The prayer of faith is generally short, and always to the point. It takes the soul and places it before God, in its real state and true character. It pleads with Him for what is really needed, what must be had.
The believer often needs deliverance, and faith cries to God for it. His language is: "O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul from doubts and fears, which continually beset me; from a spirit of bondage, which would daily entangle me; from Satan who worries, harasses, and hinders me; from the sin which so easily besets me; from men who would injure or mislead me; from my own feelings, which daily burden me."
Thus the Lord is acknowledged as the great Deliverer; our own inability is practically confessed; it is evident our trials and troubles are sanctified.
Be this our daily cry until deliverance be no longer needed; for our God says, "Call upon Me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee."
Call upon Me in the day of trouble, I will deliver you. Psalm 34:17 — the Lord hears. As I hear sounds around me, He hears our voice and responds. What blessed way to live — He hears.
Smith preaches from Psalm 116:4. Look at how that psalm opens.
"I love the Lord, because He has heard my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live."
Two days ago Le wrote: I love you Lord... let me be a sweet sound to your ears. Love, and the ear, joined in one breath. Today's reading opens by joining precisely those two things — and her note this morning is simply: He hears.
She did not choose Psalm 116. Smith did, sometime in the 1800s, and it arrived on the right Monday.
And notice the direction of the psalmist's love. He does not say I love the Lord, therefore He hears me. He says the reverse: I love the Lord because He has heard. The hearing came first. The love is the response to it. Which is 1 John's order too — we love Him because He first loved us.
He has inclined His ear to me. The word means to bend down, to stretch out toward. It is what an adult does to hear a child — the whole body leaning in, because the voice is small and near the ground.
The psalmist does not say God overheard him. He says God bent down. And the conclusion he draws is not gratitude in the abstract but a decision about the rest of his life: therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live.
One experience of being genuinely heard settled his prayer habits permanently.
Smith opens with an observation worth weighing: the prayer of faith is generally short, and always to the point.
His text proves it. Psalm 116:4 is five words. O Lord, I beseech Thee, deliver my soul. No preamble, no explanation, no case made. The man is drowning and says so.
Jesus said the same thing plainly: they think that they will be heard for their many words. Therefore do not be like them. Length was never the currency. And Solomon, two days ago in this journal, set the plain prayer of the upright against elaborate sacrifice from the wrong heart — the ceremony rejected, the plain words called His delight.
Which is a mercy in a season with no energy left over. The shortest prayers in Scripture were prayed by people who had run out of everything else. Lord, save me. God, be merciful to me a sinner. Lord, remember me. Every one of them was answered.
Smith's second phrase is the harder one: prayer takes the soul and places it before God, in its real state and true character.
Not the improved version. Not the version that has been tidied for company. The real state. Which is exactly why the prayer can be short — a soul that has stopped dressing itself up does not need many words. The long prayer is often the one still negotiating what it is willing to admit.
This journal holds a record of that practice. My thinking was wrong. Under stress, I go back to my old nature. I was falling for it. Short, and to the point, and true — which is Smith's whole definition.
Smith names six things to be delivered from, and the order repays attention. Doubts and fears. A spirit of bondage. Satan. Besetting sin. Men who would injure or mislead. And then, last: from my own feelings, which daily burden me.
He puts a person's own feelings on the same list as Satan and sin. Not because feeling is wicked — but because it is a burden that has to be carried, and it is one nobody can set down by deciding to.
Kempis said it in the spring: trust not your feeling, for whatever it is now, it will quickly be changed. Smith goes further and asks for rescue from it. And there is real relief in that. A soul is not required to manage her own feelings into submission. She is permitted to ask to be delivered from them.
"The righteous cry out, and the Lord hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles." — Psalm 34:17
"Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify Me." — Psalm 50:15
Le's analogy is a good one: as I hear sounds around me, He hears our voice and responds. Hearing is not effortful. It does not require attention to be summoned. A person in a quiet room does not decide to hear; sound simply reaches them. That is the register in which Scripture puts God's hearing.
And Psalm 34 has been in these pages before. On July 25 the reading was verses 8 through 10 — taste and see that the Lord is good. Today, the same psalm at verse 17: the righteous cry out, and the Lord hears. Two senses from one psalm, two weeks apart, unlooked for.
And Psalm 50:15 is worth quoting whole, because the second half usually gets left off. Call upon Me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you — and you shall glorify Me. The deliverance is not the end of the transaction. God binds His own glory to the rescue of people who call on Him. Which means the asking is not an imposition on Him. It is the arrangement He set up.
"As I hear sounds around me, He hears our voice and responds. What blessed way to live — He hears."
Le's Heart · Caldas da Rainha, Portugal · Day eighty-four · James Smith · Psalm 116He Inclined His Ear
To bend down, to stretch toward — what an adult does to hear a child. He did not overhear. He bent. And the psalmist's prayer habits were settled for life.
Generally Short
Smith's text is five words. Length was never the currency. The shortest prayers in Scripture came from people who had run out of everything else — and every one was answered.
In Its Real State
Not the tidied version. Which is why the prayer can be short — a soul that has stopped dressing itself up does not need many words.
From My Own Feelings
Smith lists them alongside Satan and sin. Not because feeling is wicked, but because it is a burden nobody sets down by deciding to. He asks to be delivered from it.