It’s Time to Go From Prayer to Praise!

We are one week away from a very significant day in this nation. The National Day of Prayer is next Thursday, May 7, 2020. It is a time when we as a nation can come together corporately to agree on asking God to bless this nation and its’ relationship to the world! For the past few weeks, prayer has intensified as this deadly coronavirus has swept from other parts of the world into this nation. Whether we were motivated by someone in our families or friends being attacked by this disease, or whether it is because we realize that when something like this happens, no one is immune; whatever the case people have been praying. Reading one of the Psalms today, this is what David had to testify about prayer:

lf you lovers of God who want to please him,
come and listen, and I’ll tell you what he did for me.
17 I cried aloud to him with all my heart and he answered me!
Now my mouth overflows with the highest praise.
18 Yet if I had closed my eyes to my sin,
the Lord God would have closed his ears to my prayer.
19 But praises rise to God,
for he paid attention to my prayer and answered my cry to him!
20 I will forever praise this God who didn’t close his heart when I prayed
and never said no when I asked him for help.
He never once refused to show me his tender love. Psalm 66:(TPT)

In this Psalm David states all of our case, we want to please the God who answers prayer. He stated that when he cried out to the Lord, he had to make sure of one thing, that there was no iniquity in his heart. We too have to realize that God cannot be approached in an irreverent and common manner. Sin cannot come into the presence of a Holy God. We must repent, before making our petition. However, when our hearts are clean and we come before God we have this assurance that He hears us. The God of all the universe really hears us, He really pays attention to our faintest cry. And the Psalmist continues to say, that there was no time when he came to God for help that God refused to show His tender love to him. We can have this assurance too. So we know that right about now, it’s time to turn our payers into praise, God has heard us. He will not refuse to show His tender love to us. God reigns over ovoid-19 – let’s rejoice in His healing our land.

Maria