Prayer and psalm 92

In the Revised Standard version, verse 10 says, “ But you have exalted my horn like that of a wild ox, you have poured fresh oil over me." God has heightened his presence to this individual. What God is doing here, is very specific to an individual person and then the onus in on the person to do something with this fresh anointing. At the same time, this fresh oil would be something that is enabling. It might be that God is now enabling you towards something that had an obstacle or two, and he is giving the fresh oil, to move past the obstacles and to keep things from stopping you as you set on another and a newer course. Horn is considered a metaphor for strength. Maybe God has communicated to you on this in the past, but events and time have intervened and you want a fresh communication. Or you had good plans, and they seem to have gotten lost somewhere, and you want fresh insights and fresh perspective as to the way to go.

Verse 5 says, “ How great are your works, O Lord. Your thoughts are very deep."

Obviously the superficial matters, and the Bible says every hair on your head is counted. You wouldn’t paint your house if the superficial didn’t matter. But for the purposes of prayer, we need to search and wait in the Lord’s presence for what He might be saying that is on the deeper level and corresponds to thought. This might involve sitting in a quiet church for a couple of hours and just waiting on the Lord. It might be just one thing that He will communicate to your heart, but you need to understand that God does operate on this level and you need to find God out and get that deep thought that He has for you now. It is good to get away for the superficial chaos that is sometimes out there and spent personal time in an away location with the Lord to get this deep thought.

Verse 11 says," My eyes have seen the downfall of my enemies, my ears have heard the doom of my evil assailants."

For the psalmist God’s works have come into a fruition that has clear visibility to him as we focus in on the words “ my eyes have seen." From this psalm, we can ask God that he let us see what the story is in prayer, asking for increased visibility on a matter of concern that you are facing personally. Indeed, a degree of visibility might be very helpful and is at times the way God might work for an individual, where he will give his grace towards special sight.

Verse 6 threw 8 says," The dullard cannot know, the stupid cannot understand this, though the wicked sprout like grass, and all evildoers flourish, they are doomed to destruction, for you O Lord, are on high forever."

Here the evildoers are flourishing as are the righteous, and it appears that God will not differentiate. Later in the psalm it says the wicked fade and the righteous continue on. There is a hidden fence not seen at first, that when it obtains fuller visibility, you want to be on the right side of.

There is a depth of knowledge and understanding, that if it is not obtained and searched for threw prayer, does leave a shortfall, and no matter how smart someone thinks they are, they may be dulled to important truths and graces or not so smart in relation to getting to know God’s thoughts which can carry with it fresh oil for you. So even if your excelling in some profession, with various rewards that you may in fact be enjoying, dullness to God’s thoughts and works, counts as a shortfall that puts good things in jeopardy in the longer run if not right now.

It does say the dullard cannot know. You might say in prayer to the Lord, I just don’t know. Or you might also say, you know and I know to get to points where you are concurring with the truth of the matter. It might be a case where you say to the Lord, you know and I know that I don’t know enough about this to be enabled to go further. Maybe a response to this could be the fresh oil of God’s enabling you individually.

Verses 12 threw 15 say," The righteous flourish like a palm tree, and grow like a cedar in Lebanon, They are planted in the house of the Lord, they flourish in the courts of our God, in old age they will produce fruit, and they are always green and full of sap, showing the Lord is upright, he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him."

Some pretty powerful works and words. A corollary verse to this is proverbs 14 verse 27 where it says," The fear of the Lord is the fountain of life, so that one may avoid the snares of death."

These verses are talking about a kind of fountain of youth, where older people could even grow taller physically as well as spiritually, this being outside the boundaries of what would normally happen. It is happening to the point where it is obviously an intervention of God’s presence, as it says in the final verse of the psalm, where this is showing the Lord's works, again pointing to visibility, a general theme of this psalm.

It is interesting as well that it says, they are always green and full of sap, a protective substance for a tree. This is not sometimes, once in a while, or just flashes but with emphasis always, an even more powerful statement of God’s presence in his courts and what happens to the people that are under his brilliance. And the metaphor of the tree also contains the idea of oil, as trees do emit a type of oil called sap. Also, the giant cedars and palm trees are quite visible on the landscape, especially in the brilliance of the sun. What this is also saying though, that there is a responsibility to be there, even later in life, that is to be in God’s courts. Just as in the earlier verses where it talks about God and his communication in the depths, meaning we have to go there too. Two things that we need to do from the psalm are to get to God’s courts, stay there and realize that being older or advanced in any number of ways not just age but in advancing status, wealth, sports ability ect, doesn’t relieve us of the responsibility to get there and stay there and the other is to get to a place where we can seek and find the Lord and depth of his thought for us as unique individuals under his careful watch. Hopefully, we might be advancing in some of the benchmarks of what we want by our own or societal standards but that is not the first priority at any point in that continuum, as the first order of the day is getting to God for his deep thought and his fresh oil. It may take a prayerful watch of hours to get that one thought from the depths of the seas of God’s deep thoughts, but there is a calling to go and get it, fish it out with patience and diligence.

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