Thoughts for another day

Dec. 30, 2009

Today's verse: Ps. 102:9. Hear my prayer, O LORD, and let my cry come unto thee. (KJV)
(Pls. read the above before you read further. Thanks)

God has amazing power, earth shattering if I may add. He has the power to change a human being or bring into existence that which doesn’t exist. He can also implant righteousness into the most impure thing on earth. What surprises us including me is that God is willing to use that power for us. I am saying me, for sometimes even I feel God isn’t about to use His power for me. Rather inexplicable because God works on the behalf of those who are devoted to Him. He is more than willing to help them; so what makes me so special that He will not help me? The answer is in my mind where I feel that He will not help me. Besides, it’s not that God doesn’t hear our prayers when we make them. He does. His answer may take a while coming, but as sure as the sun rises in the east, His answer comes. What we need to look at is the way we pray.

Let’s take a simple illustration, when a beggar comes in front of you asking nothing, do you give? Now let’s say that this beggar puts a plea in his eyes, would you be moved? Then the beggar keeps persevering and making all kinds of painful pleas, would you still be unmoved? I bet, you will in this case remove something and give, isn’t it? Sometimes the way to pray is revealed in the most mundane things of life surrounding us and this illustration has a purpose here.

Our verse today is an eye-opener to learn how to pray. The psalmist says, hear my prayer O LORD and let my cry come unto Thee. Look at the words of the latter part carefully: Let my cry come to Thee. Is the psalmist praying like we do most of the time? Would then his prayer come to the LORD God? The way we pray is so dismal even we don’t know what we have prayed for, a few seconds later, like muttering something we can’t recall. Our prayers are so dull even we aren’t moved. In praying our body language should define our prayer. We need ask ourselves, when we want something desperately, does our body language concur with our prayer? Do we have the intensity that can move God’s heart? Is there anguish in our hearts till our prayer is answered? If our prayer is of the intensity of the psalmist and persevering, I can assure you that we will get what we are asking for… just like the beggar, whom we might not have liked, but because of his sheer perseverance and intensity we give; so too God will give us; just as the judge favored the widow, in Jesus’ narration of the unjust judge and the persevering widow.