Why Should I Pray?

Why Should I Pray?

Psalm 65

Main Idea: In prayer we speak to the God who listens, provides, and satisfies.

The nineteenth-century hymnwriter Louisa Stead gave voice to the deep desire of Christians over the centuries:

Jesus, Jesus, how I trust Him!

How I’ve proved Him o’er and o’er!

Jesus, Jesus, precious Jesus!

O for grace to trust Him more! (“’Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus”)

We want strong faith in Christ. We long for grace to trust him more. And we know God has provided three primary means of grace for this to happen: his Word, his ear, and his people. To put it another way: Scripture, prayer, and the local church. This psalm is itself a prayer packed with truths that fuel a life of prayer. Before we walk through the passage, let me offer a few observations about the struggle many of us have in cultivating a healthy life of prayer.

First, if you’re a Christian, you have God’s Spirit living in you. As a result, you want to cultivate fellowship with God. You want to run to him for help. Even though your desire to pray might feel like a dying ember in this particular season of your life, if you’re a Christian, the basic desire to fellowship with God in prayer is there. It may just need cultivation.

Prayer isn’t easy, and some struggles are common to many of us. If we’re honest, sometimes we’re bored or distracted to the point of not wanting to go on. This can lead to further inconsistency, which then leads to a sense of guilt and shame. We can wonder, What’s wrong with me? as if we were the only ones who struggle this way.

Consider these words from a great Christian leader, Dr. Chuck Swindoll.

I should tell you up front that this is not going to be your basic religious-sounding statement on prayer. Sorry, I just don’t have it in me. No, I’m not sorry. To be painfully honest with you, most of the stuff I have ever read or heard said about prayer has either left me under a ton-and-a-half truckload of guilt or wearied me with pious-sounding clichés and meaningless God-talk. Because I didn’t spend two or three grueling hours a day on my knees as dear Dr. So-and-So did . . . or because I wasn’t able to weave dozens of Scripture verses through my prayer . . . or because I had not been successful in moving mountains, I picked up the distinct impression that I was out to lunch when it came to this part of the Christian life. (“Strengthening Your Grip”)

It’s no wonder Jesus told his disciples to “pray always and not give up” (Luke 18:1). Apparently, Jesus knew that his disciples, and generations of believers after them, would face just that temptation.

Psalm 65 has a fresh invitation for us. Here we have a potent reminder of who God is and the privilege we have to approach this God in prayer. This psalm offers us fresh motivation to praise God and to cultivate habits of the heart by which we look to him for all we need. It offers us three reasons to pray.

God Listens and Rescues

Psalm 65:1-8

Prayer is a true test of faith. Consider what the author of Hebrews said about faith: “Now without faith it is impossible to please God, since the one who draws near to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6). In prayer we come to God, believing he’s there even though we can’t perceive him by our senses. We come believing not only that he’s there, but that we will come away with something—he rewards those who seek him. In other words, prayer holds up a sign that says, “I believe you are listening. I believe you are near and present to bless, sustain, forgive, and renew.” In prayer, whether we feel this to be true or not, we always leave with more than we had when we came.

So here in Psalm 65 David is praising God. He says in verse 1, “Praise is rightfully yours.” And the ESV captures the way the psalmist moves from God’s worthiness to the mind-blowing fact that this God is attentive to our prayers: “Praise is due to you, O God, in Zion, and to you shall vows be performed. O you who hear prayer” (vv. 1-2 ESV; emphasis added).

God listens to us when we pray. Have you stopped to consider the gravity of this simple truth? Everything about that statement is staggering. Just turn it over, word by word. God listens to us when we pray. God listens to us when we pray. God listens to us when we pray. God listens to us when we pray. What a grace-driven motivation to pray and not give up!

David stacks the verbs up in these verses, saying God hears (v. 2), atones (v. 3), brings us near (v. 4), and answers (v. 5). Christian, what a picture of the God we have come to know through Jesus! This is the God who is there. He deserves praise, hears prayers, and intervenes in our lives to prove his faithfulness again and again. Psalm 65 motivates us to pray in much the same way the Bible as a whole motivates us to Christ-exalting living—by showing us how wonderful God is!

In 1986 I was in sixth grade, in Mrs. Rolfes’s social studies class. The year before that, President Ronald Reagan laid out his “Strategic Defense Initiative.” I remember hearing a lot about Mikhail Gorbachev and hearing the words Star Wars associated with President Reagan’s plan. Something about a global shield to neutralize nuclear weapons. My imagination was running wild.

Mrs. Rolfes told us we could write a letter to President Reagan to share any ideas that might help. I took this assignment seriously. I went home, tore a page out of my notebook, and drew a picture of a tank, along with instructions, directly addressed to our nation’s commander in chief. I had arrows and descriptions indicating which button lowered the beds for the tank drivers to sleep in, which button deployed the oil slick behind the tank, obviously to immobilize pursuing enemies, and which buttons triggered missiles, lasers, and flame throwers, respectively. I pictured President Reagan opening that letter, marching into the war room, slapping it on the table, and saying, “Build this!” I hoped he would name it “Gorbie’s Worst Nightmare.”

Here’s the crazy part. I got a note back from the White House thanking me for writing. Who knew my tank drawing would make it all the way to the Oval Office! I was intolerable for days. In reality, I’m pretty sure my tank never made it into any war-room conversations. But that’s not the point. I share the story because I’m still amazed that I sent a note from Elmwood Parkway to the most powerful office in the world, and it actually got there.

Friend, prayer is a far more awesome prospect. The God who is enthroned in heaven, sovereign over the nations, all-knowing, blindingly pure, and unspeakably holy is there when you pray. And he’s listening.

We could go further back into the Old Testament and watch the story of Moses unfold. Young Moses was reared in the courts of Pharaoh. He grew up learning the names and the ways of the gods of Egypt. Then God revealed himself to Moses and called him to rescue the people of Israel. When Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt, he began to introduce them to the one true, living God. Moses set God apart from the collection of Egyptian deities: “For what great nation is there that has a god near to it as the Lord our God is to us whenever we call to him?” (Deut 4:7).

The great prince of preachers, Charles Spurgeon, said this about prayer: “Prayer pulls the rope down below and the great bell rings above in the ears of God. He who communicates with heaven is the man who grasps the rope boldly and pulls continuously with all his might” (Spurgeon, Quotable Spurgeon, 178). We think and speak too modestly about prayer.

God Is Gracious and Provides

Psalm 65:9-13

When I was a kid, we sang a song that helped with some of the Hebrew names of God. I don’t know if we pronounced them correctly, but we would sing about Jehovah Tsidkenu—the Lord our Righteousness; Jehovah Nissi—the Lord our Banner; Jehovah Rapha—the Lord our Healer; Jehovah Shalom—the Lord our Peace; and Jehovah Jireh—the Lord our Provider. Think about those names for a minute and realize, everything we need as weak and sinful people, living in a world filled with difficulties and hardships, God supplies. We need righteousness; he’s got it for us. We need protection. We need peace. He is everything we need. Martin Luther famously said, “God is mine; everything is mine.”

Starting in verse 9, God is seen as providing for and sustaining his creation. The rain we need for the fields, for crops to grow—where will it come from? God brings the growth. God clothes the hills with joy. Words that capture God’s beneficence and generosity carry these verses along as God abundantly enriches, fills, softens, blesses, soaks the channels, overfills carts with plenty, carpets the hills with joy. What’s the joy spoken of here? Verse 13 says it’s flocks and grain. This isn’t just God being good to creation for its own sake. Verse 9 says, “You prepare the earth in this way, providing people with grain” (emphasis added). In God’s kind providence, he cares about our everyday needs, our physical sustenance.

In the New Testament, when Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he invited them (and us) to ask for physical provisions: “Give us today our daily bread” (Matt 6:11).

Taken together we have, in God’s Word, an open invitation to bring all our cares to God. Peter urged Christians to cast “all your cares on him, because he cares about you” (1 Pet 5:7). James wrote, “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God” (Jas 1:5). He gives that too! And Paul says, “Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything” (Phil 4:6 CEV).

Charles Spurgeon said, “If you may have everything by asking in his name, and nothing without asking, I beg you to see how absolutely vital prayer is” (Spurgeon’s Sermons, 28: 1882). What an incentive we have to pray!

God Is Worthy and Satisfies

Psalm 65:1-13

The greatest gift God gives us in prayer is himself. This psalm centers on God’s worth and intervening grace. Right out of the starting blocks, David says, “Praise is rightfully yours.” Then there is an unbroken series of “you” statements, featuring God as the one who hears (v. 2), atones (v. 3), chooses and brings near and satisfies (v. 4), answers and gives hope (v. 5), is robed with strength (v. 6), silences the roar of the seas (v. 7), brings joy (v. 8), and abundantly provides for his creation (vv. 9-13). This passage pulls God into focus. Martin Luther said, “Prayer is climbing up into the heart of God” (“Of Prayer”). To put it another way, prayer is a means by which God brings us in close.

Whether we always feel it at a conscious or emotional level, when we come before God in prayer, we leave with an imprint on the soul. Something of his delights, his compassion, his joy becomes ours, in a unique way, when we pray.

My father planted a church in New Orleans before I was born. He died when he was only forty-five years old (I was twelve), but while he lived, he had a contagious joy in Christ and love for people. I could tell stories all day, but no area of my dad’s life was more compelling than his life of prayer. How often I caught him reading Scripture and praying! Especially after we went to sleep. I could see the lamp on down the hall and could hear him whispering his prayers, praising God, and mentioning us and others by name, sometimes praying with great emotion.

After dad died, my mom told me, “Your dad used to say he didn’t want his entrance into heaven to be like someone running into a brick wall. He wanted to live so close to God that death was like tearing through tissue paper.” I have never known someone to be in such a continual state of prayer as my dad.

Prayer is oxygen for the Christian. That’s why the moment you believe, God sends his Spirit to live inside you, and the Spirit’s first order of business, according to Paul, is to create a cry in your heart that says, “Abba, Father!” (Rom 8:15). He comes and tells you and me, “You can call him Father now! And you can bring everything to him!”

Now, all of this hinges on the perfect work of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, died in our place on the cross, and rose again, all who turn to Christ for hope and life are saved. We’re washed clean of sin and guilt. We’re brought into God’s forever family. From then on, we live in the good of Jesus’s perfect standing before God. The throne of judgment becomes to us a throne of grace. Jesus taught, “No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6). That same Jesus is the one who makes real prayer possible.

Why pray? The God who rescues and who graciously provides for us, the God who is worthy and satisfies his people with abundant grace, is listening when we pray. What a privilege!

Reflect and Discuss

1. As a Christian, what can you do if you lack the desire to pray? How can you cultivate this desire?
2. Two common struggles with prayer include boredom and distractions, which easily lead to frustration, inconsistency, and guilt. How have you experienced these struggles in your own life as you pray? What have you done to address these struggles?
3. How do our motives affect our prayers? What is your aim when you pray?
4. What do your prayers indicate about where you are in your relationship with God?
5. Practically, what does it look like to pray at all times or to pray “without ceasing”? What keeps us from doing this as we go about our day? How can we abide with God throughout our day?
6. How should we respond when God does not answer our prayers the way we would like?