Psalm 80:1-19

Prayer is the primary resource that we have when we are in difficult situations.  God may allow us to face hard times but He is also our greatest source of hope for being restored from the hard times.  Our natural tendency when under distress may be for us to turn from the Lord or become bitter against the Lord or blame the Lord; all of these responses are futile.  The proper response is to cry out to the Lord for help.  He knows our situation and He is capable of resolving it according to His will.  Prayer places us in a position of surrender to the will of God and forces us to acknowledge Him in the midst of our trials instead of blaming Him.  When a child has been disciplined by his parent, he desires to turn his back, stomp his feet, stick out his bottom lip and pout.  This attitude will only bring further discipline and more hardship for this child.  The best thing for this child to do is recognize his disobedience, love his father for correcting him and then running into his father’s waiting arms for a hug of restoration.  Praying is how we run into the waiting arms of our Lord.

IN PRAYER WE REQUEST RESTORATION FROM GOD: Clarity is very important in prayer.  None of us likes it when someone wants to ask a favor from us but they never come right out and say what they want.  It makes us feel like we are being manipulated.  We should know better than to try to manipulate God.  When we come to God in prayer we should clearly request just exactly what we want.  In this case Asaph is requesting restoration from God.  Israel has been plundered and taken captive.  His longing desire is for the Lord to bring restoration to the land and the people so he clearly asks God to do exactly that.  He knows that God is able to save so He simply requests that God step forward and save them.  We must learn to recognize our own plight in life, understand what God is able to do and then simply ask Him to take action on our behalf.

IN PRAYER WE REMEMBER THE PROVISIONS OF GOD: When we pray it is important that we remember what the Lord has done in the past as well as where we are in the present.  Israel had been enslaved in Egypt, but God took them from slavery, planted them in The Promised Land and then allowed them to flourish in the land that God had provided.  This was God’s provision for His people and it was abundant.  However, due to the disobedience and idolatry of the people, God allowed them to be invaded by foreign nations and they ended up seeing their land stripped and their people enslaved once again.  Since God was able to establish Israel in the first place; it is clear that He is able to restore them now.  Remembering God’s provision of the past gives us great hope for the present and future.


IN PRAYER WE RETURN IN REPENTANCE BEFORE GOD: God is always ready and willing to restore His children when they truly repent before Him.  When we pray we must do so with a repentant attitude and be ready to run into the arms of our Lord who waits for us to turn back to Him.  We must recognize that He is our only hope and admit that our trials were of our own doing and simply admit that we were wrong and then turn back to the Lord with a renewed commitment of living in fellowship with Him and obedience to Him.  God is ready and willing to restore those who repent.  We must stop trying to manipulate God in prayer.  We must not use prayer as a means of simply lamenting the loss of the “good old days.”  We must repent before God when we pray and trust Him to restore and save us so that we can return to the joy of praising Him.

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