Terry Deaver, our pastor of people and prayer, brings part 2 of our Prayer series looking at Psalm 51:3-6. David comes to God in prayer following not just a sexually immoral act, but his murder of Uriah. Our assumption is that David should be afraid of God after his sin, instead he cries out to the God of steadfast love and mercy. When we pray we need to understand who we are and what we’ve done as well as who God is. David has already referenced God’s love and mercy, now he examines himself.

When King David penned his prayer, recorded in Psalm 51, he was at one of the lowest spiritual points of his life. After a moral failure with Bathsheba that led to a mortal failure, i.e. Uriah, David was in the thick of it. It’s here that he writes Psalm 51, from the depths of remorse and failure, seeking forgiveness he did not deserve. His first few sentences though will set the stage for the rest of his prayer and help us understand some things about how we approach God in prayer after we’ve blown it.

For 20 years Esau has thought Jacob was dead and Jacob has learned what it’s like to be cheated out of things you believed were yours. Now Jacob comes back home to the land of promise to take his position as the leader of the family of promise but with a new way to look at life and a newfound trust in the God of promise.

Jacob has always gotten a bad rap. Treated like a cheater and underhanded because of something he did at birth. But what if the examples we use to frame him as a cheater were actually times he was trying to prove he wasn't? What if he saw things differently from others and we missed it? Jacob's story proves that God doesn't see you for you've been, but for who He created you to become.

Most of what we know about Isaac comes from Genesis 26 and the very first thing we’re told is that as Isaac takes up the mantel of God’s promise from his father, Abraham, there is a famine in Canaan but the author tells us it’s not the same famine that happened when Abraham first arrived in Canaan 40 years ago. Now, none of us would have thought is was the same famine, so obviously the author is trying to tell us something. What we see in Genesis 26 is Isaac basically undoing the mistakes of his father. The promise continues.

Isaac’s near death experience was tough on everyone and left their family in shambles. But Abraham continued to trust the story God was writing and his responsibility to his son, Isaac. So he sends his servant Eliezer on a journey to find a wife for Isaac. Abraham shows great trust in God, Eliezer tries to trick God by concocting a ridiculous test and in the end Rebekah shows great trust herself. It’s a wild ride, much like our own lives!

God never intended for Abraham to offer his son Isaac as a sacrifice, but God intend to reveal more about who He was and who Abraham was through that test. Of course, it’s a pretty incredible picture of Jesus and the Father and Son who chose to go through with the sacrifice that Abraham and Isaac didn’t have to complete. But the story is MUCH more about who Abraham and Isaac were than what God was asking.

Abraham had a promise from God but what he didn’t have was any progress toward that promise, for like, years. So after a while Abraham and his wife Sarah decide to push their way into what God had promised.

Abraham has just begun to follow God and his faith and trust in God seems incredible but Abraham has received exactly zero of God’s promises. So Abraham demands some collateral from God but only manages to dig a hole he can’t get out of.

We know Abraham wasn’t perfect, but why does God seem to bless his bumbles? Does God really bless cheaters or is something else going on here?