Courtenay Part 1: Time to Awaken the Dawn - Psalm 108

I believe in the power of intercessory prayer - particulary of those that have the heart of David.

Psalm 108 reads as follows from the Oxford Annotated Bible:

My heart is steadfast,
O God, my heart is steadfast;
I will sing and make melody,
Awake of my soul
Awake oh harp and lyre!
I will awake the dawn.
I will give thanks to you, O Lord,
Among the peoples,
And I will sing praises to you,
Among the nations,
For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens,
And your faithfulness reaches to the clouds,
Be exalted, O God, above the heavens,
And let your glory be all over the earth,
Give victory with your right hand,
And answer me,

So that those whom you love may be rescued,
God has promised in his sanctuary:
With exultation I will divide up Shechem,

and portion out the Vale of Succoth,
Gilead is mine, Manasseh is mine,
Ephraim is my helmet, Judah is my scepter,

Moab is my washbasin,
On Edom I hurl my shoe,

Over Philistia I shout in triumph,
Who will bring me to the fortified city?
Who will lead me to Edom?
Have you not rejected us O God?
You do not go out, O God, with are armies,
O grant us help against the foe,
For human health is worthless,
With God we shall do valiantly;
It is he who will tread down our foe.

The meaning of this psalm emanates from verse 2, where the psalmist, David says, awake, O harp and lyre, I will awake the dawn.
Verses 3 thru 6 go on to say, " I will give thanks to you O Lord, among the peoples, and I will sing praises to you, O Lord, among the peoples, and I will sing praises to you among the nations, For your steadfast love is higher than the heavens, and your faithfulness reaches the clouds, Be exalted, O God, above the heavens, and let your glory be over all the earth, Give victory with your right hand, and answer me, so that those whom you love may be rescued.

This psalm apparently was written at a time when David was at the height of his kingship, leading the peoples in praise of the Lord. In the traditional sense, David was a powerful leader but this is also referring to a leadership as God's anointed.

Here, David, when he says he will awaken the dawn, is speaking of great and vast intercessory powers, that he himself possesses in the context of prayer.

The power of his intercessions, have a pervasiveness that can reach throughout all of the earth and just as the day can dawn throughout all the earth, his own powerful relationship with the Lord as an intercessor is such that his intercessions can awaken or even surpass what is physically present in the dawning of the sun for a new day.

We can only imagine what David's pleadings might have been, but in verse 6 he is asking for the Lord to answer me, and says that this would happen so that those whom the Lord loves may be rescued. He asks the Lord is verse 5 that his love be all over the earth.

We don't know the specific contents of David's requests, but we do know that he is referring to the Lord's love, in his requests and how this love is also for individuals unnamed but known to the Lord, throughout the earth.

This also gives the idea that a good place to start in prayer is that the Lord's love be sent.

It can only be imagined how great David's intercessory power would affect the world today. When he speaks of awaking the dawn, he is talking of something great and widespread, something that otherwise was not present or even seemingly possible.

David's prayers today could change conditions in whole continents at the level of spiritual life, at the level of physical life and the speculation could go on and on. He could change weather systems for years throughout the earth, just as Elijah did, as mentioned in Paul's epistle of James.

Conditions throughout vast regions of the earth could be changed, at the level of awakening the dawn, by the power of David's intercessions.

Individuals on a massive scale could be rescued, in any ways that they needed to be rescued, through the great power of David's pleadings to the Lord.

Verse 7 says, " God has promised in his sanctuary: With exultation I will divide up Shechem, And portion out the Vale of Succoth,

This is referring to the power and just have specific the work of the Lord is. Every division, every portion of what will happen and can happen, is under the control of his sovereign desire.

It will be the Lord understanding that rules. In the case we do know of where this type of prayer was effectual, the Lord responded to Elijah's request for rain and the divisions and portions of how this rain came was controlled by the Lord's sovereignty.

Verse 12 says, " O grant us help against the foe, for human help is worthless." Of course there is some practical value to human help, but in the dimensions that David is speaking of here, dimensions where there is an awaking of the dawn of what was otherwise impossible, inconceivable and just otherwise not going to be, other than through the help of the Lord, and no matter what advances of man that can ever come about, this truism will hold that the inventions of man can never reach the level of awakening the dawn. Something like this can only manifest through the appearance of the Lord's help.

In James, Chapter 5 verses 16 through 18 it says," Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed, The prayer of a righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest."

It is interesting that this verse doesn't say someplace locally yielded its harvest, it says the earth yielded its harvest. This was the whole earth, not some local farmland. This was a kind of awaking of the dawn that David speaks of in his psalm.

There is an implication in these verses from James that such intercessory powers can be available to those whom the Lord deems righteous and these intercessions can reach every nook and cranny of the earth.

These intercessions are both powerful and effective and reach into dimensions that are just otherwise not available to man. These channels cannot ever be traversed other than through prayer and that manifestation of its power and effectiveness. No matter what is invented in science into the near and far future, nothing can be obtainable that could do what Elijah awakened through his specific prayer, which is to stop all rain on the earth for more than three years and then have it rain to where the whole earth was properly moisturized for crops and the harvest. These dimensions can not otherwise be reached.

Something to meditate on is in what ways do people need to be rescued, as it does say in verse 6, " so that those whom you love may be rescued." Such situations can be the subject of intercessions.

Realistically, it would be utterly impossible that someone could literally awaken the dawn. However, this psalm says otherwise, that something as great as the dawn if not greater can be awakened and that David did actually do this. David is quite plainly saying, his prayers did reach out into the level of awaken the dawn of what was otherwise impossible.His prayers, reaching through the earth both in space and time, may be affecting the earth even now, awakening the dawn in these present days.

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