Set A Guard Over My Mouth

I call to you, Lord, come quickly to me; hear me when I call to you. May my prayer be set before you like incense; may the lifting up of my hands be like the evening sacrifice. Set a guard over my mouth, Lord; keep watch over the door of my lips. Do not let my heart be drawn to what is evil so that I take part in wicked deeds along with those who are evildoers; do not let me eat their delicacies. (Psalm 141:1-4)   This is a psalm that has often marked services of daily, common prayer throughout the history of the Christian church—particularly the service of evening prayer.  Indeed, in the CRC's newest red hymnal (Lift Up Your Hearts), this is the psalm written in for the service of evening prayer (#381). The psalm is really quite general in terms of what it asks God for.  Hear me.  Help me.  Guard my words.  Guard my heart.  Keep me from evil and from the evil of evildoers.  These last petitions resonate with the Lord's Prayer: "lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."  While general, there is also something quite deliberate and attentive about this psalm.  It names our mouth, our hearts, our eyes, our actions.  It is a psalm that desires wisdom and growth away from the ways of evil and toward the ways of righteousness.  Perhaps most significantly, it recognizes that we cannot do this alone, but need God's help if we're going to turn away from evil and toward the good.  It's not enough for us to watch what we say: we also need God's accountability and help to watch over the door of our lips.  We also need God's help to check us against the ever-restless desires of our hearts for the "delicacies" of any number of different "appetites" of relationship, body, status, or possession that may not quite be ours to enjoy.  Salvation is not our doing.  We know that.  But neither is living in grateful response to the salvation gift that we have been given.  We are equally as dependent on God for living Christianly as we were for becoming a Christian in the first place.  There's a whole lot of Christian life and living that comes after the point of our "salvation," which for a good number of us may have been the day we were born into the covenantal Christian community as infants.  That means we need a whole lot of very boring, ordinary, general, everyday help from God. Psalm 141, therefore, is a good prayer for all of us.  We need a good prayer for this general, everyday life use.  We need a Holy Spirit guard over our eyes and lips and hearts day-by-day against all the "little" sins, "white" lies, and ordinary, glancing temptations so that our little eyes might be careful what they see, our little tongues what they say, and our little hearts what they covet. May God indeed do this work daily.  May God keep us hungry for him and satisfied in him alone.  May he keep our words pure and in step with the fruit of the Spirit in all situations.  May he keep our eyes on the gifts he's given us and off the gifts he's given others.  "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil."