"Hear my prayer, O Lord"

“A Psalm of David. Hear my prayer, O Lord; give ear to my pleas for mercy! In your faithfulness answer me, in your righteousness! Enter not into judgment with your servant, for no one living is righteous before you. ” (Psalm 143:1-2 ESV)

How do I pray? A question I sometimes hear. Believe it or not, there are many in the church who are not sure what true prayer is all about. Learning to pray comes from reading the prayers of the Bible. In this I do not mean we just memorize the prayers of the Bible. It is about regenerating your mind through the Word so that you think and pray like Christ. This can be seen in the prayers of the Bible, especially in the Psalms of David.

In today's scripture David reminds us that we are not like God, his holiness far greater than ours and though we are made righteous through Christ, we are still saints that are prone to sin. David remembers that God is the judge of humans and that as His servants, we are to pray to His glory and mercy.

There are some who are skillful with words and whose prayers are beautiful, however, in most cases they are being said before others with a purpose, mealtime, family or individual blessings or whatever the event may be. I am speaking of our prayers to God which are our communications with God alone. Christ told us, “But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (John 6:6) When we pray it is our quiet time to commune with our living God.

We should always start our prayers glorifying God for who He is, His power, love grace mercy or any attribute of God for which we adore Him. We are created to worship God above all things. Unfortunately, we are used to hearing, pray for so and so who is sick, pray for healing, praying for guidance and so on that we forget to glorify God at all. Prayers of supplication are necessary yet sometimes they can be come me, me, I, I, prayers designed to obtain what “we” want. There is nothing wrong in praying for any of these things and it is not my intent to say they are wrong. What is important is the order in which you pray and the glorification of God. We learn this in scripture as well.

Jesus told us in Matthew 6:9 what should come first in prayer, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” The glorification of God comes first. Paul starts a majority of his prayers for other with the glorification of God; “May the God of endurance and encouragement” (Romans 15:5), “May the God of hope” (Romans 15:13), “ I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus,”(1 Corinthians 1:4) “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God” (2 Corinthians 3-4), In some fashion, Paul glorifies God at the beginning of his prayers.

Following our glorification, we pray for the will of God to manifest itself in this world for us and the saints. Again, we see this in the words of Christ in Matthew 6:9-13,  “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  Asking for the will of God to take place on earth be it in in our lives, peace, or war, or environmental tragedies it shows God that we trust in Him above the confusion of the world.

We then give thanks for all the things God has provided us, for everything we have is His to which He has sent us. Interestingly, in verse 11 Christ tells us to pray we are given our “daily bread.” The Greek word Epiousion (ἐπιούσιον) translated n this verse as “daily” is enigmatic.  It is used only twice in the Bible once in Luke and once in Matthew both verses in Christ’s teaching on prayer, specifically, the “Lord’s Prayer,” and specifically this verse. Epiousion literally means “the next day” and bread that fits (meets) the unique demands of the coming day."1 We see it as a prosaic term simply for our physical needs. Calvin firmly argued that "bread" refers to physical nourishment and the necessities of life, yet other denominations such as the Roman Catholic church see the literal meaning of Epiousion as the “mystical” link to the Eucharist, the Body of Christ, and their beliefs of transubstantiation.

Transubstantiation is the doctrine that the bread and wine literally become the real body and the shed blood of Christ which reformers reject because it is contrary to the cross and the penal substitutionary sacrifice of Christ.

The last thing we pray for are things in which we ask God for supplication and intervention on behalf of ourselves and our needs and sins, and of others and their needs and sins. Christ’s instructions in the Lord’s prayer are that it is a model, “Pray then like this.” Let the first words that come from your mouth be words of glorification despite the trouble in your life. The writer of Psalm 66 wrote, “I cried to him with my mouth, and high praise was on my tongue,”(v.17) and we should do the same.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.’ (Psalm 19:14)

Grace and peace

1 Strong’s Greek Lexicon, 1967.