The following article is an excerpt from Praying with David by Michael Phillips.
Like David, we cannot keep ourselves from gravitating toward external prayers. They cost little. There may indeed be a fleshly payoff.
Large temporal dividends often accrue in the account of the Old Adam from certain kinds of prayer. Much prayer actually feeds the Old Adam. When the Old Adam prays, there is no need to admit weakness, to admit sin, to admit total bankruptcy of strength. The Old Adam can pray happily and mightily and victoriously without worrying about any of that.
When I said earlier that David might not qualify as a role model, I was speaking of his full life character. He is, however, my prayer-role model. The Psalms—rightly read—represent the biblical guidebook of inner, transparent, searchlight, mirror prayer. David is our guide in these deep regions.
The prayer of transparency is more difficult for men to pray. We don’t want weakness exposed. We cannot let go of the image of ourselves as seventeen foot high Michelangelo statues. Who wouldn’t rather be associated with the perfection of humanity than with a man on a cross?
The statue and the cross. Strength and power, weakness and frailty. There is no such thing as Christlikeness with a macho twist. Though much has been made in our time of “manly” and “feminist” Christianity, both are illusions.
There is no macho or feminist Christlikeness. Neither the mirror nor the cross tolerate pretense. When my wife and sons and I walked out of the gallery where Michelangelo’s masterpiece is housed, I could not help glancing down at my forearms and hands, unconsciously imitating the posture of David’s carriage and the formation of his great muscular hand.
I wasn’t thinking about the cross at that moment. I wasn’t asking how much my character resembled the man on the cross. I was comparing my physique to David’s marbleized perfection. The transparency of the 139th psalm is more than difficult, it is painful, humbling, mortifying, tormenting.
Do we really want to know what God sees when he looks into our innermost depths? What will he find?
In the Psalms, God calls his people to courageous transparency. May we take courage to be God’s men and women, ready to answer the summons to difficult challenges—transparent, obedient, selfless, warriors in the battle against the world’s ways, and against our own fleshly motives most of all.
David was no giant of our imaginings. He was a man who knew the feel of his knees on the ground.
Lord, let me be such a one.
– Excerpted from pages 66-68 of Praying with David by Michael Phillips
Continue Reading: Praying with David by Michael Phillips
In Praying with David, best-selling author Michael Phillips explores how David’s prayers were inwardly focused on his thoughts, sin, frailty, spiritual character, and his need for God. When the fiery tempest within him stilled, hearkening back to his youth as a shepherd boy on the hillside with his sheep, the divine Fatherhood slowly crept into David’s heart, mind, and soul.
In those moments of solitude, David discovered what it meant to have a personal, transparent, authentic relationship with his God.