Delighting and Depending
Last week in our bible reading plan we read Psalm 81 which provides for us a helpful way to think about prayer. According to Asaph, the Psalmist, prayer is the habit of delighting and depending upon God’s strength. Before we consider prayer specifically, we must consider the nature of God’s strength.
God’s strength is not the cold and impersonal display of power, might, control, etc. Rather, his strength is the outpouring of his love. That this is the case is rooted in God’s nature as Trinity. God is love because God is, has been, and will be Father, Son, and Spirit. The persons of the one God are an eternal society of love. So therefore, when God displays his strength it is the outpouring and application of his love.
In Psalm 81 the display of God’s strength can be seen in his deliverance of Israel from Egyptian slavery. Rehearsing this ancient memory serves to invite Asaph’s original hearers to turn to God, to call on Him, and delight and depend on his strength. Yet we now have a more potent memory to draw upon, and to which the Exodus points: Jesus’s death and resurrection. Through Christ God delivered us from slavery to sin and death. In the hands of the Spirit, this truth draws God’s people into prayer where we get to delight and depend on God’s strength.
The Psalm begins with jubilant music and singing to God’s praise: “Sing aloud to God our strength; shout for joy to the God of Jacob” (v. 1)! In his strength God delivered his people. Now, through prayer, his people can celebrate, rejoice, and delight in God’s strength lovingly applied to their benefit. Since God’s strength was most clearly displayed in Christ’s finished work, to delight in God’s strength is to delight in Jesus.
Later in the Psalm Asaph writes on God’s behalf, “Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.” Should his people open wide their mouths in prayer he will fill them. The picture evokes images of helpless baby birds chirping for their mother to feed them. And so it is with our Heavenly Father. As we prayerfully open our mouths, in dependence upon him, he fills us with the fullness of Christ by the power of the Spirit. So then prayer in Jesus’s name is to delight and dependance on God’s strength.
