For Your Name’s Sake (Psalm 143:11)

 


Tuesday, 28 October, 2025


Psalms 143; 146

2 Kings 9:17-37

Matthew 18:15-35


Observance: Simon and Jude, apostles and martyrs


For Your Name’s Sake (Psalm 143:11)


For your name's sake, O Lord, preserve my life!
    In your righteousness bring my soul out of trouble!


Something I really love about God and being a Christian is that we are able to hold two wildly different things together at the same time: first, that we worship the terrifying, holy, glorious, all-powerful living God, and pay him the honour due to his name. At the same time, he has revealed himself to us in the Person of his Son, Jesus Christ, our brother and our friend, flesh of our flesh, intimately close to the nth degree.


I wonder sometimes, however, how are we to hold these two things together well, without going too far in either extreme, while still respecting the extremes of both?


Today’s sentence, from Psalm 143, seems to hint at this dynamic. The Psalmist is crushed under the weight of his sin, and the enemy that has tempted him into committing it. So he turns to the Lord and prays in a way that brings out both the honour he is due, as well as the intimacy he invites.


Firstly, you have to be pretty bold in asking God to rescue you; even moreso by pointing out that he should do so “for his name’s sake”. That is, if God is who he says he is, then he ought to do this. That is bold intimacy.


Yet at the same time one has to acknowledge the fact that God is all-powerful, glorious, holy and terrifying in order to ask him of this in the first place. There is both here; in this Psalm we have been given a pattern to follow to hold both sides of God in their proper place.


How do you perceive and acknowledge God’s glory? How do you celebrate him in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, and his invitation to intimacy? Which do you like more about God? How might you stir up your devotion in the other?


Holy God, our lover and our friend: reveal to us the amazing breadth of your nature, that we may rejoice in the full truth of who you are.

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