Week 3 Psalm 20
In the first half of this psalm David prays for an unknown person. His pattern is may-the-Lord do x for you… May-the-Lord do y for you… May-the-Lord do z for you.
His requests go like this: I pray that the Lord will…
• Answer you when you’re in distress
• Protect you
• Help you
• Support you
• Remember your sacrifices
• Accept your offerings
• Give you the desire of your heart
• Make your plans successful
• Grant all your requests
While I’m reading the psalms I look for examples of prayers. I look for psalms that model good prayers. I look for psalm-prayers that are worth imitating. And this is one of them.
I don’t know how many prayers there are in the psalms where the writer prays for himself. A lot I guess. It’s not hard to find a Self-Interested Prayer. I think that a Self-Interested Prayer might be the most common (and totally understandable) prayer since I know that my own top-priority interest is myself. No one’s more concerned about me than me. Which means that Self-Interested Prayers are a big component of praying. So psalm 20 is a good reminder that Prayers For Me aren’t the only ones. There’s also Prayers For the Other Guy.
Note: see Psalm 20:1-5. I paraphrased the requests.