I recently read over Psalm 67 again, one of the most popular Psalms, except this time, I came across something fascinating that I’ve never noticed before, and it may just be the most important message of this psalm in the first place. Namely, it’s the promise that one prayer request will always be answered. I’ll first put the psalm below and then we can dig into this promise and discuss some meaningful takeaways for the Christian.
May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us, Selah
2 that your way may be known on earth,
your saving power among all nations.
3 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!
4 Let the nations be glad and sing for joy,
for you judge the peoples with equity
and guide the nations upon earth. Selah
5 Let the peoples praise you, O God;
let all the peoples praise you!
6 The earth has yielded its increase;
God, our God, shall bless us.
7 God shall bless us;
let all the ends of the earth fear him! (Psalm 67)
You might be thinking, “Wait… I thought you said there was a promise somewhere? Didn’t see anything there…” Yeah, it’s hard to see at first. Follow me here: If you look at the first verse and then you look at the last verse, you will see the psalmist’s interesting use of verbs is what makes the promise.
In the first verse, the author says, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, that your way may be known on earth.” And, significantly, he ends the psalm with, “God shall bless us, God shall bless us.” In just a couple of verses, the author goes from “God would you do this…?” to “God will do this!” What happens here? Does the author suddenly lapsed into schizophrenia, or is there something significant being communicated here about a certain type of prayer? I’m going to go with the latter. It’s obvious from this psalm that there’s something unique about this prayer because it’s a prayer that is always answered. There’s something in this type of prayer turns a simple request into a sure-fire result and transforms a humble plea into a heroic perspective. Well, what is it? What’s the secret sauce behind this bulletproof prayer ?
I think the answer lies in one word in between verse one and verse two. The word is ‘that’, which is technically the first word of verse two. I’ll bolden it below for clarity’s sake.
May God be gracious to us and bless us
and make his face to shine upon us,
2 that your way may be known on earth,
your saving power among all nations.
The significance behind the word ‘that’ might pop if you change it to ‘so that’ instead. It would then read “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face to shine upon us, so that your way may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.” Do you hear how important it is? The ‘so that’ is the key that unlocks the power to this prayer. The author is praying that God would be gracious to him and bless him and to make his face to shine upon him–for what? why? Is it for selfish reasons? Does the author want God’s favor so that he can spend it on a creature comforts or self-improvement or status? No–the author is praying for God’s blessing so that he can share that blessing with others so that others might see and worship the God behind the blessing, the greatest blessing of all.
This isn’t a prosperity-health-and-wealth type of prayer for myself. It’s a type of prayer that is radically upward to God and outward towards others. It’s a prayer showing that a Christian is not to be a reservoir of blessing, but a river of blessing. God’s blessing, grace, and presence that are plead for in verse 1 are not for the purpose of dwelling statically within the Christian, but for the purpose of passing powerfully through the Christian.
Let’s expand the reservoir-river analogy a bit. Typically, a stagnant body of water increasingly becomes engrossed with algae, bacteria, and filth; yet, a running body of water is typically cleaner because of the way that circulation purifies it. In the same way, so also is the nature of the blessings that God has put in our lives, too: if they’re sitting in us like a reservoir, they’re probably molding and losing their life-giving powers as a resource to others. Yet, if they’re passing powerfully through us, they could be resourcing entire ecosystems 0f God’s grace, blessing, and presence where others are coming to know Christ. When we retain God’s blessings inwardly, the power of our blessings will sour. But when we direct God’s blessings outwardly, the power of our blessings will multiply beyond more than we can imagine.
In other words, when we ask God to use us to bless others for the sake of expanding the kingdom, that is a prayer that he will never reject. Igniting a posture of radical surrender with the spark of prayer for others to know God will combust into a blaze of God’s work in some form or another. A life of upward-outward intent–and not one of inward focus–that is driven by a prayer for others to know God becomes a prayer we can take to the bank and cash every time. It’s a prayer that we know will always be answered.
And this type of prayer isn’t simply voiced once by the psalmist, either. It’s a type of prayer that echoes throughout the New Testament, and is a type of prayer that even Jesus himself begs us to pray. Check it out:
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. (John 14:13)
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7)
You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you. (John 15:16)
In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full. (John 16:23-24)
And whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded us. (1 John 3:22-23)
And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15)
Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37-38)
I’m sure there’s more verses that speak to this idea, but I’ll just stop there. The main idea in all these passages is that if we ask according to God’s will, then he will do it.
Now, let’s address the popular objection with a disclaimer: is it his will that we win a football game, or that we make an A on a test, or that our cousin recovers from cancer? Maybe so, but also, maybe not. The waters are too murky in those situations to know exactly what God’s exact will is for each of those scenarios. To be sure, it is God’s will that we be fully healed and fully alive in Him; in fact, we see throughout the gospel accounts that Jesus was healing everyone with whom he came into contact (Matt. 9:33). Yet, his healings were a pointer of what heaven would be like one day–His ultimate will–not his exact, sure-fire will for earthly scenarios. Ultimately, concerning our circumstances on earth, we can’t be sure exactly of the greater picture going on, but we can be assured that we will get that Will one day in heaven when all things become as they ought to be.
However, there is one thing that we can know is always God’s will on earth, and that’s to share the gospel, make disciples, and leverage our resources to reach people who don’t know Christ. It is always his will for us to do that. So when we pray for opportunities to share the gospel, to disciple others, and to leverage our resources for kingdom purposes, he will make it happen! What’s interesting, in fact, is that in most of the verses above, you can see how praying according to his will and loving others are side-by-side. When the passage mentions a blessing, it’s connected–either directly or indirectly–to a will of God that has a heart of trajectory towards loving others.
You hear things like, ‘Ask for what glorifies my name and I’ll answer it’ (John 14:13)–does sharing the gospel, making disciples, and leveraging our resources for kingdom purposes glorify him? Yes. Always. So he will answer it. And ‘Abide in me, ask whatever you wish and it will done for you’ (John 15:7)? If we abide in him, we will increasingly grow to want what he wants, which is for others to be saved and matured in Christ. If we abide deeply in Christ, we will begin to ask the type of prayers that he loves to answer! And what about ‘I appointed you to bear fruit, now ask and it will given’ (John 15:6)? All in one verse, you have the command to bear fruit for the kingdom, to ask for it, and for it to be given to you. Same trend. 1 John 3:22-23 might be the verse where this idea is most obvious: “And whatever we ask we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him. And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his Son Jesus Christ and love one another.” Asking for God to bless you so that you might be a conduit of blessing to others is something that God loves to endorse.
And ironically, this giving away of self isn’t the antithesis to personal joy, but the starting point of personal joy. We were designed to live in this way–as rivers, not reservoirs–and when we live according to our design, that’s where we experience joy. It’s precisely when we live against our design that we begin to malfunction and breakdown. God made us in his image, and he is a God who lives on mission for others and gives himself away so that others might be saved. So it is with us as well, and we must do so if our joy is ever to be made complete (John 15-16).
Overall, when we pray the type of prayers that we know are God’s will–evangelism, discipleship, and generosity–we can be assured that God will gladly answer them. When we pray prayers that start in heaven–that touch God’s heart–we can be assured that they will be heard in heaven and delivered from heaven. Then, we can begin praying prayers like the psalmist in Psalm 67, where our prayers start humbly with “God will you do this?” and end confidently with “God shall do this!”
To conclude, one way to begin praying these types of prayer is to simply insert your name and a name of a lost friend into the flow of Psalm 67 and pray it back to God. May we start praying prayers like these, and in so doing, making our prayers count.
“God be gracious to (me) and bless (me) and make your face to shine on (me) so that ________ (insert name of friend) may know of your saving way and power.”
Finally, I love how the band, Starfield, puts this truth to music. Definitely worth a listen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0ihxvCyrWM
Let me not be blind with privilege, give me eyes to see the pain,
Let the blessing you’ve poured out on me, not be spent on me in vain,
Let this life be used for change,
I will go.
