Restore Us, O God

Monday 4/23/2012 4:36 AM

Psalm 80 is my psalm for the week in my devotional material.  It depicts the people of God as a flock of sheep and as a grapevine in a vineyard.  It depicts God as the shepherd of the sheep and as the vinedresser.  The people of God are drinking tears, they are the objects of derision and mocking, they are broken down, ravaged, cut down and perishing.  The psalmist pleads, “Restore us, O God; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.” on three separate occasions in the psalm.

I thought about the church today in our country.  While we are not physically persecuted like the church in other parts of the world, we are objects of derision and mocking and it is portrayed as broken down, passé, irrelevant and ineffective.  Unfortunately, in my opinion, many accusations leveled against the church are deserved because of the actions, or perhaps the lack of action of its members.  Like the psalmist, I believe that the church needs to be restored and the only way it will happen is if God himself intervenes and changes our hearts.

I read a prayer today from the book A Diary of Private Prayer, written by John Baillie.  He writes.

Let me stand today –

for whatever is pure and true and just and good:

for the advancement of science and education and true learning:

for the redemption of daily business from the blight of self-seeking:

for the rights of the weak and the oppressed:

for industrial cooperation and mutual help:

for the conservation of the rich traditions of the past:

for the recognition of new workings of thy Spirit in the minds of the people of my own time:

for the hope of yet more glorious days to come.

Today, O Lord –

let me put right before interest:

let me put others before self:

let me put the things of the spirit before the things of the body:

let me put the attainment of noble ends above the enjoyment of present pleasures:

let me put principle above reputation:

let me put thee before all else.

If I lived in this manner, accompanied by the rest of the people of God, the church would no longer be broken down, passé, irrelevant and ineffective.  It would be a thriving, living organism, shaping the world around it into the kingdom of God.  Restore us, O God; make your face on us, that we may be saved.