anything, before you took action?

I’ve only started first with God once in my life.  It happened like this.  I found myself at civil loggerheads with the other French teacher at my private school.  Thanks to a radically liberating workshop I had attended nine years into teaching, I switched how I taught French. I abandoned textbooks, grammar and spelling, typical emphases for language teachers.  Instead, I embraced helping students acquire French through comprehensible input. Presenting my students rich, varied, repetitive and interesting input in the form of stories and anything novel, I simply copied how we all learn our first language.

It’s natural, organic, fun and thoroughly engages learners.

It also threatens a traditional textbook teacher. My colleague feared that my radical change would slow her down in preparing students who started with me for the AP French exam as seniors.

I endured her pushback for several years.  But eventually, I knew that one of us would have to yield.

In September of my last year at this school I told God of my desire and asked him to reveal his will. I started praying for a sign. I had no idea how the Lord would grant my request, but I trusted that he would.  The ‘deadline’ loomed closer as we approached March, the month when contracts were to go out to those teachers the school wanted to retain.

I don’t remember being TOO terribly anxious.  Mike and I kept reminding our Father of this request. Frankly, it felt like a new adventure in trusting Him.

On Valentine’s Day, I received God’s signal.  I ran into Elaine in the hallway that day. “Maria,” she began, “you’re going to have to go back to using our textbook next year.  I’m losing too much time teaching what they should have learned with you.”  What is poignant is that my students were growing unafraid to open their mouths and speak French. Was it messy? You bet, but I expected that.  Could they conjugate a verb?  No, but they entered my colleague’s classes enjoying speaking French.

Back to my hallway conversation.  “This was it!  God just gave me a sign” With relief, I felt released to look for a new job for the fall.  I refused to teach the traditional way which didn’t serve my students well.  So, I would be the one to depart.

Experiencing God’s answer after months of waiting thrilled me even more than the answer.  Here was evidence, that if we wait on him in faith, he really DOES give us wisdom.

Here the Lord was affirming and opening up a path toward my heart’s desire: the freedom to teach the way I knew allowed learners to enjoy the process of speaking without fear.

Twenty-two years have passed.  I have once again asked Jesus what he thinks about a desire I have.  I have been praying and waiting for 4-5 weeks.

You know how much I love practicing languages.  My ‘monthly allowance’ for this polyglot hobby, my exercise class, nail and hair care and book habit is not enough.  Therefore, I have laid this issue before the Lord. I have asked Mike to pray that God would make clear if he approves of me proceeding with that desire. Afterall, he is the logical person to check with first!

Isn’t the Lord the source of our good desires?  I reason from Scripture like this:  if he gives me a desire, then he is going to fulfill it.  Probably not in the way I imagine, but in a creative and surprising form.

I believe that I received a greenlight nudge three days ago. Listening to a Spanish podcast while doing food prep, Pablo mentioned why people allow fear to stop them from trying something.  Suddenly, I felt the longing to embrace something larger than me, beyond my comfort level and ability so I would have to depend on Him.

I mentioned it to Mike that night and he concurred that very likely was from the Lord.

I continue to pray and wait. At the same time, I have opened a file to capture the practical ideas that are popping into my mind.  I don’t know yet where God is leading me by means of this desire, but I’m excited to find out. His word assures me that it is he who is causing my desire to do works that he has programmed for me.

Trusting in what I can see – just plain stupid!

October 22, 2017

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Psalm 20:7  Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God. (NIV)

Who wouldn’t want to have at one’s disposal a stable full of strong, thoroughbred horses and a complement of iron chariots?  Think how reassuring that stockade of muscle and might would feel!  Especially when the enemy rattled sabers and the rhetoric intensifies.

But that seeming crutch is not what God has in mind for His children.  No! As the psalmist asserts, the people of God purposefully reassure themselves NOT by gazing at their OWN provisions but by rehearsing and remembering the facts.  The Head of the supernatural angel armies is our King, our Protector, and Provider.  He’s that invisible kind of force.  Just as real and ready, but not the kind you can see or touch.

We, humans, tend to prefer what we can feel and finger and count. At least I do!

This divine and very different sort of defense force depends on our using the faith God has given us.  The difficulty is this:  faith is an invisible gift. It’s REAL and it’s THERE. But it only becomes operative in the very moment we choose to trust who God is and what He has promised to do and move out in reliance on Him. When we act as if we really know He will come through, He comes through!  Always.

You’d think that with each God-success under our belt, it would get easier for us to trust Him.  I admit, to my shame, that I find even WANTING to rely on God a constant battle.  I think it would be easier just to have the resources myself.

For instance, I don’t FEEL like a naturally creative teacher.  I plan lessons a few days in advance and then when I get to right before a particular French class bustles in, I find that I don’t feel confident about the activity I foresaw.  When I fling myself on God’s promise to provide what I need, I get real help.   Somehow He shifts my thinking and suddenly I can SEE what something that might work and be more effective.

And the class DOES hum and I’m grateful.  HE actually provides, each time I consciously cry out and depend on Him and do what He provides.

Last Monday I didn’t do that submitting my plan prayerfully and dependently to God for His help.  I relied on myself.  And the entire day’s classes proved to be flat.  I hated it.  In fact, I wanted to give up teaching altogether as I walked out of school to my car.  Then the Holy Spirit gently brought this question to mind, “Maria, did you even ask for My help? After that first class, why didn’t you think to hand over the next level’s plan?”  Stunned, I realized that I had not prayed at all that day about my teaching.  How could I overlook such a basic resource?

The truth is, in my natural flesh, I just rather have the resources at hand – ahead of time.  It’d be much easier to be a naturally gifted, creative French teacher who had her students eating out of her hand and speaking French.

But I know better.  The Bible teaches us that we are designed and created to be needy from our birth:

Psalm 22:  9-10 –Yet you are he who took me from the womb;
    you made me trust you at my mother’s breasts.
 On you was I cast from my birth,
    and from my mother’s womb, you have been my God.

So my prayer daily, even though I sometimes forget, is for God to make me glad and content in my dependence on Him.  When I fling myself on Him, and He comes through, I get the help and relief and He gets the glory.

Our Creative Designer and Sustaining Father calls this system, this way ‘GOOD‘.

Psalm 84:11 – No good thing does He withhold from the one who LIVES moment-by-moment depending on Him to come through. (what He calls being ‘walking blamelessly or uprightly’)  And if you think about it, if we are upright, that means we have our hands raised to Heaven, imploring and crying out to Him, instead of looking horizontally either at the need or what we can do to meet it ourselves.

Father, please help my unbelief!