Prayer of Praise

[Bible Verse]

Psalm 42:8

By day the LORD directs his love,
at night his song is with me—
a prayer to the God of my life.

[My reflections]

Samuel was a son Hannah received after prayer (I Samuel 1:27). She had been provoked by her rival Peninnah, because she had been barren. Hannah prayed to the Lord in anguish and her prayer was finally answered. As she promised to the Lord in her prayer, she dedicated her son Samuel to the Lord. Growing up in the house of the Lord, Samuel became a man of prayers from his youth and none of his words “fell to the ground” (I Samuel 3:19), because God listened to him. Samuel even considered it a sin against the Lord to fail to pray for Israel (I Samuel 12:23). We should also know that it is God’s will in Christ Jesus for us to pray continually (I Thessalonians 5:16-18).

On the day Hannah dedicated Samuel to the Lord, she offered up a prayer of praise (I Samuel 2:1-10). The entire prayer is a praise song, exalting God’s authority and His deliverance. Just like Hannah, we can see that often some of the exemplary figures in the Bible offered prayers of praise. Each day the psalmist remembered the love and mercy God extended to him during the day and sang about it in his prayer at night (Psalm 42:8). Nehemiah’s prayer was that the Lord would be attentive to those who delight in revering His name (Nehemiah 1:11). Even our Lord Jesus taught us to begin our prayer with hallowing of the Lord’s name. We can see that praise is an essential part of the prayer.

Just as our prayer is our word we offer up to the Lord, our praise may be considered our word offered up to the same Lord, but with music added. For both prayer and praise, the person to whom we offer them is the same Lord God. To say that we should sing our praises with a heart of prayer means to realize to whom we are lifting up our praises and to sing or play instruments with all our hearts, all our souls, all our spirits, all our bodies and all our strength. My prayer is that each and every day of my life is a day of praise offered up in that way.