Scripture Daily

Context No. 1878 of 4322 · Psalms

Context · Reflection

Psalms 66:1-20: in context

1Make a joyful shout to God, all the earth! 2Sing to the glory of his name! Offer glory and praise! 3Tell God, “How awesome are your deeds! Through the greatness of your power, your enemies submit themselves to you. 4All the earth will worship you, and will sing to you; they will sing to your name.” Selah. 5Come, and see God’s deeds— awesome work on behalf of the children of men. 6He turned the sea into dry land. They went through the river on foot. There, we rejoiced in him. 7He rules by his might forever. His eyes watch the nations. Don’t let the rebellious rise up against him. Selah. 8Praise our God, you peoples! Make the sound of his praise heard, 9who preserves our life among the living, and doesn’t allow our feet to be moved. 10For you, God, have tested us. You have refined us, as silver is refined. 11You brought us into prison. You laid a burden on our backs. 12You allowed men to ride over our heads. We went through fire and through water, but you brought us to the place of abundance. 13I will come into your temple with burnt offerings. I will pay my vows to you, 14which my lips promised, and my mouth spoke, when I was in distress. 15I will offer to you burnt offerings of fat animals, with the offering of rams, I will offer bulls with goats. Selah. 16Come and hear, all you who fear God. I will declare what he has done for my soul. 17I cried to him with my mouth. He was extolled with my tongue. 18If I cherished sin in my heart, the Lord wouldn’t have listened. 19But most certainly, God has listened. He has heard the voice of my prayer. 20Blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer, nor his loving kindness from me.

This psalm calls all the earth to praise God for his awesome deeds, recalling how he turned the sea into dry land and brought his people through. It remembers the testing, too: you tested us, refined us like silver, brought us into hard places, let us go through fire and water, but you brought us out to a place of abundance. And near the end the psalmist turns personal, declaring what God has done for his soul, and adds a searching line: if I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened; but truly God has heard my prayer.

The line worth pausing over is the psalmist's honest confession about prayer: if I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. He is naming a real connection between the state of our hearts and whether our prayers are heard. To cherish sin, to cling to it, to hold onto a sin we refuse to give up, while praying, is to put a barrier between ourselves and God, so that our prayers go unheard. The psalmist knows that God heard him, and he traces it in part to this: that he was not cherishing a sin in his heart, not clinging to some iniquity he refused to release. There is a sobering and useful truth here. We sometimes wonder why our prayers seem to go unanswered, unheard; and while there are many reasons prayers are not answered as we wish, Scripture names this as one hindrance: a sin we are cherishing, holding onto, refusing to let go. Your iniquities have separated you from your God, Isaiah says, so that he will not hear. It is not that we must be sinless to be heard; the psalmist was not claiming that. It is that we cannot cling to a sin we have no intention of giving up and expect our prayers to rise freely; the cherished sin, the one we are guarding and unwilling to release, hinders our communion with God. This calls for honest self-examination when our prayers feel blocked: is there a sin I am cherishing, holding onto, unwilling to give up, that stands between me and God? The remedy is not despair but confession and release: to stop cherishing the sin, to let it go, to come to God with a heart willing to part with what he asks us to part with. And the psalm ends in joy, for the psalmist, not cherishing sin, was heard: blessed be God, who has not turned away my prayer. The clean heart and the heard prayer go together; and the way to unhindered prayer is a heart that no longer clings to the sin it should release.

When my prayers feel blocked or unheard, can I examine honestly whether there is a sin I am cherishing, holding onto and unwilling to give up, that stands between me and God, and rather than despair, confess and release it, coming to God with a heart willing to part with what he asks, so that my prayer, like the psalmist's, is heard?

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