We Need Nothing

“O praise the LORD, all ye nations: praise him, all ye people. For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever. Praise ye the LORD.” (Ps 117:1-2 AV)

This morning, my devotions where in Psalms 112-118.  These Psalms were all about thanking and praising God for His faithfulness.  Verse after verse reflected how grateful he was towards the LORD for some specific mercy, or mercy in general.  There was no request mentioned.  At least not that was the theme of a particular Psalm in that group.  The entire section was all about God and how great He is.  Particularly towards them that love and worship Him.

We learn the LORD’s prayer as a pattern of prayer to follow.  Not rote repetition, but an outline of typical prayer.  The first two statements are praise and surrender.  This is the foundation of all answered prayer.  The remainder are requests.  A request for sustenance.  A request for prudent guidance.  A request for forgiveness and a request to help us forgive others.  Then it ends with another statement of praise and surrender.  This prayer is the one which the LORD gave to us as a typical daily prayer to be prayed.  But it is not the only prayer that can be prayed.  We know this because we see several in scripture that are nothing but praise.  Moses’ song following the victory of Egypt is a great example.  Mary’s prayer following Gabriel’s visit is another.  And, as we see this morning, the Psalms have in them several songs and prayers of only praise to the Father for all that He has done.

The point is this:  sometimes the better prayer to offer is one that doesn’t ask for a thing.  Sometimes, we need to simply take stock in how good God has been to us and how He continues to be good to us.  Sometimes, if we just reflect on God’s mercy and goodness, it gets our eyes off of self and our needs don’t seem as needy as we think.  Maybe, if we were to look out at the wonderful blue sky and thank God for such beauty, our day would be a bit brighter.  Perhaps is we thank God for all the times He has brought us through deep waters, the waters we are in now may not seem so deep.  Maybe if we simply surrender to God’s mercy and faithfulness by declaring them openly, we will see that His faithfulness really will not end.