Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - David's Active Recovery | The Writings | Psalm 70

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

What's your recovery time? How quickly are you able to see God's hand in difficult circumstances? Are you building endurance for the ups and downs of life? In today's episode, Tanya shares how David's prayer in Psalm 70 can act as a template for our own active recovery prayers in times of need. Read the Bible with us in 2024! This year, we’re tackling a group of Old Testament books traditionally known as “The Writings”— Psalms, Chronicles, Proverbs, Daniel, Ruth and more! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Psalm 70

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth. What's your recovery time? Active recovery is really important for endurance athletes. One of the things they might do to prepare for a long race or a race in the mountains is hill repeats. And they find maybe the longest and steepest hill where they live and they run to the top and then they jog down and do it over and over. or they find a really hilly road or a set of stadium bleachers and just run to the top over and over. Now, it sounds kind of counterintuitive because you might think the real work isn't getting up the hill.

But the most important part for hill repeats comes at the top of the hill in the recovery zone. See, the temptation is to get to the top, but all your effort in getting there and then stop and rest. But the stronger an athlete gets, the quicker their heart rate recovers at the top of the hill when they keep moving. See, they're looking to decrease that recovery time. So they don't stop. They don't walk when they get to the top. They do something called active recovery, where they just keep going.

So their heart rate is trained to more quickly return to a lower zone. What's your recovery time? When we're looking at our spiritual lives, our recovery time can be one. one way to see how things are going. Sometimes it takes a while to work through a problem or a temptation before we can see what God is doing, what he would have us do, and how he is good. Sometimes, though, our perspective changes more quickly and we can be really glad and thankful for what God is doing. When David wrote the Psalms, it seems like his recovery time is pretty active. He can be writing, and in one stanza he's lamenting about his sin and his fear and his desperation.

And then by the end of the psalm, he's praising God for maybe being a rock or a strong mountain and for keeping him tug safely underneath his wing. I like to think the Psalms are training us to be endurance athletes in the ups and downs of life, training us to be active in our pursuit of God's perspective, God's help, God's salvation, even when we're the most tired. And when we want to stop and put our head between our knees, and give up. One of the great gifts of the Psalms is the way they give us words to pray while we're running uphill, or at the top, when we're completely out of breath because of what we've just

been through. In Psalm 70, David was fighting flesh and blood enemies, but our uphill battles can be more subtle. We might be constantly comparing ourselves to someone else. We might be minimizing something that harms us. We might be hiding something that harms our family. We might be doubting that God is trustworthy. We might be forgetting that God's promises are greater than our problems. We have battles that don't end when we walk off the battlefield, but they follow us around every time we take that device out of our pocket. They keep us awake in the middle of the night. But God gives us words to pray that make our enemies shudder and quake. Like, a huge and powerful army has just crested the hill to overtake them, and those enemies stand

in the field exposed. Now, Psalm 70 is only five verses. Either David was super concise, or his recovery time was super quick, or he left out a lot of anguish somewhere in the middle. I'm going to read these five verses, and then I'm going to read you the prayer I wrote from the Psalm. It's not some kind of theological commentary, just my words that I can share, because maybe they can help you too. Or even better, maybe they can inspire you to go and do the same with your own Bible and pencil as you pray through the Psalm. So Psalm 70 from the ESV. Make haste, O God, to deliver me. Oh, Lord, make haste to help me. Let them be put to shame and confusion who seek my life. Let them be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt. Let them turn back because of their shame, who says, aha, aha. May all who seek you, rejoice and be glad in you. May those who love your salvation say evermore, God is great. But I am poor and needy. Hasten to me, oh God. You are my help and my deliverer. O Lord, do not delay. Now maybe hearing Psalm 70 already made you start

thinking about the things and the thoughts that pursue you, the things that want to steal from you, especially your sense of security and joy. There's permission here to pray with urgency. Make haste, Lord. Tim Keller said Jesus himself approves of this audacity, an almost shamelessly relentless petitioning of God. See Luke 118 for the way Jesus describes this. Yet, in Psalm 70, even before the words are off his tongue,

David is already praising God because his salvation is enough. The secret isn't in our world. words, but the power of Christ coming to settle over our hearts and minds. Ephesians 612 says, for we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. We do have an enemy that wants to eke out our joy and gladness in the Lord one little ounce at a time by keeping us distracted, complacent.

Here's what I wrote to pray Psalm 70 in light of some of those enemies. My words, Hurry up, Lord, to deliver me from the parts of my flesh that are still so weak. Lord, hurry up to help me change and grow so I don't keep responding this same way. I still hear and believe the lies and taunts of my enemy, the enemy that jeers. Did God really say you shouldn't? The enemy that whispers, you really do need this to be happy. The enemy that mocks, can you really trust him? Aren't you better off when you're in control? I know there lies, but I listen anyway. Hurry up, Lord. Expose them in my eyes for what they really are,

especially when they're loudest, especially when I'm tired and busy. and needy. Let the enemy and his false words about you and about me turn back in shame as your word becomes brighter than my temptation and bigger than my problem. Please, Lord, make me want to turn to you quicker. Make my recovery time faster. Rewire the pathways in my brain to seek delight from you and your salvation more than anything else. Make those pathways back to you deeper and wider with time so my thoughts and desires reach you more quickly. Let those pathways become my default route, more and more instinctive to me,

like I know the way back by heart. Do it quickly, Lord. You're the only one who can. Amen.