To Pray With My Whole Heart

February 14, 2017

To Pray With My Whole Heart

I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;

    I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done.

I will be filled with joy because of you.

    I will sing praises to your name, O Most High.

Psalm 9:1-2

Psalm 9, in its original form, was written in the acrostic poetic form with the first verse beginning with the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Each succeeding verse began with the next letter in the alphabet. Knowing this helps me appreciate both the poem and its author. This message was important to the author, and he carefully crafted his poem, in form and content, to communicate his message.

The foundation of Old Testament theology was based on a real experience of God’s presence and power, coupled with a belief that one day God was going to restore the entire world to its original created order. The people of Israel longed for the coming Day of the Lord, when God’s mercy and justice would freely flow, and everything would be made right. Psalm 9 is an expression of this longing for justice. This longing was carried forth in the New Covenant where God’s people still pray for God’s Kingdom to come, God’s will be done, on earth as in heaven.

Verse one sets the tone of the psalm and is helpful in showing us how to pray for the coming reign of Christ on earth:

“I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart;

    I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done.”

To pray with my whole heart is to recall that my life does not belong to me. My life belongs to God. By creation and redemption, my life, my heart, belong to God. And my life in God is not to be a secret. The reality of God’s love for me overflows from my heart, and I cannot help but tell of all the marvelous things the LORD has done.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of  First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.