The Way of the Righteous in the Muck of Life : Book Review and Psalm 6

I am so thankful to have come across this book. I've always loved Dale Ralph Davis' commentaries and I've been wanting to study the Psalms so what a perfect combination! He writes so engagingly and in a really insightful way. There's so much I've been taking away each morning as I read each chapter. I just wish the book wasn't only Psalms 1-12! I've been finding that praying through the Psalms in a bit of a loop has been really helpful at a time when I've found my praying flagging. So for the people I pray for daily, including believers and not yet believers there's loads in these Psalms (which I've particularly noticed since studying them) that is great to turn into prayer.

I want to share some insights from Psalm 6 from the book:

Among the dead no one proclaims your name.

Who praises you from his grave?

verse 5

This whole agonized prayer tells you that the whole reason for existence is....to praise God. David's prayer may expose you. How you answer the question, What's wrong with death?, will do it. My whole reason for existence [is to praise God].

I am worn out from my groaning.

All night long I flood my bed with weeping

and drench my couch with tears.

My eyes grow weak with sorrow;

they fail because of all my foes.

verse 6-7

The groaning, the tears, the grief, the exhaustion. Why does David rehearse all this to God?... What is he assuming about God? He is making an assumption about the mercy of God. He is assuming that all of this really maters to God and that Yahweh will be touched with pity over his condition. He assumes that our misery arouses God's mercy, touches God's heart. A prayer like this assumes that the Father is like Jesus- always going around being moved with compassion.

...Prayer doesn't change things, but prayer lays hold of a God who changes things and who, in prayer, changes you.

...Notice especially David's terminology for prayer in verse 8: the sound of my weeping. What a way to describe prayer. God can even make out what your tears long for. Shades of Romans 8.26 already!....You can go through a lot with a text- and a God- like that!

There will be many of the Lord's flock post-David who also come with the sound of their weeping and will need the assurance that God will see their tears. I have heard your prayer and seen your tears (Isaiah 38.5). And why shouldn't he? For he has given them a Savior, who, in the days of his flesh offered up both prayers and supplications with loud crying and tears (Hebrews 5.7) -and he was heard.