Daily Devotionals

Grace for Today

Devotional: January 12th

Matthew 6:5

‘When thou prayest’

Read 2 Samuel 7:18-29

In personal, private prayer we commune with the eternal, triune God. Prayer is an acknowledgement of our weakness in the flesh because of sin, and of our need for constant supplies of divine grace. In private prayer we open our hearts to God and pour out our souls before him.

Let us never be pretentious and hypocritical before God in prayer. He sees all and knows all. ‘The Lord looketh on the heart. ‘God is not interested in how we speak to him, the length of our prayers, the frequency of our prayers, or even the words we use in prayer. God looks upon our hearts. He is interested in and has regard for the attitudes, the motives and the desires of our hearts.

True prayer, like all other graces and acts of worship, is a heart work. You may memorize little religious sayings and call them prayers. You may read and recite prayer books and think you are praying. You may repeat the earnest prayers of other people and suppose that you have prayed. But true prayed cannot be taught or learned by men any more than breathing can be. It is not an art or skill. Prayer is the breath of the renewed soul. Prayer is born in the heart by the grace of God. It is the power and grace of the Spirit in a man’s heart that teaches him to pray. Indeed, true faith is prayer and true prayer is faith. We ought to live in an unceasing attitude of prayer, always acknowledging our sin, always seeking God’s will, always trusting his grace. In this sense, let us ‘pray without ceasing’. But let us never neglect private prayer. Truly, prayer is a source of strength and consolation to the believing heart. Above all things, our prayer life reveals our true heart attitude towards God and ourselves. What we are in prayer before God, we truly are. Our faith in Christ, our sense of our sinfulness and weakness in the flesh, our dependence upon God’s providence and our reverence for God are all manifest by our attitude about prayer.