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 seed 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 not 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 neither 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 15th
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 will 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
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