Remembering Jehovah's Mighty Acts

When we approach the Father, we must ask confidently and boldly, but in the first instance, we must recognize his lordship. We must humbly abide by His will if He decides to lead us down a different path.

"Lord, you have been a refuge for us from generation to generation. Before the mountains were born and the earth and the world were born, from century to century, you are God." With those beautiful words of worship the psalmist begins the wonderful Psalm 90. This entire psalm is filled with a sense of reverence and awe at the power and holiness of God.

With that same sense of worship and reverence should we begin our prayers. Before asking the Lord for anything, the first thing we have to do is prostrate ourselves in spirit before Him, acknowledge His power and lordship, and abandon ourselves to His sovereign will. Once that total surrender is recorded, we can bring before Him our own agenda and our needs.

It is important that we begin our prayers by giving glory and honor to the Lord. In this way we declare that He is much more important than our personal wants and needs. We put Him in the first place and recognize that our hopes are based solely on Him. Also, as we begin by focusing on Him and His glory, this increases our faith and enables us to believe that in God all things are possible. .

In the Lord's Prayer, the model prayer offered by Jesus to teach his disciples to pray, the Lord begins, “Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be your name” (Mt 6: 9). In this way the Lord implicitly established the principle of beginning our prayers giving glory to the Father. He also established the priority principle that God's will be done, before ours ("Your kingdom come. Your will be done, as in heaven, so also on earth.")

All of our lives, our prayers, efforts, and service must be saturated with that sense of reverence that the psalmist reflects. Everything is for his glory. If we live like this, we will be nice to him. If we pray like this, our prayers will touch his heart, and we will receive the requests that we present to him.