Praising God in Our Prayers

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Charla and the kids and I are dog-sitting this week for my sister and her husband while she’s in Arkansas. And for my parents, we’re actually dog-sitting my dog who lives with them because he’s old and that’s the house he remembers best. And so we let him go there and be happy in his retirement. So we’ve got their dogs in addition to our dogs.

So we’ve got three dogs, and that made for a fun morning trying to get all three dogs fed when they’re all on different diets and want to eat each other’s food. and Benjamin in in recent months has taken over the care of our dog to teach him some responsibility and he does it pretty well well this morning though there was a lot more involved in it so I was giving him lots of instructions about do this with this dog do this with this dog have you let this dog out is this dog still out because we also had to get them all back in the crates before we left because of the storm that you can hear around you and they all get nervous. Didn’t want to leave them out.

So I felt like all morning I was just issuing orders to Benjamin. That’s all that was going on because there were things I needed him to do. Now I went out there and helped him because it was a lot but there were things I needed him to do and so I felt like the extent of our morning was just me giving orders and saying you do this go over here now let that dog in.

Way too complicated. When did When did dogs get so needy? Right?

At one point, didn’t they just run around and catch things to eat? Anyway, they’re more pampered than some of us are nowadays. So given him all of these things to do, all of these orders, you know, it’s not unusual to need things from people that are close to us, and it’s not unusual to ask them to do things for us.

You know, I ask Charlotte to help me out with things all the time. I ask her, you know, if you’re going to be in the kitchen later, would you make some more tea because I’m about out and I haven’t made any more. And I go through a lot of it.

I ask her for things all the time. I spent all morning asking Benjamin to do things. I had Madeline help me with some things.

I saw on YouTube where you can use magnets to make sure your flag doesn’t furl and get wrapped around the flagpole. And it worked really nicely until I realized whoever made the YouTube video didn’t live in Oklahoma. Because that lasted all of about 10 seconds.

There’s still four magnets lost somewhere in my flower bed that we can’t find. That didn’t last very long at all. I spent all morning asking people to help me with things.

And there’s nothing wrong with that. You all ask your loved ones to help you with things from time to time. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But think about if that was the extent of your relationship with these people. Think about what my relationship would be like with Benjamin or with Madeline. if all I ever did was tell them what I needed them to do, was to ask them to do things for me, was to tell them to do things for me, but I never took time to engage them in a real conversation.

If I never took the time to get to know them, if I never took the time to open myself up to them, what kind of relationship would that be? What kind of relationship would that be with my wife? Not a very good one, would it?

And yet, have you ever considered the fact that that’s what we sometimes do with God? Sometimes, if we’re not careful, that can become the extent of our fellowship with God. That can be the extent of our interaction with God in prayer is coming to Him constantly and saying, I need this, or I want this, can you help me out with this, but never taking the time to listen, never taking the time to get to know Him, never taking the time to appreciate Him.

Now, as we’re going to see throughout this series on prayer, there’s nothing wrong with asking God for things. He wants us to ask Him for things. He wants us to carry our needs to Him and put them at His feet and say, nobody can meet this need but you.

God wants us to have that kind of relationship with Him as a Father that we can trust. But folks, that can’t be the extent of our interaction with God. As I’ve been telling you all throughout this series, prayer, one of the best things about Prayer is that it leads us to a deeper fellowship with God. That’s essentially what it is.

Because God will always answer your prayers. The prayers won’t always be yes. So we can’t look at prayer just as a means to an end of getting what we want or feeling better or anything else.

Prayer really is about the fellowship that we have with God. And we can’t have a deep fellowship with God if we don’t acknowledge and appreciate him for who he is. Just like I can’t have a real fellowship with my kids or my wife if the extent of our interaction is just what I need from them and never taking the time to appreciate them as people.

So if prayer is one of the principal ways that we come into a deeper fellowship with God as his children, I’m speaking specifically if you’ve been born again, if you’ve put your faith in Jesus Christ, and you’ve been adopted into the family of God because of what Jesus Christ has done for you on the cross, then one of the ways that we already have that relationship with him and one of the ways that we come into a deeper fellowship with him is through those times of prayer. And if that’s the case, then we need to take the time to acknowledge him and appreciate him. And that means praising him in our prayers.

That means praising him in our prayers. If you haven’t already, turn with me to Psalm chapter 86. And we’re going to look at another one of David’s prayers.

Because I know a lot of times we think of praise as something we do when we come in on Sunday mornings and we sing songs, and that’s definitely part of it. But praise really is just any time you take the time to acknowledge God’s goodness and God’s greatness. God’s greatness being His attributes and who He is, and His goodness being the way He cares for us, the things that He does for us.

When we take the time to acknowledge those, whether we’re singing in a corporate setting like this or not, it’s praise. And we can do that in prayer, and we should do that in prayer. And David gives us a great example of it here.

Starting in Psalm 86, verse 8, Lord, there is no one like you among the gods, and there are no works like yours. All the nations you have made will come and bow down before you, Lord, and will honor your name, for you are great and perform wonders. You alone are God.

Teach me your way, Lord, and I will live by your truth. Give me an undivided mind to fear your name. I will praise you with all my heart, Lord my God, and will honor your name forever.

For your faithful love for me is great, and you rescue my life from the depths of Sheol. Now, I want to come back and look at some of these concepts in here and see what some of these things mean. First of all, we look at verse 8, and he says, There’s no one like you among the gods.

Don’t take from this for a second that David is saying, there are many gods out there and you just happen to be the greatest. That’s not at all what David’s saying, because later on he says, you alone are God in verse 10. What he’s saying here is that if we keep in mind that in David’s day, Israel was surrounded by pagan countries that had, each of them had any number of gods, and they all had a different group. So Israel is surrounded by people that worship thousands of other gods.

And what David is saying here is not that he’s acknowledging that these other gods exist outside of the imagination of people. What he’s saying is if you were to take all of these gods and you were to put them together, or you were to make a list of them, and you were to make a list of their attributes, and all the things that they are, and all the things that they could do, not one of them comes anywhere close to you. God, and by the way, not all of them together come anywhere close to who you are.

He’s saying if you take all the gods that all the nations of the world can dream up, they don’t even begin to hold a candle to who you are. He’s not saying they’re real. He’s saying there’s nobody, God, there’s nobody like you. All the nations you have made will come and bow down themselves before you.

And what David’s acknowledging there is that even the nations that don’t acknowledge God as God, all the nations that are off worshiping Baal, and all the nations that are off worshiping Asherah, and all the nations that are off worshiping Molech, and all the other made-up gods, all these nations that don’t acknowledge God, it doesn’t change the fact that God is the one who created them, and that one day they will see Him for who He is, and they will come to acknowledge Him for who He is.

tell you what I love the sound of that Oklahoma thunderstorm in the backdrop of this not that I love storms it’s just a reminder to me of the greatness of God especially when so many Old Testament references talk about the thunder and the storm and God being in control of over all those things and I just don’t think I could have asked for a better backdrop to today’s message he said they’re all going to come and bow down before you They’re going to honor your name. Now, this phrase, bow down before you. Now, we think of it, you know, Julie came back from Thailand a couple weeks ago, and I looked at her and said, so what’s God?

She said, oh, you know what they do. Yeah, I haven’t been there, but I know a couple things. You know, they bow to show respect.

Okay, we might think of bowing as something like that. You know, that even if you’re wanting to show tremendous respect, you might bow all the way at like a 90-degree angle. All right?

That’s showing tremendous respect to somebody. That’s not what he’s describing here. The word he’s using when he says they’re going to bow down before you, he’s talking about the nations of the world prostrating themselves before God.

If you’re not familiar with that term, that means they are going to be on their face, on the ground, before God. It’s an ultimate show of respect, of getting yourself down as low as you can and acknowledgement of the greatness of the other person. So what he’s saying is the nations of the world, they’re not going to just come and pay lip service to the greatness of God.

All the nations of the world who don’t acknowledge him now, God is so great that when they see him for who he really is, they are going to humble themselves in every way they know possible. In every way they know how to. They’re going to bow down.

They’re going to prostrate themselves. They’re going to be humbled. the nations of the world will be humbled before him.

He says, and they will honor your name. Folks, for them to honor something meant to ascribe value to it, to give it weight, to treat it as an important thing. And so even the name of God will be treated as a thing of value, as representing who he is.

Think about how God’s name is treated today. Not a lot of respect for God’s name in this world. Not a lot of respect for God in this world.

Or his son. And yet, David says, your name will be treated with the respect that it deserves. Now, we don’t have a timeline on that.

There’s not a date listed here that says on this day we can expect that they’ll start treating your name with respect. But we do have the assurance that when the world sees God for who he really is, they won’t be able to help themselves but give honor to his name. And all of this reminds me of what it says in the book of Philippians, that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

There will come a day when the nations of the world will bow down before Him in recognition of who He is and will confess Him as Lord. And so He turns in verse 10, He says, For you are great and you perform wonders. These wondrous works, when He says you perform wonders, He says, God, you do things that nobody else can do.

And why does God do things that nobody else can do? Because he says at the end of verse 10, you alone are God. Why can you do things that nobody else can do?

Because nobody else is God. Nobody else is like you to begin with. And so he says, teach me your way, Lord.

He says, I want to know your truth. Show me your truth. Teach me your truth.

Drill it into my head. And I will live by your truth. he says I’m going to live according to your truth I want to know it I want to learn it teach it to me he’s asking God to teach him more truth to live by and he says give me an undivided mind to fear your name out of this whole passage that phrase an undivided mind gave me more trouble than anything trying to figure out exactly what David was saying here an undivided mind because there are a few things that that come to mind as to what he could be saying.

But what he’s saying here, what I finally figured out that he’s saying here, is he’s talking about a complete loyalty toward God. You know what Jesus said, a man can’t serve two masters. You’ll grow to love one and hate the other.

And David here is talking about essentially the same thing. God, don’t let my loyalty, don’t let my mind, my focus be divided, where I’m trying to serve one thing and trying to serve you at the same time. Let my loyalty and my focus be clearly and undividedly directed toward you.

What he’s asking is, God, help me to serve you with my whole heart. Let me be loyal to you alone. I will praise you with all my heart.

God, if you give me that undivided mind, if you help me to be completely loyal to you, then I’ll take my whole heart and I’ll praise you wholeheartedly, Lord my God, and we’ll honor your name forever, he says. For your faithful love for me is great. That phrase faithful love is talking about how God has shown himself to be loving with a track record of faithfulness.

For him to say that God has faithful love, he’s talking about being able to look back over his life, some of the things that are recorded for us in the Old Testament that David went through, and some things that we don’t know about. Just day by day, he says, God has proven himself faithful time and time again. God has proven himself to be loving time and time again.

God has proven himself with a track record of taking care of David every step of the way. Why can I praise you? Because your faithful love for me is great.

You don’t just have a little bit of faithful love. He said your faithful love for me is great. And I love that he talks about God’s faithful love in the midst of his praise to God.

because I’ve experienced some of that in this last week. I shared with those of you who were here on Wednesday night that ever since I’ve started preaching on prayer, I don’t know if it’s been God throwing things my way to strengthen me or if it’s been the devil throwing things my way to try to attack me so I’ll shut up about prayer because the devil knows that your prayers to God are powerful. But I have felt like I have been under attack for about two weeks since I started preaching on prayer.

And as a matter of fact, I can look back at the other times throughout my ministry that I’ve done series on prayer, and those have been some of the times of greatest attack in my life. Some of the times of greatest trouble have been when I started preaching about prayer, so I may not do it anymore after this. No, it’s that important.

And there’s something that I’ve been praying to God about, Something that I’ve been really struggling with. And if you know me, I’m just a worrier. So it can be something little that I struggle with.

But it feels like it’s the end of the world to me. And something I’ve been praying about and just losing sleep over, not eating. There’s the other night, Charla cut some chocolate pie.

The next morning she said, you didn’t have any pie last night. It’s still in the fridge. I said, no, I went to bed.

And she just looked at me funny. I said, that tells you how upset I was. I didn’t want pie.

So I’ve been losing sleep. I’ve been skipping pie over this kind of thing and praying about it. And finally, as I’m reading this and reading about what David had to say about God’s faithful love, I started thinking about the way that God has taken care of this situation time and time again for several years.

And when I started to think about God’s faithfulness to me, When I started to think about the faithfulness of God, when I started to think about who God is and who God has shown himself to be in situations in my life over the last several years, it became very easy not only to praise him, but to trust him with the situation that I’m faced with. And folks, I think that’s where David was too. That is, David, there are things that he could pray and ask God for.

As a matter of fact, if you look at the, in my Bible, the heading of Psalm chapter 86, starting before verse 1, says, lament and petition a prayer of David. He’s talking about the things that he’s upset about and he’s praying to God about them. You get down to verse 8 and he starts praising God.

And I think David, in the midst of what he’s asking God to do and what he’s needing, he stops and thinks about how God has shown himself faithful throughout his life. And about who God is and what He’s done for you, again, like I said, it becomes very easy not only to praise Him for who He is and what He’s done, but to trust Him going forward because you’ve seen what God’s capable of. So He says, your faithful love for me is great, and you rescue my life from the depths of Sheol.

Now, Sheol is one of the words in the Bible that’s translated often as hell. it’s one of the ideas of the world to come and not one of the ideas of the world to come of where you’d like to go but we know that heaven and hell in their final forms will come to be after the second coming after God wraps everything up he will throw Satan and his followers into the lake of fire which is the eternal form of hell He will also create a new heaven and a new earth, where those who have trusted in Jesus Christ will spend eternity with Him. Now, those are the eternal forms of heaven and hell.

But there are holding places now that seem to correspond to heaven and hell. We see this in the story of Lazarus, the beggar, and the rich man. That he died and he went into Abraham’s bosom.

Meaning, he was held close to Abraham. Jesus said to the thief on the cross, today you’ll be with me in paradise. That these things are a foretaste of heaven.

It’s not purgatory. It’s not a place where you’re punished a little bit so you can drop your lesser sins and be welcomed into heaven. It’s nothing like that.

There’s a place where God sends us now, those who’ve trusted in Christ, that when we die, to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. and we are in his presence in a foretaste of the heaven that is to come. So don’t think I’m saying, oh, you’re not going to go to heaven when you die.

No, you’re going to be present with the Lord and wherever the Lord is, is heaven. But the new city that’s described in Revelation, the new heaven and new earth, that’s not finished yet. So we go to be with the Lord.

There’s also a holding place, a foretaste of hell before the lake of fire. That’s where the rich man was who cried out to Abraham and said, Lazarus to dip his finger in the water and cool my tongue because I’m tormented in the flame. And Sheol is one of the pictures for our purposes we can call them heaven and hell.

Sheol is one of the pictures given in the Bible of hell. And in the Hebrew it’s synonymous with the grave. Now it doesn’t mean that we’re unconscious or that those who are in Sheol are unconscious.

There are some religions, there are some cults that teach that you become unconscious and there’s no real suffering in hell. You just are unconscious waiting for God to do what he’s going to do. That’s not what it’s taught.

That’s not what the scriptures teach. Because if Sheol was simply, I’m going to sleep and I won’t know where I am, you don’t need to be rescued. And David said, you rescued me out of Sheol.

What he’s saying here is your mercy. By your mercy, you plucked me up out of the grave. We are all destined to be separated from God.

We are all destined to be swallowed up in death and hell and the grave and to be separated from God because of our sins. And it’s only by his grace, it’s only by his mercy in Jesus Christ that we can be spared from that. We can’t earn it.

We can’t deserve it. And so when David says, you have rescued my life from Sheol, when he says, you have plucked me up out of the grave, he’s pointing toward God’s mercy and saying, it’s by your mercy, it’s by your grace that you’ve rescued me from hell. And folks, David didn’t know looking forward where God’s promised salvation was going to come from, but he believed, like Abraham and like so many others before him, that God would provide that ultimate sacrifice, that God would send a Savior, that God would send a Messiah.

And so even though David didn’t understand where the salvation would come from, he looked forward to God’s salvation, and David and Moses and Abraham and so many others of the Old Testament are saved just the same way that we are because they put their hope in God’s mercy, in God’s grace, which was provided at the cross by Jesus Christ. But he looks forward and says, you’ve rescued my soul from hell. You’ve rescued my soul from the grave. And so we look at all of this that David has to say, and we can see that he stops in the middle of this prayer where he’s asking God for what he needs, and he takes the time to stop and acknowledge and appreciate God for who he is and what he’s already done.

He takes the time to stop and praise God. And this is important for us to realize. because if we’re not intentional about it, we’ll spend our entire lives asking God for things in prayer and never taking the time to praise Him.

That’s just wrong because a God who’s worth praying to is a God who’s worth praising. Let me say that again and let that sink in. A God who’s worth praying to is a God who’s worth praising.

You see, all the things that David outlines here as reasons to praise God are the same reasons why he’s praying to God in the first place. We look at some of the things that David outlines, and this is not everything that we find in Scripture. This is not every attribute of God that makes him worthy of our praise, but David does outline several here, several things that make God worthy of our praise.

And like I said, these are the same reasons that David’s praying to him in the first place. You don’t want a God who’s just like you. You don’t want to waste your time praying to a God who’s just like you.

You don’t want to waste your time praying to a God who can’t do anything. You don’t want to that make him a God that we’d want to pray to, those same attributes make him a God worth praising. David outlines some of these in the passage that we’ve already looked through.

You know, he says in verse 8, Lord, there’s no one like you among the gods. I’ve already explained what that means. There’s nobody else like him.

He says in verse 10, you alone are God. What he’s saying here is God is unique. God is worthy of our prayers and of our praise because of his uniqueness.

We see also his mighty power. In verse 8, he says, There are no works like yours. Nobody can accomplish the things that you accomplish.

And he says in verse 10, For you are great and perform wonders. These wondrous works, these amazing things that we would stand there in awe of. And I know many of you have seen things come to pass in your own lives that you just have to stand back with your mouths open in awe at because only God could do what you saw happen.

So he praises God because of his mighty power. God is worthy of our praise and of our prayers because of his mighty power. In verse 9, he talks about God’s creative work.

Now, this kind of goes along with mighty power, but he says all the nations you’ve made, even these nations that don’t acknowledge him as God, God’s the one that made them. Now, it goes along with mighty works, but we think about, you know, a lot of people can do mighty works, but God, just with the words of his mouth, spoke the entire universe into existence. I can go down to Lowe’s or Ace and buy a bunch of building materials and build some things.

Folks, God didn’t even need the building materials. He spoke the building materials into existence. We see mighty works done and we’re impressed.

But God takes it to a whole different level. And he’s worthy of our praise and our prayers because of his creative power. With the words of his mouth, the universe obeys.

Also in verse 9, he says, All the nations you have made will come and bow down before you, Lord, and will honor your name. God is ultimately sovereign over the nations. God is ultimately in control of the nations.

Somebody reminded me recently of the verse that says he holds the hearts of kings in his hands. God is in control. Even when it feels like the world is spinning out of control, even when it feels like things are ruled by chaos and disorder, folks, God is no less on his throne today than he’s ever been.

Folks, that’s a God we can praise, and that’s a God we should want to pray to. He says God’s worthy of prayer and of praise because of his truth. He’s begging him.

He’s begging God in verse 11, teach me your ways, and I will live by your truth. Teach me your ways, Lord, and I will live by your truth. He sees God’s truth, and he wants to know more.

Folks, when we pray and when we praise, we’re not dealing with a God who’s ever going to lie to us, who’s ever going to lead us down the wrong path. we’re praising and praying to a God of truth and it’s important for us to remember that he points out his faithfulness he says God’s worthy of our praise and our prayers because of his faithfulness we see this in verse 13 he says your faithful love for me is great and we think about that track record that God has of showing himself mighty, of taking care of his people and we see his mercy there in verse 13 you’ve rescued my life from the depths of Sheol not one of us deserve to be rescued by God. I can say that not just because it’s my opinion but because the Bible says that.

It says we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We can’t live up to his standards. And it says in the book of Isaiah that all of our good works even the best works we can perform are filthy rags.

There’s nothing you and I can do that’s going to impress God and is going to make us worthy of saving worthy of rescuing from death and hell and the grain. And yet God does rescue us through Jesus Christ. And if it’s not because we’re good, it’s got to be because he’s merciful. If it’s nothing to do with us, then it’s everything to do with who he is.

So David praised God for his mercy. Now these are just a list of a few of the reasons why God is worthy of both our prayers and our praise. So looking at David’s example and seeing that a God worth praying to is a God worth praising, then what should we do about this?

What does God deserve? He deserves for us to submit to him. He deserves our obedience and our submission.

And that’s why David says one day the nations will bow, in verse 9. One day everyone will prostrate themselves before the God who made them. He deserves our obedience.

He deserves our submission. Now, folks, that speaks of a day when everybody sees him for who he is. And for many people, that realization of who he is will come too late.

Better for us to acknowledge him for who he is while there’s still time to repent and trust in his mercy. God deserves that we should live by his truth. God deserves that when he speaks, we should do something about it.

That’s why David said, teach me your truth and I’ll live by it. He deserves our complete and undivided loyalty. That’s why David said, give me an undivided mind to fear your name.

Folks, especially if you’re a believer this morning, can you say you have an undivided mind? Are you focused on glorifying God? Are you focused on praising Him?

Or are you focused on other things too? He said, give me an undivided mind to fear your name. And ultimately, he deserves all the praise and all the honor that we can ever give him.

That’s why David said, I will praise you with all my heart. Lord my God, I will honor your name forever. Now, God doesn’t want us just to say things that we don’t mean.

God doesn’t want us just to praise him because, well, I’m obligated. That’s what I ought to do. God deserves the praise of people who mean it.

God deserves the praise of a people whose hearts have been changed by his mercy. God deserves the praise of his children who’ve been purchased, who’ve been plucked out of death and hell in the grave, who’ve been purchased by the blood of Christ, who’ve been adopted into his family, and know his mercy better than anybody, who have been changed by him. God deserves a people who will love him with their whole hearts and who will praise him all their days.

Folks, our interactions with God in prayer, if you’re a believer in Christ this morning, our interactions with God in prayer should not be just about what he can do for us. Hear me on this again. There’s nothing wrong with asking God for things.

There are too many scriptures that tell us the things to ask for and how to ask for them and encourage us to ask for them. There are too many of those scriptures for us to walk out of here thinking there’s anything wrong with asking God for what we need. There’s not a thing wrong with asking God for what we need.

But folks, don’t let that be the entire conversation. If he’s worth praying to, if he’s worth praying to, then he’s worth praising. If he’s powerful enough to answer your prayers, and if he’s loving enough to do so, if he has all these other attributes that make him a God worth praying to, then he’s a God that we should be praising.

We should be acknowledging him and appreciating him for who he is and what he does for us. Again, think about our relat