Last week I talked about Psalm 71. This passage in the Psalm was so powerful that I will continue talking about the amazement of this Psalm. As I shared last week, it is a prayer of deliverance from the wicked. I believe it is a detailed description of how we should handle the wicked, evil, cruel, unrighteous, toxic people we encounter in our life.
First of all we have to realize we are not dealing with flesh and blood but against principalities, powers of the darkness and wickedness of this world (Ephesians 6:12). Furthermore, what we are experiencing is real. Regrettably, the mistake that most of us make is we want to fight against the flesh and blood, the people, we see in front of us that are causing our problems. However, spiritual warfare is a higher level and how we should be handling the wicked. Thus, if you did not read last week’s blog, I encourage you to go back and read it. Thereupon, you will be up to speed with the half of how we should conduct ourselves.
As we progress through this Psalm, it further instructs us on how we should exercise spiritual warfare and fight like a Christian. Once again, it says our mouths should be full all day long with praise and honor for God. This is how we fight the wicked! When the wicked speak and conspire against us, we ask God for strength and to stay near unto us.
Well, He has already promised He would never leave or forsake us; therefore, what a wonderful way to pray. Further, we ask God to confound and consume our enemies… Confuse them, Lord who try to hurt me! This is powerful! Additionally, pour out more and more praise unto our God by talking about His righteousness and salvation all day long. Moreover, it reminds us we do all of this in the strength of the Lord. Again, this is a high level of fighting our battles.
This is spiritual warfare against our enemies. Then we remind God of how he has taught us and for some of us it has been since our youth. Wherefore, again we rely on those things God has taught us in the past. But then it goes on to say now that I am old and perhaps gray head how we are still relying on our God.
This prayer ends in a masterful way. We not only continue to praise God with our words, but we use our songs to sing his praise. If you have no words to say, go back to your childhood songs such as, “Yes, Jesus Loves Me.” If you play a musical instrument, play your instrument unto God. Yes, this is spiritual warfare to fight the wicked.
The beauty of this prayer of asking God for the destruction of the wicked is our tongue is never used to TALK ABOUT THE WICKED. Sometimes we want to go into details of what somebody did to us. Grant it, it you must get it off your chest and you need a human to tell, find someone you trust explicitly who can keep your confidences. In honoring God, our ranting is best to be taken to the Lord. He knows. He sees. And He has already said vengeance is mine (Romans 12 :17-21).
The last verse in this Psalm reiterates, as throughout this Psalm that our tongue should talk about God’s righteousness and when we do this… the wicked, our enemies are confounded and brought to shame who tries to hurt us. Psalm 71 tells us how to pray for the destruction of the wicked. This is spiritual warfare! Love & Blessings!