Page 65 - Psalms Ebook

way that your actions pray “Thy will be done.” Your life prays to God
be the glory. Just the way you live and the way I live. If my heart is
open to the Lord, I never stop praying. If your heart is open to the Lord,
you never stop praying. Sometime you will pray in real words.
Sometime it is just a thought. Sometime it is just a sigh. But God
regards it all as prayer.

Now before we leave Psalm 18 there is another principle of prayer I
want to call attention to. Since prayer is not what I say, but who I am
before God. And since He regards groaning, moaning, sighing, crying,
the desire of my heart, a look toward heaven, and even conversation to
others as prayer, sometimes it can seem like God is not responding. In
other words, unless I fold my hands and bow my head and say certain
words, sometime I feel like I have not prayed. I have been programed to
repeat certain words in a certain way to meet some criteria that has to be
met to get an answer. If I just groan, I have a temptation to think, well,
maybe God did not really take that as a prayer.

In verse 6 of this Psalm we have this marvelous introduction. At the end
of the Psalm it says, “My cry for help came into His ears.” That is an
interesting Bible passage.

“In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried to my God for help;
He heard my voice out of His temple, and my cry for help before Him
came into His ears.”

Wouldn’t it be interesting to be able to have spiritual eyes to trace your
prayer and watch what happens when it reaches His ears? You see, there
is a section in this Psalm that is so different from the rest. I could go and
read 1 to 6, stop at 6, take 7 to 15 and take it out of the way and start
at16, go from 6 to 16 and not miss a beat. Because in verse 6 he kneels
down to pray and in verse 16 he gets up from prayer, and he said God
heard me. It is all over. Then what is in between?

I kneel and pray (verse 6). I finish praying (verse 16). What is in
between? And the answer is what happens when my prayer enters His
ears. And verses 7 to 15 describe what happens every time your groan
reaches His ear, your sigh reaches His ear, your tear reaches His ear,
your voice reaches His ear, your look reaches His ear, your life reaches
His ear, your conversation reaches His ear. Every time God hears your
prayer, this is what happens. Verse 7,

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