By Trayce Bradford

I love to pray! I love to ponder on prayer, and I love to wait to hear or discern God’s direction or responses to those prayers.  

As I was reading Psalm 37 today, I was struck by the clarity with which that Psalm illustrated God’s powerful love and protection for His people. We are all familiar with these verses: 

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart. Commit your ways to Him, and He will do it.”  Psalm 37:4-5

We can look at this verse to mean if we delight in Him, He in turn will give us the things we most desire, or it could be that the more we listen and connect with Him the more He is able to fill our hearts with His desires.  HE gives us the desires and directs our paths along His heart for us. As I continued to read, I came to verse 23: 

“The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his ways.” 

Then I read it in the Passion Version, and something leaped out at me, see for yourself:

“The steps of the God-pursuing ones follow firmly in the footsteps of the Lord, and God delights in every step they take to follow Him.”

He, the Almighty, Creator of all things, takes delight in every step that I take to follow Him. 

I don’t know about you but that just filled my heart to overflowing that the One who spins the universe in time and placed the stars just so actually takes notice of my steps, every step, and delights in those that follow after HIM! 

What does this have to do with prayer?  How will we know and have that deep relationship with God that allows us not only to read His Word as a list of rules or boundaries but let it become deeply written in our hearts? Though this reality, we see how HE can lead us today from those words written over two-thousand years ago.  We can say with our head we know those words are truth and they are, but how do we apply those truths to our walk each day and in the strategies we play out through our life?  

Our faith is not a distant or compulsory religion or belief system, it is a relationship with the Savior, King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We deepen that relationship with Him in reading His Word and seeking Him in prayer.  We listen. We speak. We repent. We request. We worship. He responds. Prayer is limitless and free to all of us, we only have to accept that free invitation to seek Him.  

Take a few moments today, even amid an urgent schedule to stop and rest in His presence. Maybe you don’t utter a word, but just sit in stillness with Him. 

He will delight in that step to follow Him.  

Amen.

We would like to help you pray each week for our nation. Take the Pledge and we will send you prayer points on Monday at 5:55 pm.