Daily Devotions

With yesterday being the National Day of Prayer, I trust you took some time to pray for our nation and it’s leaders as we face this COVID-19 pandemic. It has certainly changed the way we live our daily lives and perhaps we will never get back to our former normal. What will the new normal look like? Only time will tell, but regardless, what we do know is that God is in total control and is working out His plan for the ages.
Lamentations 3:41 admonishes us with these words, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens.”
It’s so easy to let our prayers become routine and repetitious, and we need to remember that God listens more closely to our hearts than the words from our lips. The Lord Jesus cautioned us about this in Matthew 6:7-8, “But when you pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do: for they think that they shall be heard for the much speaking. Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.”
Many people will lift their hands to pray or prostrate themselves on the ground. Some will stand; some will kneel. Some shout, some pray silently, some even leap and dance. Some will write out their prayers and then read them to others; others will pray eloquently and at great length. But the thing that counts far more than posture or eloquence is our attitude of heart. We must lift up our hearts to the Lord, not just our hands or our voices. Then He will hear in heaven!
We need to feel as the psalmist felt when he wrote in Psalm 42:1 “As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.”
Our hearts need first to be right, of course – pure and true in His sight. Paul wrote in 2 Timothy, “Call on the Lord out of a pure heart.” The psalmist wrote in Psalm 66:18, “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.” The author of the Book of Hebrews wrote in Hebrews 10:22, “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.”
Our prayers must also come from a believing heart. James 1:6-7 says, “Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering.” Otherwise, “let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.”
With these conditions met, the Christian is ready to pray, but then he must pray from deep within his pure, true, believing heart, and God will answer. James 5:16 tells us, “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
So today, “Let us lift up our heart with our hands unto God in the heavens” (Lamentations 3:41).