What Do I Pray
How we ask of God when we do not know where to begin
Suppose you open your mouth wide in prayer. “I cannot,” says one. Well, open your mouth and God will fill it with prayer and then, when you have prayed the prayer that He has given you, He will fill it with answers! God gives prayer as well as the answer to prayer! Only open your mouth and, as it were, make a vacuum for God to fill. God loves to look for emptiness where He may stow away His Grace. 1
I am the LORD your God, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. (Psalm 81:10 RSV)
Our prayers at times may begin feeble, stumbling, mumbling or stammering; just a whisper or a anguished cry; they can be an awkward hesitancy, even just silence. Open wide, says our Lord, which is to speak to Him. We are told to pray to the Creator, Provider, Provider, Merciful, Father.
And He will fill it. He will provide what is needed, and replenish as one might refill a bottle of water. The Lord fills our mouths, with prayer, with praise, with blessing, asking, thanksgiving. He gives to us the request of Him.
Our prayers may often begin with a Scripture, and then meander as we cry from our heart to God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us. (Psalm 62:8 ESV) He knows our frame, our heart, our mind, our needs, fears, hopes, frailty and longings better than we know ourselves.
Ours is to open wide our mouth, His is to fill it.
We Can Ask Whatever We Wish
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. (John 15:7 ESV)
What is it we wish? And why do we wish it? We could imagine a rather long list of earthly comforts, couldn’t we? Note however, first the qualifier at the beginning of Jesus’ words: IF. If we abide in Him and If His words abide in us, Then…
So then the praying, the asking, is not merely for our personal enjoyment, but from the Word of God. What we wish for is what Jesus has said; why we wish it is because our desire is what Jesus desires.
When Spurgeon says God will fill our mouth with prayer, we understand this to mean prayer from the Scriptures, which is dwelling in us. When and if this is the case for us, only then it will be done for you.
Real prayer is communion with God, so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours. What is needed is for Him to fill our hearts with His thoughts, and then His desires will become our desires flowing back to Him. —Arthur W. Pink
Certainly we have the prayer that Jesus taught, that begins Our Father in heaven (see Matthew 6:9-13), and is excellent to use in our daily praying. It is the model prayer, the foundation and inspiration for all other praying. There are also many other prayers found in the Scriptures, and they are all worthy of learning and praying from. For example, this is how we pray for the Church, like Epaphras did (see Colossians 4:12).
When we ask whatever we wish according to His Word, we will have the answer. There is nothing wrong with praying for something better than we have in this life, God may indeed give that—or more, or He may not, as He wills. But let us leave these matters to God—to make our requests known to Him and rest in the assurance of His love and care.
And strive to make your prayers more from His word that abides in you, and you will always know how to ask of God when you do not know where to begin. Reading and echoing the Psalms of David are a good place to become familiar with his calling to the Lord in anguish and times of difficulty, as well as times of joy and praise. Fill your heart and mouth with these. Let these abide in you, set your heart to ask of our heavenly Father, and speak to Him from your heart.
Open wide your mouth and He will fill it with His right desires to ask Him.
Praying for the People of God from the Word of God
Today we are asking you, Father, that we be praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication. To that end, we pray also that we keep alert with all perseverance, making supplication for all the saints, and also that words may be given to us in opening our mouth boldly to proclaim the mystery of the gospel, for which we are ambassadors, so that we may declare it boldly, as we ought to speak. For Jesus sake, Amen.
O Everlasting God, we are in prayer today for the servants who minister to the body of Christ—that they be delivered from the wicked, may they be protected from those who have no faith, may they have patience in persecution. May their work bless the congregation and be worthy of double honor. Amen.
We pray, Father, for all those in Christ, and we remember them in our prayer—that we all would watch therefore, and pray always...and pray without ceasing. The highly important and much neglected duty of the Church is prayer, intercession - primarily for your people, O God. We pray for more praying people! Amen
Charles Spurgeon—1894, Sermon #2380
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