Page 58 - Psalms Ebook

Psalm 62:8 is pouring out the heart. Are you familiar with John Burton’s
poem? I love poetry, and Burton wrote this wonderful poem. He said:

I often say my prayers, but do I really pray,
And do the wishes of my heart go with the words I say?
I may as well kneel down to gods of stick and stone,
As offer to the Living God, a prayer of words alone.

What is the bottom of prayer? Is it words? Turn, please, to Psalm 77,
and we are going to read two verses beginning at verse 2,

“In the day of my trouble I sought the LORD, in the night my hand
was stretched out without weariness. My soul refused to be comforted.
When I remember God, then I am disturbed, when I sigh, my spirit
grows faint. Selah. You have held my eyelids open, I am so troubled I
cannot speak.”

That last expression. What is prayer? And what happens when you are
so troubled you cannot speak? If prayer is words, you would be in a sad
condition when you got to this verse, “My soul is so troubled I cannot
speak.” Let me show you how Psalms takes us to the heart of prayer.
Psalm 102:19 and 20,

“For He looked down from His holy height; from heaven the LORD
gazed upon the earth, to hear the groaning of the prisoner, to set
free those who were doomed to death.”

I want you to mark, at least in your minds if you are not accustomed to
marking in your Bible, that little expression, “To hear the groaning of
the prisoner.” I have often ministered unto those who were literally in
prison. And I found that those who are in prison often feel disqualified
to pray. In other words, they take their own situation and they say, I am
unworthy and I cannot pray. That is what I love about this verse. God
regards groaning as prayer. It is deeper than words. He hears the
groanings of the prisoner.

You had that way in the early part of the Old Testament in Exodus
chapter two where God heard the groaning of Israel and answered their
groaning. Of course, the full mention of this is in the New Testament –
Romans 8, the groaning of the spirit. Groaning comes closer to true
prayer then words could ever come. You say, I do not know what to say.
I do not know how to pray. Let me ask you this. Do not answer. Do
you know how to groan? Because God hears that as prayer. Groaning
is prayer.