Join me in prayer. Gracious Father, teach us this powerful truth that before we can say it is well with my soul, that sometimes we must confess, we must admit, we must recognize that it is horrible with our soul. But teach us this grand and glorious gospel truth, that because your Son that it was not well with Him on the cross, that we can say it is well. That because it was horrible for Him, we can walk through the fire and the flame of trial. That if you don't deliver from the fire, you will walk with us through it because of Christ. that because of Jesus, the hand holding through the flames is not just for Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, but for us today. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. David wrote some 1,000 years before the cross. He wrote this psalm when evil men mocked and persecuted him. Before he wrote it, he had prayed day and night for God to rescue him. But God sent nothing. Was it weeks? Was it months? Was it years? We don't know. But what we do know from the text is that David heard nothing. Mystified by the abandonment he felt in the silence of his powerful and precious Savior, he prayed these opening immortal words of Psalm 22, 1-2. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. One writer described the tragedy this way. On March 27th, 2023, parents were dropping their children off at the Covenant School, a Christian school in Nashville. anticipating a bright, sunny, promising day of love, friendship, and learning. No one could fathom what would happen at 1122 a.m. that day when a 28-year-old assailant would enter the building and open fire, resulting in the loss of life for three nine-year-old children, three adults on staff, and then the assailant. How can it be? How can it be that our God asks these fellow believers to walk through this tragedy with Him? How are Christians, how are you and I supposed to walk with God through tragedies like this? How about the 1,000 situations, big, extreme, and severe? Or the one million small, minor, and low-grade sufferings dragged out over time? or even those short-lived ones? What about when people hurt, slander, mock, or abuse you? All the brokenness of this sin-shattered world. In all these things, what way of communing with God has He provided to you? Provided for experiences as utterly horrible and gut-wrenching as the covenant school shooting, and as mundane as a water leak or a common cold? Well, I have good news for you this morning. In the gospel, God did not just lob a truth bomb over the wall of heaven down to earth and say, well, try this technique, and while you're doing that, I'll be over here minding my own business in the perfect comfort of heaven. Good luck. No, no. No, in the profound generosity of the gospel, our God entered into our suffering with us. He went over the wall of heaven and down to earth in Christ. What amazing grace! And at the cross, Christ showed us how to commune with God amidst the chaos. On the cross, the way, the truth, and the life himself showed us how to commune with God when we encounter painful tests of faith, trials that seem to hide God's love from sight. Because of Jesus, the Covenant School families and believers across redemptive history can find no better words to commune with God in the flames of trial. None better than those the Savior took from Psalm 22.1. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27, 46. You see in Jesus, extreme suffering on the cross. Slow death by suffocation. Jesus reached for today's text, Psalm 22, 1, get this, not as a way to escape the cross, but as a way to commune with God the Father through it. Let me say that again. Jesus reached for Psalm 22, 1, our text today, not as a way to escape the cross, but as a way to commune with God the Father through it. Psalm 22 then is for those who long to be near God in pain and to glorify God in pain. Is that you this morning? In the words of Jesus, with man these things are impossible, but with God all things are possible. And as he said, apart from Jesus you can do nothing. So for the sake of discussion this morning, this way to commune with God in suffering, you could call wrestling prayer. The definition of wrestling prayer is just what we've been saying. It's God's way for you to commune with Him in suffering. That's the definition. God's way for you to commune with Him in suffering. And that's why today's message is titled Wrestling Prayer. Today we're going to uncover answers to these questions. How important is wrestling prayer? What makes wrestling prayer a wrestle? How do you build your own wrestling prayer? How do you do wrestling prayer without sinning? And how does God change you through wrestling prayer? So first of all, how important is it? Well, wrestling prayer is so radically bold, so near offensive, so almost disrespectful to God, that if it wasn't taught and modeled Throughout Scripture, you wouldn't dare do it. Yet, it's in Psalm 22 and all over the Bible. Take, for example, Jacob, who wrestled God for grace the stressful night before obediently facing Esau, praying, I won't let go of you until you bless me, Genesis 32. The twelve disciples wrestled God as He slept on their storm-tossed boat. They woke Jesus, praying, "'Don't you care that we're perishing?' Mark 4. Martha wrestled God after Lazarus got sick, but God didn't come in time to heal him. She prayed, "'Jesus, if you had been here, Lazarus wouldn't have died!' John 11. The Apostle Paul wrestled God three times for rescue, even though God wouldn't remove His thorn in the flesh, 2 Corinthians 12. Jesus was the master practitioner. He wrestled God in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane as He sweated blood. Then again, as He bled from the cross, He wrestled God as the scalding hot wrath of His Father descended on His head for our sin, praying, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me, as we heard earlier? So wrestling God himself in prayer is something all God's people did, including Jesus, when their experience of God didn't match their biblical knowledge of him. When God's deep love for them was manifest in strange and surprising ways that spelled suffering and tested their faith to its very foundations. As we heard last week, as we closed Genesis with the story of Joseph, your precious God controls, directs, and guides everything, all things for your good and his glory. Which means he controls and directs even evil people who mock you and hurt you. People like Joseph's brothers who hurt him. They mean it for evil against you, but God means it for your good and his glory. Now, that is hard medicine. That is a spiritual chemotherapy, if you will. And apart from Christ, who can rejoice in it? Wrestling prayer comes along in this situation and says, God, you're wise, you're good, and you're in control. And after all, you accomplished my salvation. And I believe you mean my suffering for my good and your glory. I have got to tell you, I hate the evil, foolish things being done to me in your world. And I'm boiling sad that you would control and direct all these things in my life this way. That you haven't taken these trials away when I asked, how am I supposed to understand your love in this mess? That's what David's doing in Psalm 22. This is why for Christians today, wrestling prayer is almost hidden in plain sight within the pages of Scripture. It's a strange and different Old Testament practice. It's a practice the New Testament writers later highlighted and godly men and women today still follow. But many believers don't even know it exists. Yelling at God? I didn't even know that's an option. Sadly, it's a means of grace that's fallen lost to many Christians today, buried beneath thick layers of dust, disuse, and ignorance of the biblical model. See, it's through this persistent wrestling prayer, this ancient method of communion with God during severe or prolonged suffering, that holy men and women of old drew near to God during trial and drew abundant streams of divine power and wisdom from God that were more than enough to endure trials with both contentment and joy. Whether or not their situation changed, even in trials of persecution and public shaming for their faith, even when no matter what they prayed, their pain didn't go away, even when the sense of loneliness and abandonment was unrelenting, even with no end in sight, whether it was Jacob, David, the disciples, Martha, Paul, these all wrestled God in prayer. In all cases, wrestling God was never the end goal. It was the means to something greater, a transformation rooted in the renewal of their minds through the gospel. This wrestling was meant by God to lead them to a deeper desire for God's presence and a truer worship of Him, to the praise of God's glory. So you can rest assured this morning that that's God's purpose for you too. In today's text, we're going to learn exactly how to practice this way of wrestling prayer. But before the Lord instructs us how to do it, let me also assure you through the gospel of Jesus Christ, our hope is not a technique. Our hope is not a technique. Our hope is not a technique. Our hope is not a technique. Our hope is not a technique. It's a person. His name is Jesus Christ. Wrestling prayer isn't a way to earn God's love or somehow become worthy of it. We can only pray, why have you forsaken me? Without fear of wrath here, because he was forsaken there at the cross. As we experience unexplained, prolonged, or severe pain, persecution, or suffering of all kinds that tests our faith, it's in Christ's why have you forsaken me? that we hear the answer from heaven, saying, I have not forsaken you and I never will. Because Christ was forsaken for you, wrestling prayer is now your privilege and calling as someone already loved by God and saved by God through faith in Jesus Christ. Because the cross means everything you needed to do to secure favor and acceptance with God is already finished. You don't have to pray more or pray better to get God on your side. The war is already over. You're already reconciled to God through the gospel. Now you're called to grow as holy as a pardoned sinner can be. Now you're called to follow Christ by faith through the wilderness of this fallen world. To wrestle in route to worship. To wrestle so that you might encounter times of refreshing that come from the Lord as they did in the book of Acts. And it's all as you commune with the Lord in wrestling prayer. As cities fall, as nations crumble, as enemies prevail, as shooters attack, as disease spreads, because of Jesus, you can now wrestle your God with boldness and confidence, without fear of condemnation, because in Christ, Yahweh is your shepherd. And He saved you precisely to hear your wrestling prayers to Him, with their Psalm 22 type holy complaints. So that even though you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you don't have to fear evil. Why? Because the Lord's your shepherd. He's with you. His rod, His staff will comfort you in suffering in Christ. He prepares a table before you in the presence of your enemies by the power of the Holy Spirit. He anoints your head with healing medicine. Your cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy are going to follow you all the days of your life. and you're gonna dwell in the house of the Lord forever. You will be with Christ forever. Think about that. If you believe it, you can wrestle God and struggle with his painful providence in your life like David did, like Jesus did on the cross. You can wrestle God in Christ because of the gospel, because Christ went to the cross. Wrestle because Christ was forsaken and you've been forgiven. Wrestle because Christ rose from the dead and you will rise. Wrestle because you're in Christ and because when He died, the old you died. Wrestle because when He rose, the new you arose. Wrestle because when He ascended to heaven, you ascended to heaven. You can wrestle God in prayer because you're in Christ. And when He sat down on His heavenly throne on high, Ephesians 2 says that you sat down with Him. Why am I saying all this? I thought we were talking about Psalm 22. Because wrestling prayer, though beautiful and precious, is so radical, so bold, so different, so strange, and dare we say it, so dangerous, that you'll never be able to enter into wrestling prayer with confidence and navigate its challenges unless you know your salvation is secure, that you've been adopted, that you belong to God, But if your faith is rooted in Jesus Christ and your love bound and yielded to Him in total surrender, then you can burst in to the God the Father's throne room and have it out with Him in wrestling prayer. Don't worry, you're not gonna break anything that matters. That said, you may be wondering, I get it, Josh. I'm on board. I see why wrestling prayer is important. David, in Psalm 22, and believers throughout scripture, they practice wrestling prayer, culminating in Jesus on the cross. But get practical. I've rarely, if ever, wrestled God in prayer this way. How am I supposed to grow and get better at wrestling God in prayer? How about avoiding sinful pitfalls? What about finding its highest joys? I'm glad you asked. To understand how to practice wrestling prayer, the next thing that we need to learn is what makes wrestling prayer a wrestling match. Look at verses 1 through 2 of Psalm 22. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? Verse two, oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. That's wrestling because David is grappling with the facts about God and the facts of his painful experience, pushing one against the other. Truth against pain. Searching for relief from providential pain and for truth to dominate the pain. So in normal prayer, you might present a problem in your world to God and ask for his help for him to solve it. But in wrestling prayer, your problem lies in your experience of God himself, in your experience of his sovereign design for your painful or shameful situation, in his apparent plan not to get you out of this pain. So God himself becomes your prayer request. Grappling with reality that he's knowable yet he's still utterly, mind-blowingly incomprehensible. Like David in Psalm 22, have you ever felt that God wasn't listening when you went to him in physical, mental, relational pain? Ever felt that God was ignoring you, like God was somehow beyond your theological explanation, shutting you out? Have you ever dared say to God's face, or at least thought it, You've forsaken me. If so, you felt the wrestle. On the one hand, you're loyal to your precious Savior. You're also convinced He's loyal to you, and He'll never leave you or forsake you, and with good reason too, the cross. Yet, if you don't leave Him, you're stuck dealing with the fact that He loves you, but brought this pain into your story anyway, and He isn't taking it out of your story. You're left bearing the mystery that this is all somehow for your good and His glory. And that is a heavy mystery. And it's uncomfortable, isn't it? That's what makes wrestling prayer a wrestle. The combat of truth and pain. the uncomfortable mystery of a reliable God whose providence is unpredictable. So here in Psalm 22, verses one through two, David throws down the gauntlet at Yahweh's feet. David, like we sometimes do, feels God has forsaken him. He wants to wrestle God in prayer. And as believers, as disciples of Jesus Christ, sooner or later, we'll find ourselves in the same pinch as David. It's then we'll need to know how to do Psalm 22. So here's the next question. How do you do Psalm 22? How do you build your own wrestling prayer to God? The answer from Psalm 22 is that to build your own wrestling prayer, you need to prepare to do three things. Provoke God's heart, probe God's word, and present your pain. So provoke God, probe his word, and present your pain. That's what David does in Psalm 22. So what is provoking God's heart? Most are familiar with the notorious loaded question, when did you stop beating your wife? As one writer pointed out, it implies that you have indeed been beating your wife. How do you answer without agreeing with the implication? How do you not answer without appearing evasive? This is the type question that David puts to Yahweh himself. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Not if, why. Why are you so far from saving me? Not, I think you are. Why are you? That's loaded stuff. They're accusations masquerading as questions. David, a mere man, a sinful man at that, dared to thrust accusations to God's ear. This is the profound access and safety in God that David has afforded through covenant mercy. You own the same mercy in Christ as well. But what's the point of deploying such a loaded, God-provoking question in your prayer? Well, to provoke God's heart. God is holy in all His ways, which means He is absolutely unique and one of a kind in His infinite moral perfection. And unlike us, He doesn't lie. Unlike us, He doesn't cheat. Unlike us, He doesn't steal, which means unlike us, He's faithful. His people can trust Him, and He inspires and deserves their praise. So think how much this holy God must be provoked for one of his precious children to cry, dear daddy, why have you forsaken me? Why are you ordaining things that don't seem like love? Why do you leave me for the bullies to embarrass me and call me names and cover me with shame? This is in fact what David argues in verses three through eight. Look at verse three. Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel. In you our fathers trusted. They trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried and were rescued. In you they trusted and were not put to shame. But I am a worm and not a man, scorned by mankind and despised by the people. All who see me mock me. They make mouths at me. They wag their heads. He trusts in the Lord. Let him deliver him. Let him rescue him, for he delights in him. David's argument here in three through eight shows that why have you forsaken me in verses one through two? It's only the tip of the spear and the aim to provoke God's heart. What this means for you and me personally is that it's impossible to be more radically provocative to God and his heart in your prayers than David is here in Psalm 22. So go. Be radical. Be bold. Be different. from your status quo in your approach to the Almighty. Seek to provoke a response from God by making forward moves at His holy character. Provoke His holy heart with your perspective on His providence. God won't kick you out. So that's provoking God's heart. The second part of a wrestling prayer is probing God's word. I won't spend as much time here in this point since the evidence in the text for this is already presented in verses three through eight, which we just read. But suffice it to say, to pray like David, it's absolutely necessary to bury your heart and mind in God's word, probing it deeply. Because deep knowledge and insight into God's word is the only way David could make an argument from God's holiness revealed in redemptive history that he then applies to his own pain and suffering with specific details in verses 3 through 8. So there's a sense in which David is wrestling God with his writing parchment on one side and his Torah on the other, so to speak. The result is Psalm 22 itself. We can't improve on David's inspired method when we wrestle God in prayer either. So what this means for you is that when you set out to intentionally wrestle God in prayer, and I hope you do, first get yourself some kind of a writing tool, a journal, a tablet, a laptop, an app on your smart device, or Google Docs, or whatever you prefer to write on, and then get your Bible. Then in no particular order, take one look at the pain and suffering in your life. Write that down. Take three looks at a Bible passage or passages that you feel are relevant. Think deeply on the word. See God's heart and intent in the word. Then turn to your writing tool. Wrestle God about your pain, both in your heart, with your mouth, and with your pen or keyboard or with your thumbs if you write on Google Docs on your phone like me. If you don't have this stuff, don't let that stop you. It's not about the technique. It's not about feeling condemned. It's about finding the application of this principle that works for your situation and your heart. So to build your own wrestling prayer, provoke God's heart, while probing God's word. And the third part is to present your pain to God. It's what's going on in verse two. Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. Presenting your pain to God is about cutting through the overwhelm by getting the chaos and the clutter of what's bothering you into spoken or written words. If you can speak out your prayers and write them out together, it's a powerful combo. If you're gifted at it, you can turn your writing to poetry or even song lyrics. And I didn't make this up. I've done it, but I didn't think it up. It's what David does in verses 12 through 18. Many bowls encompass me. Strong bowls of Bashan surround me. They open wide their mouths at me, like a ravening and roaring lion. I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint. My heart is like wax. It is melted within my breast. My strength is dried up like a pot shirt, and my tongue sticks to my jaws. You lay me in the dust of death. For dogs encompass me, a company of evildoers encircles me. They have pierced my hands and feet. I can count all my bones. They stare and gloat over me. They divide my garments among them. And for my clothing, they cast lots. And it echoed to the cross. God already knows all of this that David shared. But telling God verbally and in writing enables you to experience being known by God. It's an act of holy self-disclosure to God, and you were made for it. You were made for communion with God, even if that means you and God have a conversation about everything in your situation that hurts and that you hate. So in wrestling prayer, provoke God's heart, probe God's word, and present your pain to God's ear. So you might be wondering, Provoking God's heart seems dangerous. How do I avoid sinning when making moves to provoke God's heart? The first way to avoid sin when wrestling God in prayer is to do it in loving confidence. To do it in loving confidence. That's faith and love combined. Instead of selfish insecurity that screams at God out of fear, David speaks to God from a place of love and confidence. Because the love he has already experienced from God. Saying, my God, my God in verse one. And again, oh my God in verse two. So David's fundamental conviction and the ground of his struggle with God in verses one through two is that God is his. How is this love and confidence though? David's read or heard read Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy. He's learned that the covenant-making Lord of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has said time and again, I will be Israel's God and they will be my people. David's taken this promise personally. He's applied this gospel to his own life. On the basis of God's loving redemption and gracious covenant, David speaks to God and says, you are mine. So he calls the Lord my God. And on that basis of confidence and in that context of love, David speaks to God about what feels like abandonment. what feels like desertion on God's part. David's heart beats with love for and confidence in God and so should ours as we wrestle. So to avoid sinning when you wrestle God in prayer, do it in loving confidence. The second way to avoid sin when wrestling God in prayer is to do it in humble honesty. Humble honesty. Instead of a proud suppression of the truth, David displays his loving confidence in humble honesty saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And if that's not enough, he brings another why. Why are you so far from saving me from the words of my groaning? That's honestly how David feels about God right now. If this radical pressing into God wasn't in the Bible, preserved by God for millennia, Would we dare talk to God like this? But David isn't holding back. He's definitely honest with God to his face. But he's also humble. And here's how we know he's humble from the text. David clarifies what he means in verse 1 in verse 2, showing humility. He shows what he means by God forsaking him, by saying, Oh my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest. So David tempers, why have you forsaken me, with the detail, you've forsaken me by not answering my prayers yet. This shows David recognizes God's his only hope for peace and rest in the circumstances. So David's problem isn't who God is, but how God seems in experience. David's saying he's hot and bothered about the time requirements being placed on his faith through God's providence. God is not responding immediately. God's not responding when David wants him to. Ever been there? David is acknowledging this in verse two, and that's the humility embedded in David's claim that's so bold. He recognizes his earthly, time-bound experience of God. He recognizes God forsaking him is his subjective perception of God, viewed through the jacked-up prism of circumstances. And that takes humility to admit. The famed Christian author, C.S. Lewis, ran smack dab into wrestling prayer at the death of his wife. He wrote, go to God when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. See, Lewis, like David, is wrestling with the time-bound experience of God's faithful grace. Grace rarely comes as fast as we'd like it to come, or in the timing we've pinned our hopes to. But it does come, amen? And that's what makes suffering as a Christian really, really hard. We hold God in our hands, but He's not handcuffed to our expectations for timing. Knowing God is faithful and gracious doesn't take away the pain of waiting and not knowing when. So we have to wrestle with God about it. which is why Louis, like David, goes to God in loving confidence and humble honesty, struggling with the reality that God's help is being withheld, at least for a time, and without any explanation that he can see, which feels to Louis like a divine door slammed in his face, bolted and double-bolted, and after that, silence. Louis is joining David, saying to God, why have you forsaken me? Similar to Lewis, the Christian philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff wrote, he wrote this passage following the death of his son. How is faith to endure, O God? When you allow all this scraping and tearing on us, you have allowed rivers of blood to flow, mountains of suffering to pile up, sobs to become humanity's song. all without lifting a finger that we could see. You have allowed bonds of love beyond number to be painfully snapped. If you had not abandoned us, if you have not abandoned us, explain yourself. Explain yourself. We strain to hear God in our sorrows, but instead of hearing an answer, we catch the sight of God himself, scraped and torn. Through our tears, we see the tears of God. Through the tears of God, we see the splendor of God. Hear his wrestling prayer. Hear him telling God how he feels about him and why. with both loving confidence and humble honesty. See him joining David's why have you forsaken me with if you have not abandoned us, explain yourself. But also here, Wolterstorff making the connection between David and the son of David. Between Psalm 22's cry, and Christ's cry from the cross, why have you forsaken me? Saying, we strain to hear God in our sorrows, but instead of hearing an answer, we catch the sight of God himself, scraped and torn. That's Christ. Through our tears, we see the tears of God. Through the tears of God, we see the splendor of God. He's saying Jesus's tears glorified God. God did hear David. God did answer him in the fullness of time, from the cross of Christ, in Christ's tears. In that we see the splendor of God's grand design for grace. In Christ, you now see why God has preserved David's example of wrestling prayer in Psalm 22. He did so for a good reason. So we will follow the example. He's confirmed we're to follow David's example from the cross. At the cross, Jesus taught and embodied Psalm 22's ultimate application in himself, even as he was giving us the merciful right of children to wrestle Yahweh through his blood. So isn't God kind toward you? Isn't he kind? He brought Psalm 22 to your ear this morning so you might abound in wrestling prayer. Which leads to the final question we must answer. How does God change you through wrestling prayer? To answer, let me point out that change, transformation, the renewal of David's mind by the gospel of covenant grace, Change is built in to Psalm 22, which means change is possible for you and me today. Change is possible. Verses 1 through 21 are oriented to pain. 1 through 21 of Psalm 22. In this section, David's questions are transformed. He moves from asking God, why have you forsaken me, in verse 1, to be near, O God, in verse 11, and don't be far in verse 19, which shows that David's experiences, David is experiencing a radical shift from demanding answers from God in suffering to desiring the abiding presence of God in suffering. The presence of God in spite of suffering. That's huge. So everything in the first 21 verses of Psalm 22 is changing David. It's moving David toward a desperate desire for God's presence. So that's the first change that God brings in you through wrestling prayer. The heightening of your desire for God's presence. Then in the second half of verse 21, there's a sudden change. Verses 21 through 31, the end, are oriented to praise. It's a radical shift again. If the first 21 verses were pain, well, the last 10 verses are praise. It's a 180-degree flip. The David who started Psalm 22 isn't the David who ends it. It seems that wrestling prayer has been a means of David moving from pain to praise. In 1 through 21, David was surrounded by a congregation of shame of evil people who mocked him and mocked God's grace. And then in 22 through 31, David is surrounded by a new congregation, a congregation of praise that glorifies God's grace. So it's not likely that David's mockers instantly evaporated in front of him as he was writing Psalm 22, and then a bunch of faithful Christians somehow showed up right then. but rather in spite of whatever is going on outside the castle walls with the people mocking him and persecuting him, what's happened is that David's heart has shifted to a bonfire of delight in the praise of God. The change is internal, it's spiritual, it's in the eyes of his heart. Or as our very own Bill Gross shared on these verses, David has taken his eyes off himself and his situation. and is now looking up to God. He is thereby moved from lament to praise, from bondage to liberty, from oppression to transcendence. He may indeed have moved past the temporal and into the eternal. Wrestling with God has enabled him to overcome the world and to gain a different perspective on his experience. Such that he is able to experience God and celebrate God and testify to the congregation of God's goodness in the midst of his suffering. I need that to happen to me. So the two changes God makes in you through wrestling prayer, as seen in Psalm 22, are first that God heightens your desire for His presence, and second, God heightens your delight in His praise. So reflect on your own life then. What secret frustration have you been hiding from God as if it were possible? What timing requirements is God currently placing on your faith? What providential circumstances are you frustrated with? When and where in your home can you regularly practice wrestling prayer about this issue or any issue like it? If you're already wrestling God in prayer, when you pray like this, where do you need to shift from selfish insecurity to loving confidence and from proud suppression of the truth to humble honesty with your Maker? Finally, what do you need to learn about who God is and what He's like in Scripture that will equip you to more faithfully wrestle with Him according to His attributes and His characteristics? To close, you know, sometimes you look at how you're living the Christian life and you just have to laugh. At least it's true for me. I don't know about y'all. A handful of times at least, I found myself acting like I could actually keep secrets from God. I could hide from Him like Adam and Eve in the garden. Because in those times, if God were to have asked me out loud, hey, what's wrong, Josh? I'd have answered, oh, nothing. I'm fine. But I wasn't fine. The dent in my sheetrock wall would have told a different story. The blood dripping from my knuckles would have proved my lie to God. Yet Psalm 22, the Bible as a whole, and Christ from the cross teach me something opposite my hiding, something better, something transformative you could call wrestling prayer. It's not the end, it's a means, a means of grace, a means of transformation, of renewal through the gospel, as happened in David's life. Because in Christ, God has come to call you out of your hiding and into fellowship with him. Even in this fallen, blood-stained world, red in tooth and claw. Because Christ's blood means that your righteousness doesn't come from how clean the cup looks on the outside. It's located outside of you, in Christ. Which means being honest with God will not ruin your righteousness. So then, when you suffer, when you suffer, as the families of the covenant school, or in whatever way you suffer, what will you do? Will you come out of hiding? Will you commune with God in suffering through wrestling prayer? Let's pray. Father, we thank you that the war is over and you have won. You have conquered us. I was so happy to see my friend sitting in the row back there, my 12th grade doctrine teacher. God, I thank you. That time he told me about a book by John Owen, The Death of Death and the Death of Christ. We thank you, Jesus, that you were willing to die so that our sentence of death could be killed. Thank You, Jesus, for Your salvation. Thank You that in You we can come to our Father with boldness. In Your name we pray, Amen.