A Prayer To Be Nourished With Truth

I was brought to Psalm 37 one morning recently in my readings and I of course quickly bumped into these familiar verses.

Trust in the Lord and do good; dwell in the land and enjoy safe pasture. Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.  Psalm 37:3-4

The version of the Psalm I had before me translated it this way that caught my eye and got me thinking.

Trust in the Lord and be doing good; dwell in the land and be nourished with truth. Let your delight be in the Lord and he will give you your heart’s desire. Psalm 37:3-4

So, two things caught my attention.  First, “be doing good” and so my question in prayer was to ask the Lord if I was active in doing good.  It’s not enough to sporadically do good and then take a break and live a self-centered life.  There’s the need to “be doing good” today and every day.  It’s not a factory production line type of activity that requires us to go full tilt every moment of every day and saps our energy and joy in the process but rather it seems to me that we are doing good when we take time to live in God’s presence and let His goodness seep into us until we are saturated with it and then go about living our lives knowing that everything we touch and everyone we meet will be touched by the goodness that we are filled and overflowing with. 

Lord, help us today to be those who live in Your goodness that Your Word promises to us every day of our lives when it says:

Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.  Psalm 23:6

Give us grace to actively be doing good today in whatever ways our personality, gifts, talents, and opportunities allow for that today.  No pandemic can rob us of this.  Help us to trust in You, our Lord, Lord of all the circumstances in our world today and in our personal lives, and “be doing good.”  Amen

The second phrase that had me thinking and having a look in other scriptures was the one that said “be nourished with truth.”  The traditional “enjoy safe pasture” certainly has the idea of fresh and abundant food and peaceful time to enjoy it in a way that is nourishing but I don’t always make the connection between the metaphor and the personal application to my life today.  Those words be nourished with truth” helped me do that today.

Hundreds of years later Paul was writing to young Timothy he was mentoring in faith and ministry and after he gave Timothy some instructions as Timothy apparently was facing some challenges and problems with groups under his care. He encouraged Timothy to speak truth, even difficult truth knowing that:

If you point these things out to the brothers and sisters, you will be a good minister of Christ Jesus, nourished on the truths of the faith and of the good teaching that you have followed.  1 Timothy 4:6

We live in a world that moves further and further away from the truth.  God calls all of us to give effective witness to truth and to communicate it with grace.  Jesus was our first example of this wasn’t he. John’s Gospel tells us:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.  John 1:14

And Jesus later on made this bold declaration to his followers and to us today:

Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.  John 6:35

So Lord, we come to You today to be nourished by You, the Living Word, and by Your written words in the Bible.  We need to be filled up with grace and truth so we can speak courageously but with respect and kindness stand for what is right in the face of a world that tears down truth like never before and makes truth seem ugly. 

We don’t want to “pick fights” and force hard truths on people.  We know that unless people have the Spirit of God living inside them they won’t even understand truth no matter how clearly we might speak it.  So, help us to feed on the generous love of the Father, expressed in Jesus that sent Jesus to earth to live among us and die for us.  Help us to go about doing good as He did, and speaking challenging truth when that was needed with grace and wisdom.

Help us to take every opportunity today to be nourished with Your word and as the ancient prayer of Thomas Cranmer helps us we pray:

God of inspiration, you caused all holy scriptures to be written for our instruction, grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by steadfastness and by the encouragement of your holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ, who is alive with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God now and for ever. Amen.