A Faith Worth Fighting For – Part Three

Summer in the Psalms

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

August 17, 2022

A Faith Worth Fighting For – Part Three

Let’s read Psalm 3 together.

O Lord, how many are my foes! Many are rising against me; ² many are saying of my soul,
“There is no salvation for him in God.” Selah³ But you, O Lord, are a shield about me,
my glory, and the lifter of my head. ⁴ I cried aloud to the Lord, and he answered me from his holy hill. Selah ⁵ I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me.
⁶ I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around. ⁷ Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God! For you strike all my enemies on the cheek;
you break the teeth of the wicked. ⁸ Salvation belongs to the Lord; your blessing be on your people! Selah

I want to focus our attention on verse 4 this morning. I cried aloud to the LORD and he answered me from his holy hill. Gonna be talking about the power of prayer this morning.

As we’ve seen, David was the fight of his life when he wrote this psalm. His son Absalom led a powerful insurrection against him and David is running for his life. It won’t be long before David and his men will fight and defeat Absalom’s army, but right now things are looking bad for David.

And I’m not trying to be negative but that’s how things look for the church right now. When the church is in the news it’s for all the wrong reasons – it’s scandal or abuse or misused funds or whatever. But rarely because of transformed lives or communities impacted by the power of the gospel.

And I think “power” is the operative word. Right now – and that’s what I’m talking about – it seems like the power of the enemy to reach into churches and pull people – young people in particular – away from faith in Christ is greater than what we’re experiencing of the power of God to reach into the gates of hell and snatch souls away from Satan’s kingdom into the kingdom of Christ.

David had an overwhelming number of enemies and for a brief time it looked like they were going to win, but God was on his side. Soon David and his men will fight in the natural, but Psalm 3 is where David fights the spiritual battle by the power of God. Christian we are in a battle, not against flesh and blood but against evil forces in the heavenlies and there are times when we might feel like the power arrayed against us is overwhelming but Jesus said “greater is he that is within you than he that is in the world”.

The power of God within us is far more powerful than the power of Satan. And that brings us to David’s second weapon. The first weapon David used against the voices speaking lies over him was to speak truth to lies. But you, O Lord, are a shield about me, my glory, and the lifter of my head. The LORD – Yahweh – is my protector and he will see me through this. David fights the lies of the enemy with the truth of God.

God has given us the weapon of truth to fight the lies of the enemy. The truth of Jesus Christ has power to demolish strongholds. When the enemy accuses you and suggests that God has abandoned you, or that He won’t fight for you, speak God’s promises to your soul.

David’s second weapon is prayer.I cried aloud to the Lord. David prayed, literally as if his life depended on it because it did!

If the church is experiencing a kind of powerlessness compared to the pull of our culture and the enemy, I am coming to believe that powerlessness is the result of prayerlessness. We aren’t praying. And when we do pray, we pray in such a way that our prayers don’t seem to make a difference, which makes us even less motivated to pray.

We need a fresh faith to lift our prayers to heaven. We need a fresh conviction that when God’s people pray, God moves. God saves. God transforms. God heals.

The great evangelist/preacher Charles Spurgeon writes prayer is the slender nerve that moves the muscle of Omnipotence (the Almighty). Our slender prayers move God’s power. And when we don’t pray, God’s power is restrained – not because God needs our prayers but because He has chosen to act in response to our prayers.

We need to learn the power of prayer when we pray a certain way. Let’s look at four characteristics of David’s prayer life that we need to emulate if we are going to experience the power of God in this day and hour the way we need to in order to push back the overwhelming forces of evil.

1. Pray fervently and when possible, out loud

I cried aloud to the Lord…

David cried aloud. There was fervency in his prayer cause his life literally depended on God answering. All praying is not equal. God hears fervent prayers far more loudly than he hears emotionless prayers.

When I was a young kid (maybe 5 or 6) I went through a stage where being nonchalant was cool so if someone asked me if I wanted something I would say, “I don’t care.” One time I remember we were visiting an older couple I didn’t know and the woman offered me some candy and asked if I’d like one. I said, “I don’t care.” (But I really did!) And I was shocked and disappointed when she withdrew the plate and said, “well, if you don’t care, I’ll just put it away.”

If God hears us pray with an “I don’t care if I get an answer” attitude, God says, “if you don’t care, then I won’t answer.”

Charles Spurgeon put it this way: cold prayers ask for a denial! When our prayers are packed ice they ask for a denial. And the opposite is true: prayers heated by fervency ask for an answer!

James 5:16 says, The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.

God does great things when we fervently ask him to.

There is a kind of prayer that is crying out to God. I have often said prayer is talking to God and that’s true, but David isn’t describing a casual, ambling conversation with God, he’s crying out for help and we need to learn to do that if we are to see the power of God move back the tidal wave of unbelief and deception.

If we truly want to see loved ones saved, we need to pray fervently for their salvation. If we truly want to see people delivered from the bondage of sin and Satan, we need to pray passionately for their deliverance. We shouldn’t expect great answers from God if we pray like we don’t care.

David said “I cried aloud.” We don’t have to pray out loud for God to hear us. Nehemiah prayed a silent but passionate prayer when he was about to ask the king to let him go to Jerusalem. God knows our thoughts and our hearts and he can hear our innermost prayers.

But I want to encourage you to regularly find a time and place where you can pray out loud. There’s something about praying out loud that both helps focus our prayers and stoke our fervency.

I got a reminder of this the other day. There have been some things weighing on my heart and as I was driving in my car these things were on my heart and I was silently lifting these things in prayer to God but my thoughts were jumbled and unfocused.

Then I began to pray out loud – crying out to the Lord - and my prayers became more focused and more intense. In just a few minutes I was praying through tears to God. Praying out loud added fire and focus to my prayers and God hears heated prayers. Fervent prayers ask for an answer!

2. Pray short prayers!

The prayer David prayed is captured in verse 7: ⁷ Arise, O Lord! Save me, O my God!

That’s what he cried out – eight words. It was a short prayer but God would answer it powerfully.

Prayers don’t have to be long to be powerful. Prayers don’t have to be long to get God’s attention. There are a lot of short prayers in the Bible.

• Nehemiah was taking wine to the king when he let the sadness of his heart show on his face. When the king asked Nehemiah what he wanted, Nehemiah shot a silent prayer to God before he answered. It had to be a pretty short prayer but God answered it in amazing ways!
• Jesus taught us to pray with a prayer that is just roughly 66 words long.
• Habakkuk prays an amazing prayer – one we could pray today:

Lord, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.

That’s the prayer. This is what happens: ³ God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. His glory covered the heavens and his praise filled the earth. ⁴ His splendor was like the sunrise; rays flashed

from his hand, where his power was hidden. Habakkuk 3:1-4

God came. God’s hidden power was revealed. That’s what our world needs to see today. The power and glory and goodness of God. Young people need to see God’s power in their lives so they will have the courage to stand, like Shadrach, Mishach, and Abednego, when everyone else is bowing to the false gods of the hour.

It doesn’t take long prayers to see powerful answers. Longer prayers are good, and the more we pray the more we will want to pray, but I want to encourage you to pray short prayers.

3. BelieveGod answers prayer!

and he answered me from his holy hill. 

There are two things that heat up our prayers. One is wanting badly for God to do something. The other is believing that God answers our prayers. Faith gives wings to our prayers as we believe God hears and answers.

In the book of Acts we see the disciples go from timid, fearful, hiding in an upper room people to bold, confident, advancing the gospel wherever they went people. What changed? The answer is they received the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost, but that’s not the end of the answer. They began to see and experience the power of God at work in their lives, in the church, and in their communities. They experienced what Habakkuk prayed for: I stand in awe of your deeds, Lord. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.

As we see God answer prayer, it gives us greater faith to ask bigger things of God. So pray believing that God answers prayer! Faith is the muscle that reaches up and pulls down the answers from heaven.

And faith is a muscle. Just as if we don’t use our muscles in our body they will atrophy from disuse, so too if we never believe God for anything, our faith muscles will atrophy. If your faith is weak, don’t be discouraged, do what you do to strengthen any muscle – use it! Start small. Pray. Ask God to stir up your faith and strengthen your confidence that God is God.

If you saw what they saw in the book of Acts – people getting healed, people who hate Christians getting saved, people having visions that are fulfilled to the last detail, your faith would explode! God is the same God today. And we have the same access to Him through Jesus Christ. We can pray like Habakkuk, repeat those great works you did then in our day Lord.

4. Persevere in prayer!

For David, the immediate answer to his prayer for victory came in the form of peace.

I lay down and slept; I woke again, for the Lord sustained me. ⁶ I will not be afraid of many thousands of people who have set themselves against me all around.

David was still on the run, with many thousands after him, but God gave him the peace of heart to sleep and to not be afraid. God didn’t immediately give him what he prayed for. That would come later, as David persevered in asking for victory against his enemies.

Jesus taught us to persevere in prayer. Delay isn’t denial. Don’t give up when something you pray for doesn’t get answered right away. Persevere in prayer.

Spurgeon writes: Sometimes when we do not receive comfort in our prayers, when we are broken and cast down, that is when we are really wrestling and prevailing in prayer.

Some prayers need to be prayed with tears and anguish. You leave the place of prayer more burdened, not less. On one level David and his men would defeat the enemies he mentions in Psalm 3, but you know what happened right after that? Sheba rose up and mounted an attack against David! Go through David’s psalms, written at different points in his life, and you’ll see enemies is a constant prayer concern for David.

Sometimes God answers our prayers gloriously and immediately. Sometimes God gives us sustaining peace to persevere in life and prayer. Unanswered prayers press us deeper into God, just as David’s constant ordeal with enemies pressed him again and again into God and prayer.

Concluding thoughts

Is there something weighing on your heart? Troubling your heart? Maybe you try to lift it by staying busy. Or by chilling out in front of the TV. Or with a glass of wine or a shopping spree. Try casting that weight on the Lord in prayer. Cast your cares on the Lord for he cares for you. Sometimes we pray with faith and anticipation, sometimes we pray through tears. God hears them all!

As we close with a song, let’s lift our burdens to God in prayer. God is good, God loves you, God answers prayer.