Praying Psalm 131
I am always challenged when I read and pray through Psalm 131 and this week has been no exception. After some reflection on this personally and with a group, I ask, what was the Psalmist saying as he prayed this Psalm? That he had no pride in his life? I don’t think so. But maybe he was praying
I declare that
- God is in control, I am not!
- Life is all about God, not about me!
- Any strengths that I possess come as a gift of God
I am committed to
- Consider others as more important than myself
- Unseen acts of service
- Listening, believing and obeying what God has to say to me
- Listen to God speaking to me through my brothers and sisters
- Submit myself to God’s correction and rebuke
- Waiting on God before I respond or act
- Be slow to speak, slow to anger and quick to listen
- Allow myself to be transformed by love
- Cease striving, relax and rest in God
- Christ being centered in my life
- Humble myself before You God
- Be content with God’s provision
- Delight in submitting to your authority
- Yield up my rights to God
- Seek to value the needs of others over my own
- Submit my life, my plans, my ambitions, my relationships, my dreams, opportunities, schedule, etc to God
- Actively look for ways God’s goodness is expressed in my life and in the lives of others
- Embrace my areas of weakness
- Humbly use any strengths God has given for His glory
I refuse to
- Be seduced by power and pride
- Compare myself to others
- Look down on others
- Consider myself as more important than others
- Give up
- Allow anyone or anything control of my life except the Spirit of God
- Respond defensively to the suggestions or criticisms of others.
- live with a controlling, judgmental attitude.
I confess
- My total absolute need for God
- How desperate and dependent upon God that I am
- Jesus is Lord
- How easily I forget God and how quickly I seek to act independently of God and others.
- How wrong it is to compete with others for honor and position
“God, I’m not trying to rule the roost,
I don’t want to be king of the mountain.
I haven’t meddled where I have no business
Or fantasized grandiose plans.
I’ve kept my feet on the ground,
I’ve cultivated a quiet heart.
Like a baby content in its mother’s arms,
My soul is a baby content.” Ps 131:1-2 MSG
My soul had never tasted such contentedness, and I found myself drawn there: to the soils of simplicity and faithfulness; to a ground that might become familiar, and into which my roots might drive deep.
The text of Psalm 131 framed Peterson’s chapter on humility in his classic work A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. There, he draws a contrast between godly aspirations and spiritual ambition.
Aspiration is the channeled, creative energy that moves us to growth in Christ, shaping goals in the Spirit. Ambition takes these same energies for growth and development and uses them to make something tawdry and cheap, sweatily knocking together a Babel when we could be vacationing in Eden.
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