Prayer with the Whole Heart
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Pastor H.B. Charles tells the following story about a woman he knew who showed up at church and prayed the same simple prayer. "O Lord, thank you Jesus," she prayed week after week. The kids at church would start laughing every time she opened her mouth because they knew it would be the same prayer—"O Lord, thank you Jesus."
Finally somebody asked her, "Why do you pray the same little prayer?" She said, "Well, I'm just combining the two prayers that I know. We live in a bad neighborhood and some nights there are bullets flying and I have to grab my daughter and hide on the floor, and in that desperate state all I know how to cry out is, 'O Lord.' But when I wake up in the morning and see that we're okay I say, 'Thank you Jesus.' When I got to take my baby to the bus stop and she gets on that bus and I don't know what's going to happen to her while she's away, I cry, 'O Lord.' And then when 3:00 P.M. comes and that bus arrives and my baby is safe, I say, 'Thank you Jesus.'"
She said, "Those are the only two prayers I know and when I get to church God has been so good I just put my two prayers together, "O Lord, thank you Jesus."
One thing is clear here, she does not have many words, but it is clear that it has lots of heart. Some times I wonder if we may confuse the importance of the many words with the importance of the whole heart. Could it be that it is not the kind of prayer the Lord calls us to? I am quickly reminded of Jesus’ words here.
“And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
It is a clear negative when engagement is done without desire and passion. People will say things like… “It’s like I’m talking to a wall.” “Its like I’m talking to someone and all the lights are on and nobody's home.” Or… ever talk to a person that has this uncanny ability to answer you all the right ways and respond at the right times and you know for a fact that person is not listening. Or just the simple, when we engage there is just no life in our conversations. Its dead. Its empty.
It can’t be like this when we approach the living God of the universe who desires to hear us when we call. He is the transcendent creator of the universe and He desires to hear us when we pray, will we approach him with apathy of heart? Will there be earnest in our prayer to the Father in heaven?
Our psalmist shows us a beautiful picture of how we should approach the living Lord when we ask for His help. Lets check it out.
I pray with all my heart; answer me, Lord!
I will obey your decrees.
I cry out to you; rescue me,
that I may obey your laws.
I rise early, before the sun is up;
I cry out for help and put my hope in your words.
I stay awake through the night,
thinking about your promise.
In your faithful love, O Lord, hear my cry;
let me be revived by following your regulations.
The grass withers the flower fades, but the Word of our God stands forever
Call With Our Whole Heart
Call for Salvation
Call in the Morning
Call Knowing His Love
Call for Life
Today we are going to be looking at several characteristics concerning prayer that our Psalmist gives to us. And it is Christ and His work that brings to us all that we will ask for today.
Thesis: Though sin and the pattern of this world cause our prayer life to diminish, it is the power of God and the truth of the scriptures that will cause us to see how Christ alone is the ultimate fulfillment of what we ask.
I. Call With Our Whole Heart
- How did he pray?
A. This is the answer to the question … “How he prayed.” It is a vivid picture that our psalmist paints with the posture of sincerity, mourning, pain… the idea conveys a prayer of a creature in pain. The idea is that all his affections and all of his desires are united in crying out to the Lord. All my heart can be understood this way… it is united and not a divided heart in prayer.
Teach me your way, Lord,
that I may rely on your faithfulness;
give me an undivided heart,
that I may fear your name.
B. How many of us can honestly say that this is our true posture before the Lord when we pray. Spurgeon writes,
“It is good when a person can say things such as this about their prayers, but I’m afraid many never cried to God with their whole heart in all their lives. There may be no eloquent beauty about such prayers, no length of expression, depth of doctrine, or accuracy of diction, but if the whole heart is in them, they will find their way to the heart of God.”
C. Many times, myself included, we can become flippant and passionless when it comes to praying. Sometimes we find that we pray but we are just going through the motions. Motions with no emotion. Fancy and lengthy words may abound, but it will not reach the heart of God. The reality of actual prayer will not be if our hearts are divided. With all that he is and with everything he has, with all the fiber in his being he asks the Lord to answer.
II. Call for Salvation
- What he prayed for.
A. And he calls for the Lord to save. In other words, Help. Sometimes in life there is so much going on and so much pressure, and so much opposition, and so much disappointment, and so much confusion, so much suffering, so much going wrong that sometime all we can say is… Help.
B. Our psalmist did not have a ton of words but with an undivided heart he cries Save Me. One commentator writes,
“He didn’t use many words, but only cried, Save me. People are never wordy when they are downright serious. He didn’t ask for a number of things, but asked only for salvation. People are seldom lengthy when they are intent upon the one thing needful.”
III. Call in the Morning
- When he prayed.
A. Before the sun was even up, our psalmist was pleading with the living Lord. The idea here… if there is something that is worth doing, then it is worth getting right to it. Does our apathy and procrastination show earnestness in prayer or does is instead reveal a divided heart.
B. But Shane I work the swing shift. I work the graveyard. I am a night person. I sleep most of the day. The idea here is not so much when, but it teaches us that the very first moment the psalmist had, he was on his knees in prayer.
C. And again he cries out to the Lord for help. The Hebrew word Shivah always carries the idea of a loud request for help with intensity. Not so much the idea of volume, but the idea of intensity and tenacity.
D. Moreover, With the earnestness of the undivided heart and the promptness of his praying, our psalmist is displaying the posture of perseverance. As he stays awake through the night. This patience is vital to a Christian today. We cannot be like those who are weak in faith and have no hope… if God does not grant our request immediately then we resort to murmuring and complaining against God. As we can see even the apostle Paul shows us our relief of anxiety.
Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.
E. So you see, one of the chief ends of prayer is that it will feed our hope. When we pray it will increase our hope in the words of the living God. Because when we pray the Word of God is brought before our eyes.
Dr. James Boice writes, “Prayer should be deeply earnest. The psalmist’s prayers were, and it is this that drove him to God’s Word.”
F. As we pray our hope increases and as our hope increases we become more and more earnest in prayer. Our passion for prayer increases our passion for the word of God and our passion for the Word of God increases our passion for prayer. Dr. Danny Akin says that “prayer and the Bible should be inseparable twins in our lives.”
IV. Call Knowing His Love
- On what basis he prayed.
A. He appealed to the steadfast love and or mercy of the Father in heaven. Sometimes we are tempted in prayer to remind God of all the things we have done. He does not appeal to his own worth. He does not appeal to a repayment of all the merit and sacrifices we made over the days and weeks and months and years. He does not appeal to his perfect attendance with Sunday school and Sunday morning service. He does not even appeal to all the time he spent in prayer… He appeals to the Mercy of God. I’d rather appeal the Love and Mercy. Spurgeon beautifully writes,
“When God hears prayer according to His mercy, He overlooks all the imperfections of the prayer. He forgets the sinfulness of the one praying, and in compassionate love He grants the desire, even though the supplicant is unworthy.”
B. We can come to our Lord confidently anytime and anywhere. Why? Because we know that our God is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. His love is unfailing. His love is eternal. So great is his love. How great? He gave His only Son. Before we call He will answer. As a Father loves His child. So much so and in such a way that we should not doubt the Love of our Heavenly Father.
V. Call for Life
- Being made alive.
A. And here is the answer. Here is what happened. This is important for us to become awakened to. Our psalmist understood it. Another way to interpret the Hebrew phrase is cause me to live. Or even according to you justice… quicken me. Now why is this important? The best way for us to be delivered from the trouble that we face and what has been shown to us in the scriptures, in biblical history. This is worth the price of admission today. You ready. God does not eject us from the problem, He wants to give us more power to overcome our circumstances.
B. We want God to remove us from this situation, but instead he wants us to fight and have victory over the situation. Not help us to run away, but help us to face the problem and win by His strength. He does not want to press eject, but press play with a new motor and new power. We pray for power. Our Lord Jesus wants to rescue us with life and give us power.
C. Our psalmist prayed to be delivered from his enemies and Christ came to deliver us from the greatest of our enemies. Sin. That thing that so easily besets us. It infected all of us. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. There is no one righteous no not one. There is no one on earth who always does good and never sins. We are all by nature children of wrath. And the wrath of God brings judgement… the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Eternal darkness. Eternal fire. The place reserved for the devil and his angels.
D. We needed salvation. We needed to be rescued. We need help in a major way. And the Lord did something amazing. Jesus died for our sins according to the Scriptures and he was buried and he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Christ Jesus came into this world to save sinners. He became sin who knew no sin that we might become the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. By His wounds we are healed.
E. The promises continue … All who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved. Believe that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the living God and you will have life in His name.
F. And even more. And Christ when He ascended into heaven he sent us the Holy Spirit to apply our salvation and to give us power to overcome the World. We are even now more than conquerers. There is nothing in this world that we cannot overcome. Nothing.
What shall we say about such wonderful things as these? If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? Who dares accuse us whom God has chosen for his own? No one—for God himself has given us right standing with himself. Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.
Can anything ever separate us from Christ’s love? Does it mean he no longer loves us if we have trouble or calamity, or are persecuted, or hungry, or destitute, or in danger, or threatened with death? (As the Scriptures say, “For your sake we are killed every day; we are being slaughtered like sheep.”) No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us.
And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
