How would you describe your prayer life? Would you describe it as vibrant and full of wonder or dull and lacking? Sometimes my prayer life is a continual conversation with God where I am laying everything at his feet throughout the day. Other times, my prayer life feels like a series of Hail Mary’s in the final moments of a game where my opponent is kicking my butt. That is kind of how David’s prayer in Psalm 70 feels; it feels like David is throwing up a Hail Mary in a desperate situation.

I do not know what the specific circumstances were in David’s life as he penned the words of this prayer. Psalms 42 – 72 are referred to as book two of five sub-divided books of the Psalms and one commentator pointed out that “Of the eighteen Psalms attributed to David in book 2 of the Psalter, at least fifteen [of them] appeal to God for shelter from danger or pray for God to judge those who are doing him harm.”2

This means that nearly 80% of David’s Psalms, in this second book, are like desperate cries for help; Hail Mary’s in the final seconds of a game where David is getting butt kicked by his enemies. I am sure we have all been there, right? Feeling desperate and overwhelmed? Feeling ready to throw in the towel and simply surrender to that sense of hopelessness and defeat?

The circumstances of our lives may differ in comparison, but I think all of us know what it feels like to be at the end of our rope, desperately clinging to that tiny shred of hope that God will show up and deliver us from the circumstances we find ourselves in. One of my go-to disciplines over the years when I find myself in any kind of difficult circumstance is to open one of David’s Psalm and direct my thoughts, my desires, and my emotions to God in prayer like he did.

In other words, I have found it helpful to pray like David did! In Psalm 70, as one commentator helpfully pointed out, there are four key things3 that David prays for that I find super helpful in my own prayer life, and the first thing he prays for is for God’s help. Look at the passage with me…

To the choirmaster. Of David, for the memorial offering.

1Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me! 2Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life! Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt! 3Let them turn back because of their shame who say, “Aha, Aha!”

4May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, “God is great!” 5But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay!

#1: DAVID PRAYS FOR GOD’S HELP (V. 1)

When David prays for God’s help in verse one, he cries out, “Make haste, O God, to deliver me! O LORD, make haste to help me!” David is not throwing this Hail Mary up in the air with a flimsy half-hearted hope that maybe God will come through for him and if he does not come through then it’s on to plan B. David is throwing up this Hail Mary prayer in absolute desperation and trust. He is desperate for God to deliver him or to save him from his current circumstances and he needs it done very quickly.

Twice in this verse and once in verse five, David says “make haste” or “hasten to me”which can be interpreted as “come quickly to help me by delivering me from or through these circumstances”. The reality is that God rarely removes painful circumstances from our lives but when we draw near to him in prayer he is faithful and just to walk with us through those circumstances while giving us the supernatural ability to endure even as he relieves the weight of suffering just enough so that we can continue walking forward.

We often think of deliverance or salvation as being rescued or removed from pain and suffering, but the broad biblical narrative reveals something entirely different where God saves us from the effects of Satan, Sin, and Death even as he carries us through the storms our enemies create so that we come into his eternal presence unharmed and fully restored. The cross of Christ, the empty tomb, and the promise of Heaven are pinnacle of this theme of God coming quickly to deliver us from our enemies. Speaking of enemies, that is the next thing David prays for!

#2: DAVID PRAYS FOR HIS ENEMIES (VV. 2 – 3)

When David prays for his enemies in verses 2 – 3, he says, “Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life! Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt! Let them turn back because of their shame who say, ‘Aha, Aha!’” One of the first things I notice about how David prays for his enemies is that he does not pray for God to wipe them out. Total annihilation of his enemies is something David rarely, if ever, prays for.

This reminds me of the many passages in Scripture that speak of praying for those who persecute you, or doing good to those who hurt you, or loving your enemies, or blessing those who persecute you, or living in peace with everyone, or feeding your enemy, or overcoming evil by doing good, or when Jesus prays to the Father, from the cross, to forgive his enemies because they do not know what they are doing (Matt. 5:44; Lk. 6:27 – 28; Rom. 12:9 – 21; Lk. 23:34).

In this case, in David’s prayer for his enemies, it is almost as though he fulfills all those other biblical commands on how to deal with our enemies. Notice that he prays very specifically that God would let his enemies feel the shame and confusion of what they are doing to him (v. 2). That feeling of shame and confusion between right and wrong is the first step in repentance. When God wakes us up from our stupor in pursuing evil, we feel the shame, but we also feel the utter confusion of realizing that we were pursuing evil instead of the righteousness we were designed for.

That shame and that confusion is a doorway to repent, to turn around and to get right with God. So, it is possible that David wants to see his enemies turn from their wicked ways and be restored by God. Speaking of turning, David actually prays for his enemies to get turned around; twice, David prays for his enemies to be turned back or to be turned away from their murderous pursuit of his life (vv. 2-3).

David knows that only the Lord can change a person’s heart, so he prays that God would use David’s enemies’ sense of shame and dishonor to change their hearts, to turn them away from their evil plans. I think that David wants his enemies to turn around so that he can be delivered from danger, but I also believe David wants this because, like God, he desires that none would perish but that all would come to experience everlasting life.

Maybe your heart is caught in the tangled web of bitterness and resentment because of the way you have been hurt by an enemy or someone you once thought was a friend. Or maybe your heart has been imprisoned by anger and indignation because of the evil things you see happening in the world around you, so you have become fixated on your “enemies” in the culture at large.

I am convinced that we as believers need to do some serious heart work in the area of how we pray for, talk about, and ultimately treat our enemies; especially when we are in the thick of things and we feel like we need a Hail Mary to land in the endzone to relieve us from the suffering we are enduring.

With that said, it is interesting to see what, or better yet, who David prays for next. Oftentimes, when praying in desperation because of some formidable enemy in my face, I get laser focused on the enemy and I do not know what else to pray for. But David, in an interesting turn of events prays for God’s people next.

#3: DAVID PRAYS FOR GOD’S PEOPLE (V. 4)

When David prays for God’s people in verse four, he says, “May all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you! May those who love your salvation say evermore, ‘God is great!’”Think about this, David begins this Psalm by praying in desperation for God to help him quickly, to save him or to deliver him quickly. Then he moves on to praying for God to turn his enemies around and save them, if possible, by his grace. But now he turns his attention to praying for those who are among the family of God.

His prayer for believers is simple. He wants believers everywhere to find joy and gladness in the presence of God. He wants everyone who has experienced salvation in God to be filled with joy and gladness to the extent that it overflows from their lips with a triumphant, “God is great” despite the difficulties of this life.

The thing about suffering is that it often turns us inward and isolates us from the fellowship of the saints. We fear what people will think about our circumstances, so we hide instead of leaning into the grace and healing that comes from what Paul calls the fellowship of suffering (Phil. 3:10).

All too often we become like the seed from the Sower in the gospels that gets swept away by hardship (Matt. 13:1 – 23) because we reject and distance ourselves from the very life-giving source that God has provided among the fellowship of the saints who were designed to suffer together.

When David prays for believers, he is actively resisting the urge to become inwardly focused in his pain and suffering and he is acknowledging that believers everywhere will face or are facing suffering of all kinds just as he is and that they can experience joy amidst the suffering together according to James 1:2 – 4. The fellowship of suffering is where we find our satisfaction, our healing, and our salvation in the presence of the living God in the context of biblical community.

Think about it… how beautiful it is to stand among the saints, to live among the cloud of witnesses, to worship with the family of God, to stand side by side with other brothers and sisters in Christ and proclaim together, “Great is our God!”

Shouting the greatness of God while hiding all alone in your suffering will always sound like a whisper in the spiritual realm in contrast to a multitude of believers shouting in unison. With that in mind, David caps off his prayer to God, in the final verse, with a bold confession of faith-filled dependence.

#4: DAVID CONFESSES HIS FAITH-FILLED DEPENDENCE (V. 5)

When David confesses his faith-filled dependence upon God in verse 5, he says, “But I am poor and needy; hasten to me, O God! You are my help and my deliverer; O LORD, do not delay!” With these closing words, David recognizes that he does not possess the resources or the strength to endure the suffering he finds himself stuck in.

He has no plan B. He has no other recourse. He is poor and needy. Anything he does to relieve his pain, and suffering will only add hurt to his life or destruction to the lives of others around him. He is utterly helpless, and he is fully surrendered in complete dependence upon God to deliver him through his suffering.

Not only does David confess his utter helplessness, but he also confesses his full-fledged faith in God when he says, “You are my help and my deliverer”. Once again, David has no other plans in his mind to rely on anything or anyone else outside the saving presence of the living God. Nothing else will help. Nothing else will deliver. God is our only help and our only deliverer.

Sadly, in my own life and in the lives of people I know or have known, we pay homage to our helplessness and dependence upon God and then deny those very words by the activity of our lives. Relational conflict, financial problems, emotional stress, addictions, living with the pain of unrealized hopes and dreams, etc., all provide the opportunity to live in dependence upon God or to live in our own strength in defiance of God.

In these circumstances and more, we pray, we proclaim our faith and then we oftentimes behave unfaithfully as we try to control or manipulate or force the outcomes that we believe will deliver us from our suffering. We all need to be encouraged to remain dependent, in faith, upon the only One who possesses the power to save us.

CONCLUSION…

In conclusion, learning to pray like David when we throw up our Hail Mary prayers, means that we pray for God to help us. We pray for our enemies in love. We pray for other believers and remain in fellowship with other sufferers. We pray with absolute faith-filled dependence upon the God who alone has the power to save.

James 1:2 – 4 says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing”.

If suffering produces a kind of sanctifying process that results in you and I lacking nothing, then why do we often view suffering as something that happens because we are missing out on something when in reality, suffering is the very tool that God uses to transform us into the image of Jesus?

We would do well to embrace suffering rather than running from it, trying to control it, medicate it, or find relief from it. If suffering is meant to cause me to seek God more, then it is needful. If suffering is meant to cause me to pray lovingly for my enemies, then it is needful. If suffering is meant to cause me to pray for and draw near to other believers who are suffering, then it is needful. If suffering is meant to remind me of my utter helplessness and cause me to depend upon God more fully, then it is needful.

If it was needful for Christ to give his life at that cross in an act of complete surrender to suffering, then surely, suffering has a place in the lives of those who have been saved by the work of Jesus on that bloody cross. The beautiful part of the gospel is that we are reassured that all suffering is light and momentary in comparison with the hope of eternity.

That tomb was left empty just three short days later and the promise we hold onto is that there will be a day when all our suffering will be complete as we are ushered into the eternal presence of our crucified, risen, and returning Savior. Amidst this light and momentary suffering, we can pray like David, for God’s help, for our enemies, for believers everywhere, in complete helpless dependence upon Christ who is our Deliverer. – Amen!

1 Unless otherwise specified, all Bible references are to the English Standard Version Bible, The New Classic Reference Edition (ESV) (Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers, 2001).

2 Richard, Philips, Psalms 42 – 72, Reformed Expository Commentary, (Phillipsburg, New Jersey: P&R Publishing, 2019), 310.

3 Ibid., 311, 313, 314, 317.