For today’s post, I want to begin with Psalm 145:1-2. It says,
1I will exalt you, my God the King; I will praise your name for ever and ever. 2Every day I will praise you and extol your name for ever and ever.
This verse probably means exactly what you might be thinking: we need to praise our Lord and Savior always. In the previous post, I talked a bit about personalizing verses and praying those verses over the area(s) you or others you are praying for struggle with. Doing that is important, but is that all our prayers should be about?
Let us dig deeper as to what else our prayers should include, and I would argue that it is the most important aspect to our prayers: gratitude. I will speak about myself personally here. There are times when I pray that my immediate thoughts are to pray first about the areas that I am asking God to move in, or I am seeking God for clarity about something. Can you relate to your thoughts wandering to wanting to lay out immediately what it is that you desire? Even though there is nothing wrong with expressing your desires, seeking clarity, asking for change, etc., we can forget to pause, look around and notice the ways that WE ARE ALREADY BLESSED. Whether it is health, freedom, family, friends, a roof over our head, and the list will look different for each person.
So, how should we structure our prayers then? Well, for a very clear outline of what we should pray read both Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:2-4. For purposes of this post, I would like to focus on the first part of the prayer. In Mathew 6:9 Jesus begins by saying, “‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name…’” Notice the word, hallowed; the word means “holy.” More than that, I want you to notice how Jesus began this prayer with praising God’s name. This too is how we all should begin our prayers each day. Praising God is essentially EXPRESSING OUR LOVE for all God has done for us in the past and in the present.
What does that look like? King David gives an illustration of it in Psalm 145:3. He says, “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom.” When David says that “[God is] most worthy of praise,” in other words, nothing in this world—no movie, no tv show, no music, no book, no celebrity, no sport, no company, no person— is worth the amount of praise that God deserves.
Why does God deserve our praise more than anything else does? God deserves our praise, our gratitude because of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Those who believe that Jesus Christ died for their sins do so knowing that they do not have to pay for their sins anymore. Therefore, let our prayers each day BEGIN full of gratitude and praise for our incredible heavenly Father.
All Bible verses are from Holy Bible: New International Version
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