The Lord has heard my plea; the Lord accepts my prayer.
Psalm 6:9
There are many people who struggle to pray, including me. And two of the reasons people struggle and oftentimes abandon prayer is either they don’t know how to pray, or they are frustrated that God does not answer their prayers. In today’s Psalm verse, we examine both.
The Lord accepts my prayer. Let’s begin with how to pray, and before this, let’s reflect on why we pray. We pray so that we can stand in the presence of God and speak with Him. In order to have a relationship of any kind with anyone, it requires communication, and for relationships that are close, intimate (in the sense that we speak deeper than the surface, are free to be vulnerable, etc.) these relationships require that we speak to one another. I go on Amazon often to order things, but there is no relationship there, Amazon is not a person. I look at websites like ESPN and some other favorites, but there are no relationships there. We’ve even taken “relationships” out of many restaurants, where we can order food from kiosks and never speak to anyone. A relationship with God requires that we speak, and prayer is how we speak to God. In prayer, and especially in Scripture, this is where God speaks to us. Although His voice is not heard auditory (through our ears), it is heard in our hearts, our minds and our souls. We pray so that we can stand in the presence of God and speak with Him.
As for how to pray, there are several ways to pray. One can pray a simple, repetitive prayer, like the Jesus Prayer: Lord, Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. If one prays this prayer fervently, and repeatedly, it will become part of them. The book The Way of a Pilgrim describes this process. If we truly prayed the Lord’s Prayer, this prayer would be sufficient, most especially the phrase Thy will be done. There are hundreds of prayers for any occasion we can think of—morning prayers, evening prayers, prayers before and after eating, prayers for travel, prayers before and after doing a task—and these are printed in prayer books. If you can think of a need, there has probably been a prayer written about it. Prayer books are good because we can just pray, without thinking of the words needed for prayer. It is the same with the Psalms we are reflecting on this Lent. There are words of prayer throughout the Psalms. As we are reflecting on the Psalms, hopefully you can mark a few that you can go back to in prayer. Of course, there is prayer right from your mind and heart, bringing your thoughts to God with your own words. There is nothing wrong with that. Our thoughts are with us at any given moment, they don’t require looking through a book, we can pray with the thoughts we have.
One of the challenges of prayer is to not let repeated prayer become wrote and without feeling. The Church has an ambitious schedule of services for Great Lent, and it is very easy in these services to just fly through the words of prayer. Reading six Psalms at the beginning of Great Compline, or sixteen at the beginning of Pre-Sanctified Liturgy provides the temptation to just fly through them to cover the ground stated in the book. That is not a good way to pray. For those who are involved in leading worship, it is a challenge to enunciate each word so that the worshippers can clearly hear them.
One thing is certain. God does not grade prayer. He doesn’t stand in heaven with an evaluation form, telling us “you got a B+, try harder next time.” The Lord accepts my prayer is a true statement for every prayer offered to God.
The Lord has heard my plea. This is probably the hardest part of this verse to accept. Because oftentimes, when prayers are not answered, promptly, or at all, or in the way we had hoped, we get discouraged and think that God is not listening. It is especially discouraging when the prayer doesn’t involve any competition with someone else. For example, if many people are trying to get the same job, and we pray to get it, it is as if we are wishing for other people not to get it. If everyone interviewing is praying to get the job, only one of those prayers is going to be answered. In this case, it is perhaps easier to accept not having this prayer accepted, maybe God just wants someone else. The harder prayer to have unanswered is the prayer where no one is affected but us. Let ME feel better, as an example. No one else is affected by God healing me, there is no competition, God can heal many people. Same thing with relationships we pray for God to mend. No one else is affected outside of that relationship. Why God doesn’t answer these kinds of prayers is challenging.
This is where faith comes in. We must get to a place where we believe God knows what He is doing. Maybe the prayer isn’t answered for a reason we will know later. Maybe it will be answered in a different way that is beneficial to us. Having said that, why so many people can pray for a child to be healed and then that child dies, this makes for a challenge to the notion that God hears all our pleas. Again, faith dictates that we continue, even when we don’t understand. My Spiritual Father has told me many times, especially when I feel discouraged, that God has a plan for my salvation, and yours as well. There is a path to sainthood and salvation laid out for everyone. Jesus’ path to our salvation involved dying on the Cross. Our paths involve challenge and sacrifice as well, some people more than others. God hears our pleas, He knows our storms, He is with us in our storms. Faith is when we stick with God, even in the violent and lengthy storms, and trust that He is sticking with us.
The encouragement for today is to keep going to God in prayer, and to make each prayer sincere. It need not be lengthy, it should not be cumbersome, but it should be sincere. An intimate moment of connection with God benefits us and pleases God. Again, God does not grade our prayers, He accepts them. And God hears our pleas, even when they aren’t answered in our time and in our way. Faith is when we continue to pray, understanding that prayer is not about results but being in the presence of God, which we should do as often as we can.
O Lord, rebuke me not in Thy anger, nor chasten me in Thy wrath. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for I am languishing; O Lord, heal me, for my bones are troubles. My soul also is sorely troubled. But Thou, O Lord, how long? Turn, O Lord, save my life; deliver me for the sake of Thy steadfast love. For in death there is no remembrance of Thee; in Sheol who can give Thee praise? I am weary with my moaning; every night I flood my bed with tears; I drench my couch with my weeping. My eye wastes away because of grief, it grows weak because of all my foes. Depart from me, all you workers of evil; for the Lord has heard the sound of my weeping. The Lord has heard my supplication; the Lord accepts my prayer. All my enemies shall be ashamed and sorely troubled; they shall turn back and be put to shame in a moment. Psalm 6
Reflection question: What prayer have I been carrying that I need to trust God has already heard?
