psalm 37: how to pray. 32nd week tuesday

Today we continue to reflect on our Responsorial Psalm.  The psalms as I have said are prayers par excellence because when we pray them we pray with the heart, with the mind, with the words and even with the emotions of God.  Today we reflect on our Responsorial Psalm, psalm 37.  This psalm teaches us how to pray, it teaches us the secret so that our prayers will surely be answered by God. 

The Psalm says, "Trust in the LORD and do good, that you may dwell in the land and be fed in security.  Take delight in the LORD, and he will grant you your heart’s requests." I would like to dwell on this stanza because many times we get things mixed up in our relationship with God, in our prayer to God.  What do I mean mixed up?  Yes, the Lord wants to grant what our heart desires, yes, the Lord wants to heed the requests of our hearts.  But do you also know that God wants first and foremost to shape the desires of our hearts, that before he answers our hearts desires, God wants first to influence those desires? 

Take delight in the LORD, and he will grant you your heart’s requests, your heart's desires.  To take delight means to enjoy God, to treasure his presence, to do what pleases him, to enjoy his word, to see the situations of life from his perspective.  To delight in God is to allow him to influence our desires, our wants.  Only after delighting in the Lord God the psalm says, can we find the assurance that God will grant our heart's desires.  Many times however the opposite is true. We bid God to do what we desire.  We pray telling God to do what we like, to do what pleases us.  But isn't it that only a foolish father or mother will satisfy every whim of their children who do not yet know what they should really desire in the first place.  A good parent will always inform and educate the desires of the child so that the child can desire rightly, so that the child can ask correctly.

I am disturbed by what I see and hear on television nowadays when pastors, evangelists and priests promise wealth, fame and the good times, presenting a God who answers all our desires and wishes and whatever we only think is good for us.  I am disturbed when people look for miracles that will make whatever burden they're carrying vanish into thin air.  I am disturbed when we present God with a long list of petitions but we never even for a moment ask ourselves, is this what God really wants for me, is this what God desires for me?

Take delight in the Lord – let us learn to see things the way God sees things and only then can we pray properly, only then can we pray with the heart and the mind of God.  Only then can we desire what God desires.  And only then can God grant you your hearts desires.