Faith in Prayer

“The LORD hath heard my supplication; the LORD will receive my prayer.” (Ps 6:9 AV)

James tells us we are to pray in faith without wavering.   “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord.” (Jas 1:6-7 AV)  Note in particular that if we waver, we will not receive anything from the LORD.  This would include all our prayer requests and not just those immediately in our hearts.  Is James telling us that no matter what we ask for we must believe we will receive?  If not, does that mean anything we ask for will be denied?  And what of our psalmist?  Did he believe the LORD was going to remove all his enemies all at once?  Exactly what is our object of faith when we pray?  Is it on answered prayer to the satisfaction of our desire?  Or, should the faith required for an answer be founded on something else?  I think our writer gives us the answer.  It is not so much that God will grant that for which we petition, but rather, that He absolutely hears our prayer and receives that prayer.  In short, our faith must be in the existence of God, that He has an ear that will hear our prayer and a heart that cares about our prayer.

My poor father had to deal with eleven children.  Sometimes, all at the same time.  Family gatherings were interesting.  We knew that if we talked with our father at mealtime, he hears our words and considered them.  My father had a rule.  Only one person speaking at the table at a time.  This meant that any conversation was allowed unabated interruption and complete attention.  In fact, this rule, in principle, carried over into all verbal exchanges.  Other than holiday gatherings where the purpose was to visit, if there were multiple people in any one room, then the conversation was ordered and coherent.  If we spoke to our father, we knew he heard us and considered our words.  However, there was an exception to that.  There are times when dads have selective hearing.  We choose to ignore the plea before us and pretend to be busy doing something that garners our full attention.  It could be as simple as reading a book or repairing something.  Our attention is so focused on what we are doing that we do not acknowledge the additional noise as something we should tend to.  This can also work to the petitioner’s advantage.  He could announce to dear dad that he was going to do something dad would more than likely not approve of.  When called on it, he would simply say that he told dad and dad never objected.  My father loved to collect things.  He worked extra hard in collecting records of songs.  He taped America’s Top Forty every week and then edited them so that he had one recording of each song any artist would ever write.  While he was editing, he wore earphones.  A convenient way to block out eleven kids.  When we tried to converse with him during these times, we were never confident he heard us.  Maybe he did.  Maybe he didn’t.

This is not so with God.  If we have faith that God hears and cares, then He does!  This is the psalmist’s point.  The context is relief from his enemies.  David is not professing that as soon as he departs from his prayer closet God will destroy all his enemies.  His faith is not in the assurance that God would grant ever-abiding peace from that moment forward.  No.  His verse is his statement he is one-hundred percent confident that God heard his prayer and that He cares about what ails David.  That is all the assurance he needs.  He cannot guarantee how it will turn out.  In fact, David dealt with enemies almost his entire life.  What he needed to know most of all is that God heard his plea and that his plea was important to Him.  We cannot claim promises in every instance of life to the satisfaction of our desire.  Perhaps God will not do that which we desire.  Perhaps He will.  What we do know is as His child, He will always listen and always care about that which troubles our hearts.   It is this heart of faith that receives God’s best.  It is this faith that endures through troubled water.  It is this confidence that rests with God and trusts Him to do what is best.  This is the faith James speaks of.  This is the faith we need.