Deal on My Behalf for Your Name’s Sake (Psalm 109:21)

“But you, Oh God, my Lord, deal on my behalf for Your name’s sake, because your steadfast love is good, deliver me.”
– Psalm 109:21

What I want you to focus on in this Psalm 109:21, it’s going to lead our praying and really should guide all of our praying every day is this middle phrase.

When the Psalmist says, “To God, deal on my behalf for Your name’s sake.” So think about that. Deal on my behalf for Your name’s sake, oh God. So who is the Psalmist asking God to do this for? For him or for God? Deal on my behalf. For Your name’s sake. And the answer is so who is the Psalmist asking God to answer in this way for? He’s asking for both for my behalf or do these things for me, I pray, for Your name’s sake.

Psalm 109:21 Teaches Us How to Pray

This is the way prayer works and it’s so key. This is so critical to understanding prayer, like get this. When we ask God to do things for us, we are ultimately asking him to do things for us, for Him. For us, for Him. That’s how prayer works. We ask for grace and God gets the glory, when God gives the grace.

Lord help our prayers to consist of petitions asking for Your grace, receiving Your grace, and all of this taking place for Your glory.

It’s pretty awesome how this comes together in prayer. We ask for and receive grace. God receives glory in His showing grace. So just think about that. As you pray, when you and I ask for things, which God has told us to do, He said, I’m a loving Father. You’re my children. Come before me, ask and it will be given you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be open to you. So we ask and ask and ask, like that’s a right to do. But to realize that as we ask for things for us, ask God to do things on our behalf, we are ultimately asking these things so that He would be glorified in his provision. Well to use the words of Psalm 109:21 in the end, deliverance.

Psalm 109:21 Reminds Us of God’s Glory

As God works on our behalf, God receives glory. So you just think about that as we pray. Let’s just do this now, and put this together. God, we come you right now with so many needs in our lives and so many things we can and want to ask You for. God, we need You to deliver us in so many ways. From temptation through trial, we need You to lead us. We need You to provide for us. God, we need strength. We need wisdom. We need help, we need grace.  And we need Your fruit of Your spirit, love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

This Verse Leads Us to Ask God For Help

We need all these things from You. God, we need You to provide for our needs to help us not to worry, to trust in You. God, we need You to direct us, to guide our decisions where we don’t know what to do in this or that situation. Please help us. We need all of these things. So we ask You to do all of these things on our behalf for Your glory, for Your praise, that You would be glorified as the giver of all good gifts. As the provider of those who look to you. As the one who has all power to strengthen in our weakness. And as the one who has all wisdom. Lord as we ask You for wisdom, we pray that You would lead us and You promise to guide us with Your wisdom. We pray that you would do it in such a way that You are known as the all wise one, as the generous dispenser of a wisdom.

God, we pray that You would help us to understand this and our daily walk with You and our daily prayers before You, that we would ask for things on our behalf to Your glory. That you would answer our prayers for us, for You. That you would be glorified as our Father in Heaven as we receive Your grace through prayer. May it be so, may this be like the summary of our lives, and specifically our prayer lives, that we asked for and we received grace and God in the end received glory. Oh God, please, may this be true of us. Deal on our behalf. For Your name’s sake, in Jesus name and for his Glory, we pray. Amen.