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To you, O Lord, I lift up my soul. O my God, in you I trust (Psalm 25:1-2a, ESV).
I’ve prayed often, read many prayers, and listened to others pray for decades. I can summarize the motivations of all the impassioned prayers I’ve heard in three words:
Delight, Desire, and Desperation!
I’ve prayed from each of these motivations and often from all three at the same time. God always wants us to ask about anything at any time, as when we pray — God is God, and we aren’t!
This triple “D” of passionate praying is Biblical.
Delight
I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart (Psalm 40:8).
Great praying begins with delight in God’s Word.
There are two instances in the Bible when God said, “Do not pray about this.” First, when Moses asked to be allowed into the Promised Land, and second, when Jeremiah was told to stop praying for the Israelites.
In both situations, God’s “Do not pray” resulted from disobedience as Moses had disobeyed God at the waters of Meribah, and the Israelites had repeatedly broken their covenant with the living God.
When we delight in God’s law, then we can request the desires of our hearts.
Desire
Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4).
I love this verse, and it’s my main motivation for praying.
When we delight ourselves with the Lord, His desires become our passions, and our resultant prayers open a floodgate of answers. The Book of James warns against praying with wrong motives, “You ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your pleasures” (4:3).
Knowing God gives us the desires of our hearts makes learning and understanding our motivations a key growth area for praying.
Desperation
In my desperation I prayed, and the Lord listened; He saved me from all my troubles (Psalm 34:6, NLT).
Prayers of desperation are welcome. Let me repeat: Prayers of desperation are welcome.
Pray for all things, even if you don’t know how to pray. One desperate prayer will always be answered: “God, forgive my sins and save my soul.”
All of us will be desperate sometime. The Bible gives one answer — pray, pray, and pray.
The Bible teaches that heaven is the ultimate answer to all our righteous prayers. The mystery of praying is why some of our requests bring miracles, and others don’t.
The answer is the will of our sovereign God, and our response is trust.
Confession: You’ve probably discerned that I watch the show “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” in which the host, Guy Fieri, refers to the show as “Triple D.” Though I don’t think Fieri got this name from praying, a show about the Bread of Life could be entitled:
Delight, Desire, and Desperation!