How Reverent are Your Prayers?

The first entry in this mini-series can be found here.
The previous entry can be read here.

When you pray, what do your prayers sound like:

• Whining and complaining?
• Commanding and authoritative?
• Humble faith?

I submit to us today that if we desire for God to listen to our prayers and answer them the way we would desire that they be answered, not only must we have a humble attitude of faith and submission, but we must also request that we only pray what would be pleasing to God.

David sets this example for us in Psalm 141:2.

“May my prayer be set before You as incense,
the raising of my hands as the evening offering.”

Last time we looked at the fact we must have a sense of urgency about our attitude toward prayer. David was between a rock and a hard place (quite literally as we will see as this series goes on). His men wanted him to kill Saul and his flesh was screaming the same, but his spirit knew that he could not strike down the Lord’s anointed.

For this reason he prayed that God would come quickly to his aid, and also that God would listen to his prayer. Verse 2 comes directly out of David’s request for God to hear his prayer.

In the first line he wants the words he prays to be pleasing to God. He does not want to pray anything that would lead God to be angry with him. He doesn’t want to pray anything sinful. We can sin in our prayers. David here asks that he would not.

In the second line David requests that God would be pleased with David’s posture of prayer. We can pray in flippant ways, and this is just as bad as praying for sinful things. David here requests that his posture in prayer would be just as pleasing to God as his spoken words.

David knows that he desperately needs God’s help. He knows that the only option he has is to pray to God. As such, his request is urgent. As such, he knows that he must pray rightly. He holds prayer as a sacred task; it is, in its truest sense, communion with the holiest of holies: God Himself.

Prayer is a sacred task; communion with God Himself

Do we view prayer this way?
Especially when we are in trouble?
Or do we casually throw a “Help me” up to the ceiling?

We must pray urgently, and we must pray with a sense of God’s holiness in mind. Our attitude must be reverent, and our first request must be that God is pleased by our prayer!

Oh how different not only our lives, but the world would look if this was how we approached prayer!

Temptation, sin, and depression would all fall flat before the power of God if this was how we prayed!

Soli Deo Gloria
Solus Christus

The next post can be found here.