Page 52 - Psalms Ebook

prayer is singing.

You are going to find as you go on with the Lord more and more, that
you are praising God more than requesting from God. As you go on with
the Lord, your “please’s” become “thank you’s”. When you are young
in the Lord you are asking God for everything, but after a while you just
say, “oh, thank You Lord”. Thanks for this and thanks for that and
thanks for the other thing.

There is a note of joy in all true prayer, even in desperate prayer. You
take a Psalm like 88. If you’re in a bad mood avoid it. What a gloomy
Psalm it is. There is not a note in there in the major key. The whole
Psalm is in the minor key. In fact, the last word in the Psalm is the
“Darkness”, and that sums up the whole Psalm. But remember, they
sang Psalm 88. It was a song. It was part of their worship, and I think
we need to learn to sing in the minor key as well as in the major key and
be praising God at all times.

Some things are very unpleasant naturally. We say, I cannot pray
because I do not have a song in my heart. That is the prayer of your
heart, that is the song. When you do not have a song is when God wants
to give you a song. In this connection I love Psalm 80, verse 18. It
illustrates that real prayer comes from God.

“Revive us, and we will call upon Your name.”

One thing I love about that is the psalmist is praying to God because he
cannot pray. He is calling on the Lord saying, Lord, I am prayer less;
revive me and I will pray. Even when you cannot pray, you call on
the Lord to revive you in prayer. In that connection I love Zechariah
12:10,

“I will pour out the spirit of prayer and supplication.”

The spirit of grace and supplication. If you pray, why do you pray?
Because God has revived you to pray. God put it in your heart. It is not
natural. God is the One that pours out the spirit of supplication and of
grace. So that is what we are going to trust God to do.

We are going to be using Psalm 62:8 as sort of the key verse on prayer.
Psalm 62:8 says,

“Trust in Him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before Him.”

If ever there is a verse that describes true prayer, it has got to be in those
simple words, “Pour out your heart before Him.” It is always time to