praying with a grateful spirit

The last two posts have been an invitation to listen to the call of Scripture as it invites us to draw near to God in prayer.

Scripture invites us to watch in prayer. That means we should pray with an alert mind.

It also urges us to wait in prayer. In other words, we ought to pray with a patient heart.

Those two ideas are brought together by the prophet Micah who said,

“But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, 

I wait for God my Saviour; my God will hear me.”

(Micah 7:7)

This week we come to the invitation to worship through prayer. This is a call to pray with a grateful spirit.  And we find this call in the book of Lamentations.

“…I call this to mind,
and therefore I have hope:

Because of the Lord’s faithful love 

we do not perish,
for his mercies never end. 

They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness!”

(Lamentations 3:21-23)

Try and imagine the chapter in which these verses are set as being a bit like a sandwich! The outer layers are wrapped in extreme suffering and judgment, while the centre holds words of affirmation and hope. 

The experience that takes Jeremiah to that central place is the little phrase, “this I call to mind”.

Jeremiah doesn’t just happen to remember something. He makes it come back into his conscious thinking. Perhaps a better way to appreciate this sentiment would be to say, “This I cause to return to my heart.”

Why? 

In order that it would change Jeremiah’s whole perspective. Sometimes it takes an emphatic act of the will to remember what we already know, when everything in our present experience threatens to deny it and overwhelm us. 

The contrast between the beginning and the end of the little passage above is astonishing. What can Jeremiah have possibly remembered that lifts him out of a pit of despair to stand on the solid rock of hope?

It is the Lord’s acts of faithful, covenant love, 

his endless mercies and 

his great faithfulness.

These verses are deservedly famous. They have been quoted and sung by countless generations of Christians in the midst of personal suffering, danger, illness, bereavement, poverty and persecution. We have a little chalk board in our kitchen with words that were inspired by this passage:

…strength for today

and bright hope for tomorrow…

(From the hymn, “Great is Thy faithfulness”)

Those truths have become ever more precious in recent years.

The sustaining truth at the heart of Jeremiah’s memory brought transforming perspective and renewed hope.   

As you utter the Lord’s name in prayer today call to mind who he really is and pray with a grateful spirit…“This I cause to return to my heart.”

Someone put it so wonderfully well when they wrote, 

“Every blessing of God has the freshness and fragrance of the morning about it - unfailing as the morning dawn, bright and joyful as the morning sunrise, brilliant as the morning dew, invigorating as the morning air.”