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To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul in you I trust, O my God (Psalm 25:1-2a)

As I have said before, the psalms of the Old Testament are the church's prayer book. At least, they should be. I don't mean that we should only use these prayers but that we should allow these psalms to teach us how to pray.

They will help us learn how to pray the Lord's Prayer which begins, "Our Father who is in heaven..." I\u2019m convinced this prayer is Jesus summary of the Psalms.

Many psalms come out of the depths of broken, harassed or desperate hearts. They seem to explode out of the psalmist and we can feel their pathos and desperation. Others, like Psalm 25, are more deliberate; they have been brooded over and carefully put together.

This psalm has 22 verses. It is an acrostic which means that each verse begins with a successive letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This prayer is not offered "off the cuff' but through meditation comes into its present form. We often think that praying needs to be spontaneous. That is an illusion. David teaches us that a prayer which is thought out and stylistic is as spiritual and effective as spontaneous expressions of the heart.

This is a prayer that comes out of a time of trouble, thus, it is not prayed with a smile and exuberant joy. In his season of anguish, David explores for himself what it means to lift up his soul to the Lord (1). When I think of \u2018lifting up my soul to the Lord\u2019, I think of joyful singing of God\u2019s people in worship. But David teaches me even when I am discouraged, I need and can to lift up my soul to my God.

So, what can we learn about "lifting up our hearts to the Lord" from this prayer? Well, one this is this, we notice that significant parts of the psalm reflect on the "way of the Lord." David believes that the way of the Lord is the right way to live and therefore he wants to be taught how to live it, even in a time of despair.

There are different ways to live and he doesn't necessarily know God's way, so he wants to learn. Of course, he has the law of Moses, as we have the Bible. But many situations arise when there is no clear path. We need to learn through the Scriptures, by the teaching of the Spirit and the help of the Christian community how follow God. Trusting in God and lifting up our souls up to Him means that we desire to walk in His ways.

This of course leads David, and it should lead us, to the recognition that we have not always followed God's ways. It may even be that some of David\u2019s current problems have arisen because he did not do what is right. So, what does he do? Does he try to hide this reality? No. He confesses it and asks the Lord to forgive. Forgiveness is possible because in His love, the Lord always forgives.

Trusting in the Lord does not mean instant success. David has staked his life on doing life God's way. If he goes down in defeat, he will experience public shame. He fears that shame even though he knows that in the end God will be proven to be right.

In the long run, God will set His people secure in the land (13). Jesus makes a similar statement: "Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth" (Matthew 5:5). With so many other things in the Bible, we recognize this may not happen until the new heavens and the new earth.

Are we willing to hang in there with God and walk in his ways until that time?