…BUT I GIVE MYSELF TO PRAYER!

David must have been broken man! In Psalm 109 :22 we read:”My heart is wounded within me!” He wasn’t a perfect man void of

sin nor weaknesses free.Fact is, fingers can be pointed at him for good reasons.And his heart called to be “after the heart of God”

later, be unmasked as full of lust and deceit.

Yet despite these,he remain fearful of God. Once his sin pointed , he came to God with a crushed heart. Asking for mercy and re-creation

of his heart. Fractured saint but great repentant sinner!

Wrongly accused, he can be so broken! Yet would not lift his hand to strike back. He would retreat to his God and ”… give myself to prayer” (v4).

And to this less but sublime hidden character of him I am lured. He not only a man of songs but also a warrior in prayer.Beyond the seeing eyes of men, he fasted and prayed.This mighty warrior, a swordsman of no equal, a giant-killer, leader of men,wrestle with God in prayer and has a soft knee. Said he, “my knees are weak through fasting” (v24). It dawn on me, he is mightiest when he’s on his knees before the presence of God and not when mounted on his horse leading his men to charge. He knows where the true greatness can be traced. On knees. And his brokenness? Look at his enumeration:

    v.2 …the mouth of the wicked and the mouth of the deceitful have opened against me.

          …they have spoken against me with a lying tongue   

    v3 … they surrounded me with words of hatred and fought against me without a cause

    v4 …in return for my love they are my accusers.

Swords, arrows and spears seem not to hurt David, but words, words of false accusations wounded him deeply.Rightly accused he would come to God broken, wrongly accused, he was a devastated man. In both occasions though, end  in the presence of God. He falls back to God.

I think of David a lot of times these days. There are uncanny ways where we servants of God fat the receiving ends of suspicious and malicious talks.Lying tongues put around us tales that hurt us and in some way destroy us. But the thing here is not what is thrown at us but if  we hurl back. In case of David, he gave himself to prayer, but I don’t question his ability to let his sword strike.Heads will roll for sure! Oftentimes this is the opportunity,unknowingly, we missed. The opportunity for the inner man to grow in prayer because we let go our own way of confronting our “war”. It has a place, I know, but prayer will lead us to a much different way…the way of God. Come to think of it, His is best, and David knew it all along, thus he comes to God. Thus in like situations we need not throw back.

This to me is a simple  lesson to learn that canl help us manage future encounters. When  arrows start to fly by us, and arrow throwers are beside us,we need not to throw back. These arrow throwers shall have their season but we know their ends. When we retreated to prayer, God becomes our shield and defender.A mighty refugee.A strong tower and deliverer. We learned this from David:” I will greatly praise the Lord with my mouth…He will STAND at the right hand of the poor to SAVE him from those who CONDEMN him” (vs30-31)

Let us give ourselves more to prayer. Let God deal with arrow throwers, he knows what to do. Remember,(this time with old saying), he who walks around and throw mud,is the one who loses ground ,yet and bitter still, has the dirty hands.

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