Advancing the Kingdom and Psalm 141

Psalm 141 reads as follows from the New King James version of the Bible:

Lord, I cry out to You;
Make haste to me!

Give ear to my voice when I cry out to You.

2 Let my prayer be set before You as incense,
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

3 Set a guard, O Lord, over my mouth;
Keep watch over the door of my lips.

4 Do not incline my heart to any evil thing,
To practice wicked works
With men who work iniquity;
And do not let me eat of their delicacies.

5 Let the righteous strike me;
It shall be a kindness.
And let him rebuke me;
It shall be as excellent oil;
Let my head not refuse it.
For still my prayer is against the deeds of the wicked.

6 Their judges are overthrown by the sides of the cliff,
And they hear my words, for they are sweet.

7 Our bones are scattered at the mouth of the grave,
As when one plows and breaks up the earth.

8 But my eyes are upon You, O GOD the Lord;
In You I take refuge;
Do not leave my soul destitute.

9 Keep me from the snares they have laid for me,
And from the traps of the workers of iniquity.

10 Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
While I escape safely.

It says in the gospels, "seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you."
This psalm relates to both the individual who is addressed in this verse in the gospels and this individual, these individuals activities and focus as relating to the global, world view of the Kingdom of God. The advancement is towards seeking the Kingdom and the righteousness of the Lord and for this all necessary provisions will be given in support of this.

While, when there can be prosperous overtones to the section where it says, "all these things shall be added unto you" there might also be unexpected overtones.
As with everything else, you don't know quite what to expect, and the same might go with the activities of the Lord behalf of you and what "all these things" might be, and how and when they might be added to you
You don't always quite know even what you need, what to prioritize and what is more so important and less so important.

The Lord will surprise you within what is added and some good portion of what is added is going to be unexpected in many respects, but noticeably it might be sent in a fashion that is tied into some specific work you have just done on behalf of the advancement of the Kingdom.
A central verse in this psalm is verse 5 where David refers to the in person appearance of the correction of the righteous man, as a favor from the Lord to help keep the focus and activity on the ways of the Lord and the kingdom.

Verse 5 says
Let the righteous strike me;
It shall be a kindness.
And let him rebuke me;
It shall be as excellent oil;For
Let my head not refuse it.

For still my prayer is against the deeds of the wicke
David is praying against the deeds of the wicked.

Individuals today try and forge a connection or alliances with those that might be well heeled financially, have access to deep markets, and have great political influence, church influence, nationalistic influence.
If I am one of these individuals, that is forging a relationship with the powers that be, this can benefit me as well, if I am short say in some area such as finances I can possibly gain access to funds through these cultivated relationships with friends in high places.

Because I have this relationship, those that are enemies of whom I am aligning myself with, become in indirect fashion an enemy of my interests as well.
Those who go against the interests of my now forged alliances, friendships, relationships, might not be directly against me, but because they are going against the person, persons, organization and so on with whom I have established beneficial ties, they are indirectly working against my interests as well although they are not directly in my path as an enemy.

The enemies that David is speaking of, in this psalm, might have been direct enemies of his, but they might not have been.
It might have been that the enemies spoken of in this psalm had no direct contact with David, and where some where out there, in the distance and not at all involved with any interruptions of David's affairs.
David however had that closely cultivated relationship with the Lord, a relationship where he was seeking first in many cases the Kingdom and the righteousness of the Kingdom and David saw that the Lord was correspondingly adding blessing upon blessing to him personally.

It was not that David was a person one hundred percent seeking the Kingdom and aligned with the principles of the Kingdom but he was mostly there and mostly focused on the Lord, with some intermittent shortfalls in the process of his purposes of seeking and advancing the Kingdom of the Lord.

Verse one and two of this psalm highlight the closeness of this relationship where David is asking that his prayers continue to appear in the very presence of the Lord as incense, still rising about, through and above all the chaos, uncertainty, ambiguity and mixtures of darkness and light that prevailed on the ground level of what he had been experiencing and what was actually out there.

Lord, I cry out to You;
Make haste to me!
Give ear to my voice when I cry out to You.
2 Let my prayer be set before You as incense,
The lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

David's personal prayer, the prayers arising from his own hands, lifted from him all the way to the presence of the Lord were counted as rising incense all the way to the heavens and this vision of David's prayers also highlights the important and centrality of prayer in seeking first the Kingdom and the righteousness.

David fear is that some of the evil out there, which he describes as being ultimately a trap, could contain elements of temptation to him, that maybe even he could be tempted to go on a visit to the dark side and then he would begin to lose his position before the Lord, highlighted by his prayer position where his prayers were still being counted as incense and his wish was that it would remain this way.

But despite the continuing presence of personal enemies and temptations, enemies that potentially could come in droves with the high positions that David occupied in a partially secular or worldly sense, it also could have been that these enemies had no ax to grind with David personally but were still engaged in activities that were against the interests of the Lord and the Kingdom of the Lord, but did not amount to anything that had to do with David's activities.

Thereby, their deeds, what they were doing, was something that David would pray against, even though these deeds afar might not have been and in many cases were unlikely to have been directly at David personally and basically did not affect him
David had ready access to the Lord; the Lord would hear his voice and hastily respond to it.
In today's who you know, having friends in high places, can be very beneficial to you personally.
And those who are opposed to your friend in high places indirectly are conceived as opposing you and your interest because of what your friends in high places do for you, or might yet do for you.

Those who threatened the ways of the Lord and his Kingdom, were also perceived as indirectly against David's interests due to David's closeness to the Lord, even though he was thriving and in many cases untouched by their mischievous wicked deeds.

For example, robbers might have been robbing others, and getting away with it, but they were not robbing David yet this injustice was against the Kingdom of the Lord because David was aligned with the advancement of the Kingdom of the Lord, this behavior was considered enemy behavior.
Enemies of the Lord and the Kingdom were by proxy also enemies for David whether they were anywhere near him or not.

If and when David strayed, and there were points where he did stray, he then turned around and redirected his aim to the seeking of the Lord and the kingdom of the Lord and he never really reached the point of no return, the subject of a song from the modern day group Kansas.
What the Lord added to him personally was so lavish that he couldn't even get to all of it and David knew and acknowledged that these lavish graces and added benefits were from the Lord and the ways of righteousness and kingdom advancing.

It wasn't necessarily that David was pursing that Lord out of sheer duty; it was closer what might be described as a love affair, in that passion was present highlight in other psalms by the longing David felt when the Lord was seemingly absent or that felt closeness was in so ways being compromised and threatened.
If even an everyday friendship is threatened, this is a big deal.
This relationship, friendship, put him up front and center with the Lord, in that inner circle with the Lord who was for him the friend in high places.

Although David eventually was "the King" of the land he recognizes that it isn't his kingdom per se, it is the Kingdom of the Lord that he is concerned with, and concerned with, seeking, advancing and defending and he maintains this world view, big picture view, global view of seeking the kingdom of the Lord and his righteousness, well aware of all that already had been added derived from this vital, all important relationship he had cultivated and for the most part maintained with the Lord

With seeking first the advancement of the interests of the Kingdom of the Lord, in the here and now, other things will be added to us and there is no need to revolt against these things, even though they might be at times more than we can seemingly handle
These might be amazing and unexpected things.
John's gospel chapter 1 verses 48 through 50, says,
48 "How do you know me?" Nathanael asked.
Jesus answered, "I saw you while you were still under the fig tree before Philip called you."
49 Then Nathanael declared, "Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are the king of Israel."
50 Jesus said, "You believe[h] because I told you I saw you under the fig tree. You will see greater things than that.
Nathaniel was amazed that Jesus saw him under the tree and took note of his conversation there from miles away, and Jesus response it aht you will see even greater things.

Greater things would be added for Nathaniel and they would have to be at times in the unexpected range.
Give Nathaniel credit here, some might not have been able to handle the presence of the new thing, that was so amazing and unfamiliar, yet Nathaniel tapped into the wells of the moment perfectly, with acknowledgement and attention and he did receive the grace thereby present in that moment.

As the Lord adds things, acknowledge these new additions of grace, handle the graces with grace and see that the things the Lrod is adding are to be understood as befitting you and your present day circumstances, even though these additions of grace might seem very unfamiliar to outright bizarre to what you know.
If a well heeled friend gives you a yacht for doing a little research for his or her frim, and you think this is a big lavish and overdoing it, adjust to the gift and take the gift.

In the same way the Lord's gifts might seem outlandish in relation to the little work you do in the advancement of the kingdom, but accept the outsized graces with thanksgiving.
Nathaniel's job was to recognize and continue to see the Lord and his kingdom as an individual and proceed from this moment of grace ready for the next round of things the Lord would be doing for him or through him as per graces

David, finalized this psalm with verse 10 which says,
Let the wicked fall into their own nets,
While I escape safely.
The activities of the wicked, which amount to the antithesis of the advancing kingdom, can result in trappings that are like a prison, for which David which to escape outright and totally avoid.
The ways of the Kingdom as they advance always involve freedom and more freedom and escape from what otherwise would be a trap.

You don't always know what you have escaped, because you did escape and didn't get caught,
The hiker might have passed the menacing bear, unbeknownst to him or her, not to pick on bears.
You look at people who are immersed in substance abuse, and maybe introduced to it by some wicked person, and how much free and easier things would have otherwise had been for them had they avoided this outright.

Wherever, however, whenever you are walking about free and easy, it good to reflect on this also as traps avoided and this is from the grace and goodness of the Lord according to this psalm, escape is a blessing and grace from the Lord.

This also highlights the specific grace of escape and that we can and should as David does here in this psalm, thank the Lord for the graces of escape and ask for additional graces of escape as we going along in seeking to follow the paths of goodness and righteousness in the advancement of the Kingdom in the here and now.

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