Psalm 80:19
Restore us, Lord God Almighty; make your face shine on us, that we may be saved.
Here we see again the repeated chorus of this psalm - a
prayer that God would restore his people to their special relationship with him, look favourably on them and save them. These words are familiar, but if we look back through the whole Psalm, we see that verses 3, 7 and 19, while very similar are not identical. Verse 3 is addressed simply to God, verse 7 to God Almighty and verse 19 to the LORD God Almighty. There's a rising intensity to
the prayer, expressed by adding something new to the description of God each time.
He is God - the one who deserves to be worshipped by his
people (and all people everywhere). He is Almighty (or the 'God of hosts', the one who commands all of heaven's armies), powerful to save. And he is LORD. That is his covenant name, a reminder of his faithfulness to his people. This is who the psalmist prays to - the only one worthy of worship, they only one powerful to save, the only one committed to restoring wayward people because of his great love and mercy.
This is the same God who we pray to, too. And if our prayers don't have the same intensity as the psalmist's, if we pray once and then give up rather than persisting, perhaps we've forgotten who we're praying to. Maybe
we also need to reflect on some of the names of God - in this psalm and throughout the Bible - so that we are reminded again of his awesome might and his faithful love. Let's praise him for those things today, and let's pray that our dependence on him would grow as our knowledge of him grows.
