I think just about everybody looks forward to payday. When I picked up my first high school job at a grocery store, I was paid every other Friday. I loved payday so much, though, that I would go over to the service counter every Friday just to see if there was a check for me. A few jobs later, I started working for an organization that did monthly paychecks. Those were some of the most grueling months of my life, forcing me to learn how to budget money out over longer periods of time. But, I’ll tell you what, you never need to buy lottery tickets when you’re paid once a month—you win the lottery every four weeks.

Out of all the paydays that I’ve had though, one stands out in particular. In the Fall of 2020, I packed up my meager Minnesota belongings, rode fourteen hours with my parents to Louisville, and moved into the dorms at Southern Seminary. The first few weeks were easy-going: I went to school, ate with new friends who liked nerdy-Bible things as much as me, picked up a part-time job. I was enjoying the seminary lifestyle.

Things started to turn quickly, though. A health-concern popped up. Friendships rearranged. The bi-weekly paydays from the part-time gig were leaner than expected. School was harder than before. Tuition payments were big, rent was expensive, and the taste of cost-efficient Spaghetti-Os simply wasn’t doing the trick. 

The perfect storm hit me from nowhere: Payday intersected with the day that I paid rent and tuition. My paycheck went into my bank account around 3:15am. My tuition payment came out of my account around 4:30am. My rent check was cashed around 9:00am. Around 10:00am, I drove to the gas station and played chicken with the gas pump—managing to get the tank just shy of full. I drove home, opened my bank app, and saw that I officially had $11.34 to my name. On payday.

When I say this was the straw that broke the camel’s back, “broke” would be an understatement. Staring at my $11.34, feelings of failure washed over me. If God really wanted me in seminary—and, by extension, to someday be a pastor—why on earth would he let it financially cripple me? On top of that, I was reminded every day just how difficult that same, expensive schooling was—wouldn’t someone “called” to seminary be better at it? And, to top it all off, I was drowning in guilt, fixated on my past and present sins that seemed to condemn this broke, confused, exhausted, lonesome, wannabe-seminary student. 

Something that regularly catches me off guard is that this is the place from which the Psalms often speak. In just the first few verses of Psalm 86, David expresses his desperation: “Listen, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy… protect my life… save your servant who trusts in you… I call to you all day long.” One way to read verse four is, “Give joy to the soul of your servant as I lift my soul to you, my Lord.” These are not the pleas of a man on top of the world. Later in the psalm, David will say that he’s surrounded by a gang who disregard God and plan to kill him. 

Better than me, David knows this place of desperation. Maybe it was while he was on the run from his kingly predecessor, Saul, the man hellbent on having him killed. Or maybe it was while fleeing from his would-be successor, Absalom, the son who in his hate for his father staged a coup and temporarily deposed David. It could have been a thousand circumstances, but by God’s grace David wrote down his desperate pleas to God for help. 

On top of that, it’s fair for us to see the Psalms, including Psalm 86, not merely as a prayer of David, but also as a prayer of Jesus—David’s descendant who was promised to take up and perfect David’s rule. Jesus, the Son of David, features prominently across the Psalms. And not only are these the prayers of Jesus, but even now Jesus is praying, perhaps one of these Psalms, with and for us. The author of Hebrews writes that as Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father in glory, he is interceding on our behalf. He is praying with us. The one who humbled himself to a simple, earthy lifestyle prays for us the same prayers that he prayed for himself.

Jesus, the suffering servant, surrounded on all sides by powerful men bent on killing him, prays with David and with us, “Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give strength to your servant.” 

Jesus, who knew poverty to the point of saying, “Foxes have dens, and birds of the sky have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head,” prayed with me on payday, “Listen, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy.” 

Jesus, who was tempted in every way as we are, prays with us in our weakness, “Teach me your way, Lord, and I will live by your truth. Give me an undivided heart to fear your name.”

The beauty of this reality—that the Psalms give words to our need as Jesus prays with and for us—is the faith-shaped transformation of desperation to dependence. Whether it is David looking out on a crumbling kingdom, Jesus looking face-to-face as one of his disciples betrays him, or me looking at an empty bank account and the mound of uncertainty it brought, our desperate circumstances become transformative dependence.

In desperation, we look to ourselves. We look to our own means. In desperation, I try to figure out ways to get by on $11 for two weeks, pass classes by my own wit, and handle my sin by my own strength. But, in praying the Psalms with Jesus, my circumstances call for dependence. In dependence, I call on the Father to provide, I plead with the Spirit to equip me, I turn to the Son to handle my sin. Suddenly, as desperation becomes dependence, my hope isn’t in the next payday. My hope is in “you, Lord, kind and ready to forgive, abounding in faithful love to all who call on you.”

For what it’s worth, in that experience four years ago as God took my desperation and brought me into dependence, I saw him provide. The financial provision primarily came through sacrificially generous and supportive parents—who are my parents only by God’s grace. The intellectual provision came through some gracious and patient professors—exercising those virtues only by the Spirit who lives in them. The spiritual provision has always and only can come through Christ, the perfect Son of David, with whom we can pray from Psalm 86:

God, I come before you in need of help, desperate for you to hear me.

My life, faltering in faithfulness, is in your hands; my God, save your child.

Show me your grace God, infusing my soul with the joy that can only come out of constant, daily prayer.

Those prayers go to you, a God overflowing in love, a God who hears prayer and provides mercy.

God, in my desperation, hear me.

You are the maker of all things, the sustainer of all things. The world is your design, the nations are humbly dependent upon you. 

Though my heart is torn in a thousand directions, would you take all the pieces and bind them together and aim them at you.

Let that heart that you’ve brought together worship you properly and eternally, knowing that your love is strong enough to save me.

Lord, though a thousand demons, a gang of wicked fiends, and an insurmountable list of sins stare me down, I will trust in your compassion. Be patient with me as I learn to trust.

Lord, let me see and know your goodness as you transform my desperation into dependence.

Prayer based on Psalm 86