Prayer, Part 6: The Fruits of Prayer (Psalm 16:9-11)
Prayer, Part 6:
The Fruits of Prayer
First UMC of Pocatello
February 23, 2025
Psalm 16:9-11
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Back on January 12th, on Baptism of the Lord Sunday, I began this sermon series on prayer. We watched Jesus, who had gone to the Jordan River to be baptized by his cousin John, come up out of those waters and settle into a time of prayer. Luke’s Gospel says that “as [Jesus] was praying, heaven was opened” (Luke 3:21). He prayed and received the anointing of the Holy Spirit. He prayed and heard the voice of God, “You are my son, whom I love” (3:22).
And this is a theme in Luke’s Gospel: Jesus’ own prayer life. Before he chose his twelve apostles, he spent a whole night in prayer (6:12). Prayer, as we will see next week, is what preceded his Transfiguration, unleashing, for a few moments, his inner light and thinning the distance between past and present, time and eternity (9:28-36). Jesus prayed – and things happened. And, as Luke tells it, it was after this series of revelatory events, after Jesus has modeled ministry flowing from communion with God that the disciples came to him and asked, “Lord, teach us to pray” (11:1).
That’s been our prayer these last six weeks:
“Lord, teach us – teach your people here at First United Methodist Church – teach us to pray. We want to hear you speak our belovedness. We want to come into our power as practitioners of mercy and justice. Lord, teach us to pray.”
And to help us stay with that desire for prayer, we’ve been spending time with Psalm 16. Psalm 16 has served as a guide through the great landscape of prayer and shown us some of prayer’s essential elements.
We’ve seen that prayer means asking God for help and getting comfortable with being dependent on God’s grace (vv. 1-2). Also that prayer is an act of attention, and so it matters whether we are paying attention during the day to stories that amplify hatred and shame or stories that inspire steadfastness and mercy (vv. 3-4). Prayer works through metaphor, helping us to see God in all things, and prayer marks moments of transition throughout our day, allowing us to pause and re-center ourselves in God (vv. 5-6). Prayer is a daily tool for gently examining the deep movements of our souls (vv. 7-8). And we’ve tied each of these insights to prayer practices to try out during the week.
Here I want to offer a quick invitation. Next Sunday is the last Sunday before the start of Lent, and I’ll be concluding this series. I’m planning on making time in the service for some of you to testify about how you have grown as a result of this preaching series – either through the teachings or the prayer practices that you’ve been working with. If you have a story to share that would allow us to celebrate you and that would encourage others to keep going, please reach out to me so I will know how to include you in the service. It doesn’t have to be elaborate, just one or two minutes. And I’d be happy to help you craft what you’re going to say.
Today we come to the final three verses of the psalm, and the first word we encounter is a hinge. “Therefore.” This is a shift, a shift away from the “how” of prayer to the “why.” What are the fruits of prayer? What does prayer make possible? Prayer is not a magic trick that immediately fixes all our problems. Prayer is not a hack for understanding why things happen the way that they do. So, what can we expect from it?
Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices;
my body also rests secure.
For you do not give me up to Sheol,
or let your faithful one see the Pit.
You show me the path of life.
In your presence there is fullness of joy;
in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Let’s start with that first line: my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; / my body also rests secure. The Psalmist is checking in with the different dimensions of his being – heart and soul and body – and noticing a pervasive sense of gladness and security. Now, this is where just looking at one psalm can be a little incomplete, because there are other psalms – other prayers – that express pain or anger or confusion and don’t end in such a resolved way. We might think of Jesus’ cry from the cross: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Those psalms of anguish tend to be more “of a moment.” They reflect a specific circumstance of suffering and show us how to be fully open and honest before God in moments like it. But Psalm 16 is a wisdom psalm; it takes a long view of prayer. And it promises that, over time, as our communion with God deepens through prayer, as our attunement to God’s constant helping and loving presence keeps getting refined, prayer will strengthen us. In the core of who we are – in our hearts, in our soul, reverberating through our bodies – there will be a sense of wellbeing unlocked by our trust in God’s love.
I want to be clear here: prayer isn’t a substitute for therapy if what you really need is therapy; it doesn’t take the place of exercise or nourishment or sleep; praying is not the same thing as being informed or involved, so it doesn’t eliminate our need for education and our responsibilities to act; neither is prayer a substitute for intimacy with other people. But prayer is an act that integrates all these aspects of our personhood. In prayer, we know ourselves to be held together in God and through God’s Spirit, and prayer helps us rest in God’s perfect knowledge of who we are.
Verse 10 says, For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.
You know, this verse is quoted twice in the New Testament book of Acts. Acts tells the story of the first Christians and their first churches. Two of its main characters are Peter, who was with Jesus from the start as one of his twelve disciples, and Paul, who came later, starting out as an oppressor of the Church and then becoming the greatest missionary of the movement.
In their sermons, both Peter and Paul quote Psalm 16 verse 10. They use it as a kind of proof text when proclaiming Jesus’ death and resurrection. Jesus died, they say, but God raised him from the dead. God did not abandon Jesus to the underworld, to the decay of death, to the injustice of the cross. No, God protected Jesus from that bleak finality. And in raising Jesus from the dead, God changed the end of the human story – of our story.
The God who did not allow the powers of cruelty and death to have the last word over Jesus is the God who meets us in prayer!
The God who turned a disastrous ending into a glorious new beginning is the God who helps us when we ask for help!
The God we claim as our good, as our portion and cup, as the one who gives us a good inheritance, who counsels us, is the God of resurrection and life.
No matter what may come, God will keep our lives from being overwhelmed and dragged under, bound and defined by the power of the Pit. We can expect this of prayer. We can expect to be companioned by the God who has let death touch him without being overcome, the God who will not abandon us in our time of need.
And at last we come to the final verse of the psalm, one of my absolute favorites in all of scripture: You show me the path of life. / In your presence there is fullness of joy; / in your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
The “path of life” always makes me think of Abraham. Way back in the first book of the Bible, in Genesis chapter 12, Abraham was called by God to leave his home and go to place that would be revealed to him along the way. He didn’t pray about it and see the destination ahead of time; he didn’t say Yes because he caught wind of where he was headed and could get out in the front of the difficulties entailed in getting there. No, he had to live the journey toward Canaan, the path revealed only in the going, each day unfolding into the next. He said Yes because he trusted the one who would walk alongside him and never abandon him.
God shows us the path of life. God leads us day by day – and prayer puts us in touch with that leading. And it is, make no mistake, a path of life – a path that takes us deeper into our real circumstances, not away from them. Deeper into our work, into our families and friendship. Deeper into our leisure, our service, our streets, and our ecosystems. “I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” Jesus says in John’s Gospel (10:10, ESV). And another Psalm puts it like this: “For you, LORD, have delivered me from death, / my eyes from tears, / my feet from stumbling, / that I may walk before the LORD / in the land of the living” (116:8-9, NLT). Prayer allows us to live our real lives right now with hearts and eyes and hands wide open.
A couple years ago I heard our bishop, Cedrick Bridgeforth, say that Jesus calls us to “pray with our feet.” That can mean two things. There’s the phrase, “stay with your feet,” which means don’t get ahead of yourself, don’t go somewhere else. Stay here in this moment, in this place, and be present. Pay attention to what God is up to in you and around you right where you are.
“Pray with your feet” can also mean putting our prayers into action, become living prayers. And I think our psalm has shown us that that’s possible.
If are in the habit of being met by the God who helps us, won’t we step more bravely toward others who need help? If we are in the habit of saying to God, “I have a good inheritance,” won’t we want to work to make sure that others get what they need to experience joy and rest, even if right now they look ahead and only see struggle and pain? We might even be the one who comes along and helps someone else out of the Pit – like the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ parable, who finds an abused traveler as he walks along the road, and stops what he’s doing to help his neighbor recover.
You show me the path of life. For two nights this week I was at the Monastery of the Ascension in Jerome, not far from Twin Falls. The monastery houses an aging Benedictine order of monks, but attached to the cloister is a lovely retreat center. I was there with other Methodist pastors from our district for a time of prayer, fellowship, and continuing education.
When I woke up on Wednesday morning, there was fresh snow on the ground, and some still softly falling from the sky. I joined the monks for morning prayer and then went out to take a walk. There is a long, straight driveway, probably a quarter of a mile, linking the entrance of the monastery to the closest country road, and along both sides of the driveway the monks long ago planted rows of conifer trees to break the wind and absorb some of the smell of nearby cattle. Today, those trees have grown into full stature; they are tall and thick and dark. Walking through them was like walking through a holy hallway, the wind hushed, life stirring.
Because of the slant of the snowfall, the row of trees to my left were covered with it, but the row of trees to my right were bare. One side white, another side green. In the morning light there were juncos and sparrows, magpies and chickadees stirring in the trees. A few hawks circled overhead. And I saw a Great Horned Owl for the first time in my life; we stood and looked at each other for a long, long time.
By planting those trees for practical reasons, the monks had created a new, micro ecosystem, a place of life and beauty. It took years for the trees to grow into their full effectiveness and purpose, but to walk through them today is to walk through something good and holy. Sometimes we begin to pray for very practical reasons. We’re trying to survive. We need help. We need a little more silence or beauty or reflectiveness in our days. And that’s okay! Prayer is practiced moment by moment, day by day. It is tended and patiently endured. And then? Then prayer grows up and becomes the very thing that holds and protects us, that marks the boundaries of our lives, that teems with life and blesses those who come alongside us, even after us.
If prayer is about coming to expect the presence of God in all persons and things, at all times, in all places – including in our very own heart, and breath, and bodies – then prayer really is about the fullness of life.
And this expectation, this hope, that the God of mercy and love is so very near to us always, is a source of joy and pleasure. It was what they sensed in him, those disciples, when they came to him and said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”
Amen.Prayer,