Judge Kavanaugh’s wife’s prayer request: Psalm 40

As most of the world knows, Judge Brett Kavanaugh has been going through Hades during his nomination process to the American Supreme Court.

His wife, Ashley, and their two daughters have also been put through much unnecessary harassment and abuse.

Ashley Kavanaugh has asked people to pray for them and for the nation, specifically by praying Psalm 40. Some of my readers prefer the King James Version below:

To the prayer warriors. Ashley Kavanaugh (Judge Kavanaugh’s wife) is from Abilene, Texas. She has asked her Christian Family and friends to pray Psalms 40 over her family and also pray it for the nation. I am passing this along to you and hope you pass it to other saints who pray pic.twitter.com/FCa7v80LL4

40 I waited patiently for the Lord; he inclined to me and heard my cry. 2 He drew me up from the pit of destruction, out of the miry bog, and set my feet upon a rock, making my steps secure. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many will see and fear, and put their trust in the Lord.

4 Blessed is the man who makes the Lord his trust, who does not turn to the proud, to those who go astray after a lie! 5 You have multiplied, O Lord my God, your wondrous deeds and your thoughts toward us; none can compare with you! I will proclaim and tell of them, yet they are more than can be told.

6 In sacrifice and offering you have not delighted, but you have given me an open ear.[a] Burnt offering and sin offering you have not required. 7 Then I said, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: 8 I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart.”

9 I have told the glad news of deliverance[b] in the great congregation; behold, I have not restrained my lips, as you know, O Lord. 10 I have not hidden your deliverance within my heart; I have spoken of your faithfulness and your salvation; I have not concealed your steadfast love and your faithfulness from the great congregation.

11 As for you, O Lord, you will not restrain your mercy from me; your steadfast love and your faithfulness will ever preserve me! 12 For evils have encompassed me beyond number; my iniquities have overtaken me, and I cannot see; they are more than the hairs of my head; my heart fails me.

13 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me! O Lord, make haste to help me! 14 Let those be put to shame and disappointed altogether who seek to snatch away my life; let those be turned back and brought to dishonor who delight in my hurt! 15 Let those be appalled because of their shame who say to me, “Aha, Aha!”

16 But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, “Great is the Lord!” 17 As for me, I am poor and needy, but the Lord takes thought for me. You are my help and my deliverer; do not delay, O my God!

O Lord, please thwart the attempts of the Kavanaugh family’s foes. May their pernicious deeds be brought to light and to justice, whether in the Senate chamber, at home or at school.

Please also preserve the Great Republic, the United States of America, today and always.

We ask this humbly through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

Thanks so much for posting this!

Here’s an article from desiringgod.org about the main ingredient in powerful and effective prayer that I thought was good.

Article by Jonathan Parnell

Pastor, Minneapolis, Minnesota
It’s tragic how easily we can miss the main ingredient in effective prayer.
In our sin, we’ve been rewired to focus on us — on the steps we should take for our prayers to be heard. We have this bent toward believing that every result is born from method. If something works for somebody, we want to know what that somebody is doing.
We’ve developed the assumption that if we can just strip it all down to a reproducible process to put into action, then the results will multiply. While this applies to certain things, it doesn’t apply to prayer — or at least that’s not the vision the apostle James gives us. The main ingredient in effective prayer is emphatically not us.
Often Misunderstood

Many of us find James 5:16 to be a familiar verse: “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” — which is also translated, as an ESV footnote spells out, “The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power.”
“We pray as ordinary people who have an extraordinary God.”

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This is one of those coffee-mug verses. It’s commonly understood like this: Be righteous, and your prayers will work. It’s what I used to think. But that’s the skim-milk meaning. It’s what happens when we fly by the text without questions. Our broken bent is to make the burden of this passage something to do with us. We simply settle to think that, if we want our prayers to be effective, then we need to be righteous.
But this reading doesn’t hold up.
Reading in Context

First, look at the context surrounding James 5:16. James’s whole point is that prayer is effective. He asks in James 5:13, “Is anyone among you suffering?” Then he replies, “Let him pray.” What about cheerfulness? Or sickness? Or sin? In each case, James encourages his readers to pray. Why? Because prayer is effective, which means, God hears his people and acts on their behalf.
Then, in the beginning of verse 16, because prayer is effective (James 5:13–15), he says, “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed” (James 5:16). To make it even clearer, he follows this with, “The effective prayer of a righteous person has great power.” That line is the second portion in a double dose of support for our praying. James’s point is to repeat his theme to pray because prayer is effective. His concern is not how prayer is made effective, but that prayer is effective. And then verse 17 comes to ground that point.
What About Elijah?

James 5:17 then brings in Elijah. “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently.”
What does Elijah have to do with our praying? Does it mean that Elijah was righteous and his prayers worked, so we should be like Elijah for our prayers to work too? Is that what he is saying?
No way.
“Prayer is effective not because of great men who pray, but because of a great God who graciously hears his people.”

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Look at the book. James says that Elijah was a man with a nature like ours. He was just a man. He was like us. He had a nature like ours. And being just a man, being like us, having a nature like ours, he prayed fervently and God heard. The point is not that we should be righteous at the extraordinary level of an Elijah, but that he was normal like you and me. James doesn’t say for us to be like Elijah for our prayers to be answered, but that Elijah was like us and his prayers were answered — therefore, pray.
Don’t Miss What’s Main

This means that the focus of effective prayer is not us, but God. Prayer has less to do with the specifics of how we say what we say, and more to do with the one to whom we are saying it.
We pray as ordinary people who have an extraordinary God. We’re just normal, you and I. We’re just normal like Elijah. Prayer is effective, not because of great men who pray, but because of a great God who in Christ graciously hears his people.
He’s the main ingredient. So, pray.

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