“In the morning, Lord, you hear my
voice; in the morning I lay my requests and wait expectantly.” (Psalms
5:3 NIV)
In case you’re keeping track, yes, the last two parts of The Sling
for God were also focused on Ps. 5:3. Today’s devotional is also from
this same verse, because God keeps speaking new messages to me through
this verse!
Let’s remember as we read this powerful text that it is our
Heavenly Father who supplies all of our needs. This is definitely what
David knew, for according to this psalm, he came to His Heavenly Father
every morning to lay out his requests to God.
Many of us are in the habit of praying to our Heavenly Father at
the beginning of each day. It’s almost a habit for many of us. As I have
written about before, as a teacher I would often talk to my Heavenly
Father about my students and upcoming problems in the car on my way to
class, and sometimes I would even go from desk to desk to pray for each
of the students.
So often, however, we only look at the first half of Ps. 5:3. We
pray in the morning, but we don’t pay attention to the second part, the
part that tells us to wait expectantly for the Lord to
answer. We continue to anticipate whatever problems we’ve laid before
the Lord in our morning prayers. This, however, isn’t faith. When we
pray and then continue to worry, we are basically just using prayer as
something to do when we can’t do anything, rather than the powerful tool
that it can be.
To look at it another way, what if one of your young children
comes to you and asks if you can take him to the park that day. You give
your promise, but the child then goes to his brother, and instead of
saying, “Hey, we get to go to the park today!”, he says, “I hope we can
go to the park today. I asked mom, but I don’t know if it will happen.”
Think about how that might make you feel, and then you will have some
idea of how God must feel when we don’t follow the last part of David’s
suggestion, when we present our requests in the morning but we do not
wait expectantly!
When I prayed for my class each morning and then waited
expectantly, ever knowing that God would answer my prayer, I had a
peaceful day in the classroom without fail. What problems are you
anticipating today? Bring your requests before our loving Heavenly
Father first thing; but then, wait expectantly! Know with certainty that
God WILL answer your prayers! Remember: When we trust solely on our
Heavenly Father, we can truly wait with expectation. Why? Because He
loves us so much!
Rob Chaffart