Psalm 66:8-20 (NRSV)
Read Psalm 66:8-20 on biblegateway.com
Verse 8Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard,
Verse 9who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip.
Verse 10For you, O God, have tested us; you have tried us as silver is tried.
Verse 11You brought us into the net; you laid burdens on our backs;
Verse 12you let people ride over our heads; we went through fire and through water; yet you have brought us out to a spacious place.
Verse 13I will come into your house with burnt offerings; I will pay you my vows,
Verse 14those that my lips uttered and my mouth promised when I was in trouble.
Verse 15I will offer to you burnt offerings of fatlings, with the smoke of the sacrifice of rams; I will make an offering of bulls and goats. Selah
Verse 16Come and hear, all you who fear God, and I will tell what he has done for me.
Verse 17I cried aloud to him, and he was extolled with my tongue.
Verse 18If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.
Verse 19But truly God has listened; he has given heed to the words of my prayer.
Verse 20Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me.
Devotion
What a blessing it is to have a deity who does not reject our prayers. How strange, in the context of world history and religion, to have a divine being who does not demand sacrifices to be slaughtered, burned or offered in homage. How remarkable it is that we have an object of our petitions who listens.
Apparently there can be barriers to our prayers being heard, however. Psalm 66:18 says, “If I had cherished iniquity (sin) in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”
Thankfully, God took on human flesh and sacrificed himself for our sake. Thus, Jesus, God the Son, “has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility” (Ephesians 2:14, NIV). Through Jesus’ gift, we are freed to not cherish sin in our hearts. Now we can say with complete confidence: “Blessed be God, because he has not rejected my prayer or removed his steadfast love from me” (Psalm 66:20).
Prayer
Father, Son and Holy Spirit, thank you for sacrificing for us, freeing us from our cherished sin. Thank you for hearing our prayers. Thank you for listening, thank you for answering. Amen.