How to pray

“Trust in the Lord, and do good; dwell in the land, and feed on His faithfulness.

Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He shall give you the desires of your heart.

Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass.”

Psalm 37:3-5

This week I was giving a Bible study on the topic of ‘prayer.’ I was using a Bible study material to give the study and there were many verses given for us to read together. And the verse above was one of them. I used this Bible study material many times in the past. But for some reason when we were studying this time, this verse took my attention.

When I was reading the given verse, each verse started with a verb: trust, delight, and commit. (Well, you can find two more verbs, such as ‘dwell’ and ‘trust,’ but I just want to focus on the verbs that are at the beginning of each verse.) Verb is ‘a word used to describe an action, state, or occurrence, forming the main part of the predicate of a sentence.’

When we pray, it requires a verb, an action. Too many times we only pray when we are only in need, or just simply as a routine before a meal or before going to pray. And when we do pray, we just ‘ask’ God what we need, then quickly finish off with a small ‘amen.’

This Psalm teaches us that there is more to prayer than our practice of prayer. When we pray, we must ‘TRUST’ in the Lord, ‘DELIGHT’ ourselves in the Lord, and ‘COMMIT’ our way to the Lord. These words require our voluntary actions. When we do so, the psalm promises us of His awesome response. God is always faithful to us and He does not fail us. Let us continue to pray to God every moment as God is desiring to speak with us.