Yesterday the organization I work for came together for our semi-annual half day of prayer. We celebrate the Lord’s faithfulness and cry out our petitions and pleading to our Father. We pray for the OC family around the world. Before we lift our voices in prayer, we spend time in worship and the Word, led by our mission pastor.
He shared on our heart posture before we enter into prayer. Our course, like many pastors I’ve heard, it was a three-point sermon, but it was the first point that stopped me and convicted my heart.
We should enter prayer with a posture of thanksgiving and praise.
Look deep into your heart. Do you really enter prayer with a heart posture of thanksgiving?
I don’t. I go through my proper “prayer” procedure or ACTS: adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication (which means asking or begging for something earnestly or humbly). More often than not, I go through the first three to get to four – the request.
How often do you pray with the sole purpose being to give adoration and thanksgiving to the Lord? And that’s it. It ends there. No agenda. No request. Just praise.
I’ll be honest with you, even though we discussed this heart posture before praying yesterday, we dove into the requests, yes praise and thanksgiving blended with those petitions, and our hearts, I’d like to believe, were in the right place, but our words didn’t start with thankfulness. Or at least mine didn’t.
In about a month I am headed for an extended trip to three countries (hopefully). I pray fervently for this trip. I pray for safety, for smooth travel, for finances (honestly, that’s a big chunk), for the people I will be serving, for wisdom, for discernment, for a heart after the Lord’s, for eyes and ears to tell His stories. I humbly and earnestly beg for all these things. I ask others to intercede on my behalf. I need this from my Father.
But, I hope, after yesterday, when I pray I don’t just focus on what the Lord will do for me. I hope I focus on Him. And even if none of my “asks” are answered, I won't feel my prayers fell on deaf ears.
Because my prayer shouldn’t be about being answered, or my having my requests given, it should be about God. If it’s about Him, I will never be unanswered or told “no.”
Because prayer isn’t me asking for something, it’s me worshipping my Father – giving Him my adoration and thanksgiving. Period.
If I start there, then maybe, just maybe, I will truly be earnest and humble in the rest.
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