Show me your ways, Lord, teach me your paths. Guide me in your truth and teach me, for you are God my Savior, and my hope is in you all day long (Psalm 25:4-5).

I can’t recall how old I was, what year of school I’m vaguely remembering, but somewhere along the way I know that I had textbooks that provided answers in the back.

If math is a ‘language,’ I never came anywhere close to being fluent. My mother worked with me patiently, quizzing me over and over until I memorized my multiplication tables. Her labor in this was surpassed only by the travail with which she brought me into this world. When I entered college, my advisor was reluctant to place me in a basic college algebra class, urging me instead to do something more remedial (I pushed back and did just fine in algebra).

But I digress.

Early on, if I had a math book that had answers in the back – typically odd numbered problems only – I felt like I had won the lottery. I didn’t use the back of a book as a crutch. I worked out the problems and arrived at an answer. But as soon as I had come to my own answer, I would immediately check the back of the book.

The answer was the point. That’s what I wanted to know.

Seeking His Face

By their very nature, “show me” prayers seek an answer. We’re asking God to make plain to us what we do not know or cannot make sense of. 

Show me what to do.

Show me where to go.

Show me what’s next or how to move ahead.  

We’re looking for an answer. The answer is the point. But prayer was never meant to be a technique by which we arrive at answers. Prayer is how we enter into a relationship with our creator. More than an answer, the point of prayer is God.

Consider Psalm 27: “Hear my voice when I call, O Lord, be merciful to me and answer me. My heart says of you ‘Seek his face.’ Your face Lord I will seek” (Psalm 27:7-8).

The Psalmist is clearly asking for God to answer. But what this prayer truly seeks is God’s “face.” This is the deep yearning of the heart – God’s presence, God’s very self, often pictured as God’s face.

The Guide above the Guidance

Sooner or later we all need guidance. Truthfully, we need it all the time. More often than we like, we find ourselves groping along, hands in front of us the way we walk through a dark room, waving our outstretched arms about in search of a light.

But more than guidance, we need a guide.

When we pray “show me” prayers our petitions rarely, if ever, flip a switch. Light may dawn, but the morning comes very slowly. Sometimes in answer to our show me prayers, God takes our hand in the pitch black and walks us along. We get more than directions. We get more than an answer. We get the answer-giver.

In prayer we find the guide.

What darkness are you navigating these days? What guidance are you seeking? Resist the urge to jump to the back of the book. Seek God’s face. Reach for the hand of the guide and trust that he’ll show you and lead you to the answers you need.

Prayer:

Gracious god, we come before you now seeking your face. Our questions are plenty, and the darkness we’re walking through seems so thick at times. We need guidance. We crave answers. We ask you to show us what we can’t see right now. But above all, we seek you, our faithful guide. Take our hand, we pray, and lead us where we cannot see, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen. 

Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom (Psalm 145:3)

A couple of years ago Lifeway Research conducted a survey of 1100 American adults to determine what it is that people most often pray about. Prayers for family members and friends were the primary focus of prayer for 82% of the respondents. Coming in second at 74% were prayers for difficulties or problems. Further down the list at 37% were prayers that focused on God’s greatness.

This isn’t surprising. Most of us would acknowledge that we easily pray for the people we love and care about. We also know that we direct a fair amount of our praying energies to the challenges we’re facing.

But praise, well . . . not so much, not so often.      

Can Presbyterians Do This?

For many people – and that includes many praying people – the act of praising God is something akin to hitting a golf ball. It appears to be simple enough: swing the club and hit the ball. It seems simple until we try to do it. Our swing is stiff and awkward. The ball doesn’t move, but it’s a small target. And if we happen to make contact, the ball doesn’t go where we want it to go. As we observed yesterday, this is going to require some work.

So with praise. We know some basic vocabulary, but we’re not adept with the language. We don’t know what it looks like, and we don’t do it as often as we should. Simply put, we’re not very good at praising God. Dwelling on God’s greatness and declaring to God his glories and perfections doesn’t seem to come easily to us.

When we recognize this and make a deliberate effort to praise God, we often find we’re awkward and inarticulate. What do we do?

Should we raise our hands?

Is it ok for Presbyterians to do that in church?

How do we praise God with words beyond the obvious “Praise God?”

For so many of us – Presbyterians or otherwise – praise is hard to recognize and not practiced as often as it should be. That’s why we’re thinking this week about praising God.

No One is Left Out

Awkwardness aside, let’s keep a couple of things in mind as we ponder the praise of God this week. 

First, praise is the highest aim of human life. It is what we were made for. Psalm 145 captures this from the first line as the Psalmist resolves to praise God “every day” and “for ever and ever.” If we add to this the words of Psalm 100, we see that the invitation to make a joyful noise is extended to “all the earth.” No one is left out, exempted, excluded. Praise is not a skill practiced by those with a particular gift or temperament. We were made to praise God. All of us.

Second, whether we do it or not, the name of the Lord will be praised. Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem was accompanied with shouts of acclamation and praise. Offended, the Pharisees demanded that Jesus rebuke his disciples and rein in their exuberance. Jesus’s answer is worth hearing when we feel awkward and self-conscious about our praise of God. “If [they] were silent, the very stones would cry out” (Luke 19:40).  

Make no mistake, the name of God will be praised. “From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets, the name of the Lord is to be praised” (Psalm 113:3). You can be a part of that, and you can begin right now.

How is the praise of God most often expressed in your life, and what seems to prompt it?  

Prayer:

Gracious God, you are worthy of our praise. The Psalms repeatedly tell us to praise you with all that is within us, remembering all your benefits and blessings to us. Forgive our forgetfulness and help us by your Spirit to praise you. Teach us what that means and make us eager to do it, we ask in Jesus’s name. Amen.  

All kinds of animals . . . have been tamed by man, but no man can tame the tongue (James 3:7-8).

The things we say.

With our words we can endear ourselves to others and in the next breath embarrass ourselves in front of the same people. With our words we can cast a vision that inspires, and we can cast a cloud that disheartens. Words allow us to compliment and complain, to express gratitude and share the latest gossip.

The things we say. Some of them were worth saying and others weren’t worth saying at all. And very often what comes out of our mouths surprises us, not to mention those to whom we speak. Most of us, at one time or, have grieved the unruly nature of our ‘big fat mouth.’ Our words pinball here and there, one moment this, one moment that.

James, with wisdom born of the Holy Spirit, understood how we struggle to exercise discipline in the area of words and speech. Every failure, every slip of the tongue, leave us filled with regret and self-loathing. We promise we won’t let it happen again, but before long we break that promise. James observed that humans have proven competent at taming all kinds of threatening beasts, but when it comes to our words – what James calls ‘the tongue’ – we are weak and impotent.

‘No one can tame the tongue,’ James writes. That’s a conclusion that doesn’t offer us much hope.

Those Not-So-Finest Moments

But there is hope. And the Bible is full of stories that are meant to encourage us whenever we reach the limit of our own best efforts.

There’s hardly a bigger fatter mouth to be found in the New Testament than the mouth belonging to one of Jesus’ closest friends, Simon Peter. Let’s briefly survey some of his not-so-finest moments.

At Caesarea Philippi Jesus asked his disciples ‘who do people say I am?’ They reported what they had heard, the word on the streets about Jesus. And then Jesus asked them directly, ‘But what about you . . . who do you say I am?’ Peter answered boldly with God-given insight, ‘You are the Christ.’

And then within a matter of minutes Peter rebuked Jesus as Jesus set forth God’s plan of the salvation of all people, a plan that involved his suffering and death (Mark 8:27-32).

On another occasion Peter swore his loyalty to Jesus, loyalty to the point of death. And then on that same night Peter denied that he knew Jesus or had ever been in his company. Not just once but three times. And the last time, just to make himself perfectly clear, he spiced up his denials with cursing (Matthew 26:35, 74).

James was so right on. ‘Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing’ (James 3:10)

Powerful Words

But there are some other stories about Simon Peter that we need to remember.

After the crucifixion and resurrection, after Jesus had ascended to heaven, his followers were gathered in a room in Jerusalem (James was likely among them). They were reflecting on all that had taken place and they were constantly in prayer. Then we are told that in this moment ‘Peter stood up’ and spoke words of direction and leadership. Peter proposed the plan that led to the replacement of Judas.

Not long after that, on the day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on this same gathering of Jesus-followers. Peter again ‘stood up’ and addressed a crowd in the streets of Jerusalem. As a result of this sermon, a bold proclamation of Jesus, three thousand people came to faith and were added to the community of believers on that day (Acts 2:41).

Fast forward some years, and Peter commits his words to writing as he pens letters of encouragement for struggling communities of Christians throughout Asia minor. We have those words in our New Testament and they remain a source of teaching and encouragement for followers of Jesus today.  

The Wideness of God’s Mercy

Here’s the point in all of this: God was able to use Peter’s big fat mouth. And he can do the same with yours.

Don’t assume that somehow Peter suddenly became a model of self-discipline. There’s no reason to believe that Peter discovered the secret to taming his tongue. What seems to have clearly made the difference for him was a personal encounter with the resurrected Jesus and the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

We’ll say more about that tomorrow. For today, let’s land it here: The harm you’ve done with your mouth doesn’t define you. The things you’ve said that should have been left unsaid do not render you unfit for use in God’s work and they do not nullify the work of God in your life.

Peter had to clear the air with Jesus after the resurrection. Those cursing denials didn’t get erased by time or by being silently ignored. Jesus was able to bring them up without throwing them in Peter’s face. ‘Peter, do you love me?’  

And Jesus won’t throw your words back in your face.

If you need to, go make amends. Make apologies. But claim the wideness in God’s mercy. A wideness that more than covers your big fat mouth.      

Prayer:

Merciful God, heal the harm I’ve done with my words. Forgive the way praise and cursing can come from me, words that bless and words that bruise. In your grace, give me words that might be used to show who you are and draw others closer to you, I ask in the name of your son Jesus. Amen.