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Psalm 6 – Praying through the Bible #170 – A Prayer of Pain Before Praise
Before a psalm is taken apart and analyzed, each needs to be experienced, even felt, as our emotions overflow and overtake our minds. We need to allow the Psalms to take apart our lives as it takes part in our lives. To experience Psalm 6 we have to experience the pain and the praise. To experience Psalm 6, re-experience a time in your life when you felt as David feels:
(1) LORD, do not rebuke me in Your anger; do not discipline me in Your wrath. (2) Be gracious to me, LORD, for I am weak; heal me, LORD, for my bones are shaking; (3) my whole being is shaken with terror. And You, LORD — how long? (4) Turn, LORD! Rescue me; save me because of Your faithful love. (5) For there is no remembrance of You in death; who can thank You in Sheol? (6) I am weary from my groaning; with my tears I dampen my pillow and drench my bed every night. (7) My eyes are swollen from grief; they grow old because of all my enemies.
This psalm is about real life, and is written from a first hand, personal perspective. Real life is experienced and felt before it is analyzed. In Psalm 6 and our lives, there is praise for God after the suffering. Sometimes when reading, verbally pause; our silence is symbolic of waiting for God. When reading Psalm 6, I forced you to pause between v.7 and v.8. Now before finishing, remember a time when God answered yes to you. Re-experience the triumph you felt as you continue to read:
(8) Depart from me, all evildoers, for the LORD has heard the sound of my weeping. (9) The LORD has heard my plea for help; the LORD accepts my prayer. (10) All my enemies will be ashamed and shake with terror; they will turn back and suddenly be disgraced.
To experience Psalm 6, we have to experience the writer’s emotions; the angst, the calm, the victory. We have to descend into the valleys of the shadow of death before we ascend the mountains of praise. While hearing the author’s pain and praise, you might have felt something hauntingly familiar. Within this poem, there is an uneasy connection between two different realities, dual realities, with the greater and grander reality overtaking the emotions and the mind. In reaching up to God, God brings us up to Him, and in our suffering we offer supplication. After the pain, comes the praise. Just as life is pain, life is praise. Those denying the pain have a diluted sense of praise. Those denying the praise, hurt with no hope of being healed.
Prayer Challenge: Prayers are not just said, they are felt. The fountains of our hurt become fountains of God’s healing. So when you pray, don’t be ashamed to feel.
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