A Primer on Prayer (Ps. 119:145-152)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 9/19/2012 7:45:04 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                                                 Focus:  A Primer on Prayer

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                             Reference:  Psalm 119:145-152

 

            Message of the verses:  “145 Qoph. I cried with all my heart; answer me, O LORD! I will observe Your statutes. 146 I cried to You; save me And I shall keep Your testimonies. 147 I rise before dawn and cry for help; I wait for Your words. 148 My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word.  149 Hear my voice according to Your lovingkindness; Revive me, O LORD, according to Your ordinances. 150 Those who follow after wickedness draw near; They are far from Your law. 151 You are near, O LORD, And all Your commandments are truth. 152 Of old I have known from Your testimonies That You have founded them forever. “

 

            In his introduction to this section Dr. Wiersbe writes “The writer prayed throughout this entire psalm, but in these verses he concentrated on prayer and cried out to God day and night.  From his experience, we receive some basic introductions about successful prayer.

 

            Pray wholeheartedly (vv. 145-146):  “I cried with all my heart; answer me, O LORD! I will observe Your statutes. 146 I cried to You; save me And I shall keep Your testimonies.”

            From verses 2, 10, & 58 of this psalm we learn that we must seek God with our whole heart, and in verses 34 & 69 we learn that we must obey the Lord with a whole heart.  John Bunyan wrote “In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words, than words without a heart.” 

            The golden altar of incense that was in the temple represents prayer, and it is also spoken of in Revelations 8:3-4, “3 Another angel came and stood at the altar, holding a golden censer; and much incense was given to him, so that he might add it to the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar which was before the throne. 4 And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, went up before God out of the angel’s hand.”  This can teach us that the devotion of the heart is what ignites our prayers, and this enables us to present our requests to the Lord; we are praying wholeheartedly.

            We see at the end of verse 146 that the psalmist states what seems to be a bargain with the Lord when he states “save me and I will keep Your testimonies.”  Dr. Wiersbe points out that the psalmist was “dedicating himself to God to obey Him no matter how He answers his prayers.”  He then writes, “Before we can pray as we ought, we must pray for ourselves that God will give us a heart ignited by the fire of the Spirit.”

 

            Pray without ceasing according to the Word (vv. 147-148):  “147 I rise before dawn and cry for help; I wait for Your words. 148 My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Your word.”

            We see two important elements of successful prayer in this section.  When we read 1Thes. 5:17 sometimes we wonder how we can “pray without ceasing,” but that is the first element of successful prayer that we find here.  Dr. Wiersbe states to ‘pray without ceasing does not mean to walk around muttering prayers.  It means to ‘keep the receiver off the hook,’ so that nothing comes between the Father and us.”

            We see from this section that the second element of successful prayer is the Word of God, and this should not surprise us at all, for apart from the Word of God we have no idea of knowing God’s will.  We have mentioned that there may be only three verses in this entire psalm of 176 verses that do not mention the Word of God and so we must conclude that the writer was devoted to the Word of God and prayer for as you read this psalm it reminds us of a very long prayer.  Dr Wiersbe points out that “we must balance the Word and prayer in our devotional life and ministry, for all Bible and no prayer means light without heat, but all prayer and no Bible could result in zeal without knowledge.”  "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (John 15:7).” 

            It was evident from Acts 6:4 that the early church leaders dedicated themselves to prayer and the study of the Word, and the kept this in balance.  Dr. Wiersbe points out that “when we meditate on the Word, the Father speaks to us, and when we pray, we speak to the Father. We need both instruction and intercession if we are to be balanced children of God.”

 

            Pray as an act of Love (v. 149):  “149 Hear my voice according to Your lovingkindness; Revive me, O LORD, according to Your ordinances.”

            Jesus told His disciples that if you love Me you will keep my commandments and from this we learn that love and law do go together.  I think that sometimes we think that our prayers are only like the prayer that Peter prayed “Lord save me” when he was sinking into the water, but as parents we would not only want our children to speak to us if they want something or if they have some sort of crisis, and so does our heavenly Father.  In this we learn that prayer is more than asking, but loving as we can see from this psalm that the psalmist had a great love for the Word of God and the God of the Word.  I have spoken many times about the 15^th chapter of John and abiding or remaining in the Lord in order to get our marching orders from the Lord, but we also will love the Lord more and more when we abide or remain in His Word and in Him, for we can not help but love the Lord more as we study His Word, for by doing this we will better see who He is.

 

            Pray with your eyes open (vv. 150-152):  “150 Those who follow after wickedness draw near; They are far from Your law. 151 You are near, O LORD, And all Your commandments are truth. 152 Of old I have known from Your testimonies That You have founded them forever.”

            We see in this section that the enemies of the psalmist were drawing near and so he wanted the Lord to draw near to him.  An example of this is found in the book of Nehemiah when he and the people of Jerusalem were rebuilding the wall and the gates of the city.  Daniel had prophesied that this would be a time of trouble in the ninth chapter of his book, and Nehemiah instructed the worker to watch out for the enemies along with working on the wall.  They were to watch and pray.  We also see this when Jesus was praying in the garden and His disciples were falling asleep because they were not watching and praying.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “We are soldiers in a battle and we dare not go to sleep while on duty.”  We are to watch and pray.

 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I see from this section that the psalmist seems to be praying without ceasing, and we have discussed what this means.  This is something that I desire to practice for I know that I am in a battle and in order to win the battle I need to be, at all times, in touch with my Commander.

 

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Watch and pray with my eyes open.

 

Memory verses for the week:  1Cor. 13:1-7

 

            1 ¶  If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, I have become a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2  If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. 3  And if I give all my possessions to feed the poor, and if I surrender my body to be burned, but do not have love, it profits me nothing.

    4 ¶  Love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, 5  does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, 6  does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; 7  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

 

9/19/2012 8:44:37 AM