Praying Honestly
Are you honest with God when you pray? Lots of people struggle with being completely honest with Him. Instead, they pick and choose the things they pray about. They hide certain sins and confess others that aren’t as embarrassing.
But Scripture says that we don’t need to clean up our life before we come to God. God is the one who created us, and He knows everything about us. So there is nothing that we can hide from Him. He already knows the innermost parts of our thoughts and desires.
The writer of Psalm 139 prays for God to search his heart and mind, and to bring up anything that he might be unaware of that is hiding beneath the surface. This is a prayer that we’re all invited to pray.
We cannot be healed from the things we try to hide. In order to experience the grace and mercy of God, we must bring everything to Him. When He searches us and brings things to mind, He’s inviting us to humbly confess them to Him.
This prayer in Psalm 139 is an open and honest plea for God to continue to purify and sanctify our hearts. God can handle the heaviest parts of us, and He is not surprised by what happens in our thoughts.
Honesty before God is the only way we can grow into the people He wants us to be. We cannot grow in our spiritual life by hiding secrets or guarding our thoughts from God.
So take a moment today to make Psalm 139 your prayer. Ask God to search your heart and see if there is anything hiding that you’re unaware of. When He brings something up, take it to Him and ask for forgiveness. Ask for the power of His Spirit to lead and guide you through this time.
God is faithful and merciful to continue to love us in spite of our shortcomings. He will continue to walk with you and lead you into eternal life with Him.
God is Our Comfort
Have you ever looked around you and wondered, “Why is there so much evil, wickedness, and pain in the world?”
In Psalm 94, King David is extremely upset about the state of humanity. People are blaming God for the world’s rampant wickedness as though God did not see it and did not care (see verses 1-7). So David reminds his audience that the Lord is Creator, and He knows, sees, and hears all that goes on (verses 8-11).
Because of God, David could say, “When the cares of my heart are many, your consolations cheer my soul.” (Verse 19)
King David’s “cares of the heart” were because of the wickedness and evil he saw—and our world is not much different. But David’s consolation in all the evil he witnessed was his Creator and Savior.
That’s why He could close his psalm by writing, “But the LORD has become my stronghold, and my God the rock of my refuge. He will bring back on them their inquiry and wipe them out for their wickedness, the LORD our God will wipe...
“Then said the high priest, Are these things so? And he said, Men, brethren, and fathers, hearken; The God of glory appeared unto our father Abraham, when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall shew thee. Then came he out of the land of the Chaldæans, and dwelt in Charran: and from thence, when his father was dead, he removed him into this land, wherein ye now dwell. And he gave him none inheritance in it, no, not so much as to set his foot on: yet he promised that he would give it to him for a possession, and to his seed after him, when as yet he had no child. And God spake on this wise, That his seed should sojourn in a strange land; and that they should bring them into bondage, and entreat them evil four hundred years. And the nation to whom they shall be in bondage will I judge, said God: and after that shall they come forth, and serve me in this place. And he ...
“Cry aloud, spare not, lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sins. Yet they seek me daily, and delight to know my ways, as a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinance of their God: they ask of me the ordinances of justice; they take delight in approaching to God. Wherefore have we fasted, say they, and thou seest not? wherefore have we afflicted our soul, and thou takest no knowledge? Behold, in the day of your fast ye find pleasure, and exact all your labours. Behold, ye fast for strife and debate, and to smite with the fist of wickedness: ye shall not fast as ye do this day, to make your voice to be heard on high. Is it such a fast that I have chosen? a day for a man to afflict his soul? is it to bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him? wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the LORD? Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of ...