Perhaps the most neglected duty of the Christian life is that of prayer. Every believer esteems prayer. If surveyed we would affirm that praying is a good thing, two thumbs up, five of five stars. But few pray. Or if we do, we make sure that our prayers behave themselves and don’t get too uppity.
But if we stand atop the mountain of the Psalms and survey the lyrical landscape of that ancient prayerbook, we see God teaches us to be anything but safe when it comes to prayer. In the Psalter we are taught to cry out in godly anguish, to bow ourselves low before the greatness of the Most High, to weep over our own sin and the sins of others, to yearn for the fellowship of the saints in Jehovah’s courts, to petition our God to give our enemies a divine left hook. Gratitude and grief are alike poured out before God. Tears of despair and trumpets of certainty weave together in harmonic unity.
Similarly, when the Gospels let us eavesdrop on the prayers of the Lord Jesus, particularly while upon the cross, they are overwhelmingly drawn from the Psalms. Even His parched whisper on the cross, “I thirst”, was a cue to the surrounding revilers to fulfill the words of Psalm 69:21, “In my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”
As you make your plans for this new year, set yourself to pray with greater quantity and quality. This means deliberately setting aside more time for prayer, but it also means seeking to weave your prayers with the golden threads of Scriptural language, right doctrine, and godly emotions. David set aside seven times a day to pray (Psalm.119:164), while Paul exhorts us to pray continually. Set aside regular time for focussed prayer, but also talk with God about everything, all the time. Let your words be few by selecting the words of Scripture to be the framing of your prayers.
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