Psalm 35

Like so many psalms, the Thirty-Fifth Psalm is a prayer for the Lord to defeat David’s enemies.

Question: Praying against my enemies—is that even allowed?

Answer: Yes. More than allowed, it is required.

Remember, the psalms teach us to pray through our emotions, and sooner or later you will have the emotions that come with enemy opposition. Enemies are people who deliberately work to harm you or your loved ones in some way, and if you tell me that you’ve never had any enemies, I’ll tell you it’s only a matter of time: enemies are inevitable. When enemies attack, we have 2 choices:

• Lie and pretend that we are so holy that enemy attacks don’t cause us pain;

• Tell the truth and ask the Lord to defend us.

Honesty in prayer is essential, and asking the Lord to defeat your enemies does NOT mean you are hating them. To love is to will the good of the other, and if your enemies are wrong, then it is to their good that the Lord stop them from doing greater evil. In fact, the surest way to end up hating your enemies is to

1. refuse to pray honestly to the Lord (thereby letting your hurt fester into hate); and

2. have them do more evil to you (thereby fanning the flames of hurt into hate in your heart).

When we pray for the Lord to defeat our enemies we are doing a very important thing: we are giving a desire for vengeance over to the Lord and trusting him to judge justly.

Praying in this way is a way to remove the venom from the bite before it turns your heart black.

The psalms teach us to pray through our emotions.

Through what feelings do you need to be praying today?