"Hear my prayer, O Lord, give ear to my supplications!
In Your faithfulness answer me, and in Your righteousness.
And enter not into judgment with Your servant, for in Your sight
no man living is in himself righteous or justified.
For the enemy has pursued and persecuted my soul,
he has crushed my life down to the ground;
he has made me to dwell in dark places
as those who have been long dead."
(Psalm 143:1-3)
"The psalmist there was struggling with a dark force that attacks almost
every one of us at some time or another, the force of condemnation. Each of us
has an enemy, an accuser, one who seeks to make us feel guilty, unworthy, one
who reminds us of our failures and our shortcomings and our unworthiness,
and if we let him go on speaking to us he'll crush our life down to the ground.
The answer is the answer that the psalmist found.
He turned to God and he prayed. And he said:
"Give ear to my supplications.
Answer me in Thy faithfulness,
and in Thy righteousness."
When we are facing condemnation and a sense of unworthiness, it is most
important that we don't listen to the enemy any longer; that we turn to God and
that we appeal to God for help. Not on the basis of our righteousness or our
faithfulness, but on the basis of God's righteousness and God's faithfulness.
That is the way out of condemnation. That's the way back to victory.
We don't ask God to enter into judgment with us, we ask Him to answer
on the basis of His righteousness and His faithfulness and when we do that,
we are released from that dark power of condemnation."
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