▼25:1 Verse 1 ‘I lift myself to you’ means ‘I pray to you’. The word ‘myself’ is the Hebrew word that we sometimes translate ‘soul’. We cannot see our souls. Our soul is the part of us that lives on when our body dies. Paul wrote to the Church in Ephesus: ‘God has made us to sit in heaven in Christ Jesus’. (Ephesians 2:6) When we pray it is as though we are in heaven with God. Heaven is the home of God. Christians will go to heaven when they die. They also lift up part of themselves to heaven when they pray.

▼25:3 Verses 2-3 David asks for help so that he will not be ashamed. Here, ‘ashamed’ means being hurt and feeling pain. It is more than feeling sorry. David does not want his enemies to triumph over him. When you triumph, you say how great and good you are and how weak your enemies are. David says that the people that say what is not true should be ashamed. He means his enemies. They are also the enemies of God. They say things about God that are not true.

▼25:5 Verses 4 and 5 There is a lot in this psalm about ‘the way’. What way is this? We understand it best when we read John 14:6. John was a friend of Jesus. After Jesus had gone back to heaven, John wrote the story of Jesus. We call it the Gospel of John. In John 14:6 Jesus says, ‘I am the way. I am the truth. I am the life. Nobody comes to the Father except by knowing me.’ The Father is God. This tells us that we learn the way to God from Jesus. We also learn from Jesus what is true about life. We must do what Jesus tells us to do in the 4 Gospels in the Bible. If we do not have a Bible we can still pray to God the words of Psalm 25:4. God will find a way to answer us.

▼25:7 Verses 6 and 7 Here we learn that God has always been loving and kind. That is why he will not remember the bad things we do. But we must tell God we are sorry about them and ask him to forgive us. We must also ask for help not to do them again.

▼25:15 Verse 15 A net is something that we catch animals or fish in. Here, David feels that his enemies have caught him in a net like an animal, or a fish. How can he become free? There is only one answer. Only God can make him free. So he says, ‘My eyes are always looking towards the LORD.’ This means that David is always hoping that God will make him free from the net. It is another way of saying, ‘I am always praying to the LORD.’

▼25:18 Verses 16-18 David is in trouble. He is:

– Lonely: he thinks that he is on his own. Elijah also felt like this, but God said, ‘There are lots of people like you.’ When we are lonely, we must remember the words of Jesus: ‘I am always with you.’ (Matthew 28: 20)

– Hurt: perhaps in body, perhaps in mind. Again, when we are hurt, we must remember the words of Jesus: ‘God has sent me to give health to people’. (Luke 4:18)

– Unhappy: things are getting worse and worse. His enemies seem to be winning. This often happens to Christians. They think bad people are triumphing over them. (Look at Psalm 25:2). But again, we must remember the words of Jesus: ‘Be happy, I have won the fight for the world.’ (John 16:33) Then David says, ‘Forgive all my sins.’ Why? Is he lonely, hurt and unhappy because he is a sinner? He may be, but that is not the reason he says it here. He says it because God can only hear him pray after God forgives his sin. When God forgives us, the wall of sin between us and God falls down. God can hear and answer when we pray.

▼25:22 Verses 19-21 ‘Being ashamed’ means more than feeling sorry. If the enemies triumph over David, they also triumph over God. So, David prays for God to protect him, or make him safe. He gives two reasons why God will do this:

– David is honest and good. This means that God has forgiven David’s sins. God can now hear when David prays.

– David says, ‘I am hiding in you.’ (Psalm 25:20) This means that David is trusting in God. This means that David believes that God will take care of him.