When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you.
Psalm 73:21-22
This is Asaph confessing his sins to God. He is admitting to things that are wrong in his life. As soon as Asaph gets his thinking straight, he begins to pray.
Prayer flows out where truth flows in. We hear the truth every Sunday as we listen to the Word of God preached, and we read the truth every time we open the Bible. One way to measure your grasp of the truth is to take a look at your prayer life.
It is possible to affirm your church’s statement of faith, but then to have very little confidence that God is able to help you in what you are facing now. It is possible to believe ‘We are all sinners,’ but then to have very little awareness of sin in your own life. That’s where Asaph was. But God met him in the sanctuary, and the evidence of it is in the way he prayed afterwards.
This psalm is brutally honest. It is the kind of honesty that leads to a changed life. “When my soul was embittered, when I was pricked in heart, I was brutish and ignorant; I was like a beast toward you” (73:21-22).This is a confession of sin from a godly man.
Reflect on your prayer life. Are you failing to apply your faith to the things you are facing now? When was the last time you were brutally honest with God about yourself and about your sins?
