His Name Not Yours

Dan.9:¹⁷ “O our God, hear your servant’s prayer! Listen as I plead. For your own sake, Lord, smile again on your desolate sanctuary.”

I have found in my walk with God, that one of the strongest pleas in supplication is “for your own sake” and Daniel also deployed this. But how does having mercy benefit God? God does not desire that any should perish, it does not give Him joy that His judgement comes out. His judgement comes out because He is a just God but that is not his preference. Then ultimately, His Name is bigger than my mistakes. His Name is bigger than my flaws. His reputation is bigger than my errors – that is why it is For His Name sake. Which is why you should know God yourself and have a relationship with God. You will get to a point where you will need to go to God and own up that while you are not deserving of His mercy but openly declared your son-ship and that He is a good God. So not for my own sake but for Your own sake. It is a strong point in the place of intercession.

The truth is that if you are waiting for a slow day to catch up on prayer, you may get a few here and there. But most times you find that on those slow days, you hardly get around to praying. Some people will attempt to attend church service on those days to silence the voice of guilt for not doing what they thought they would have done. The real reason you do not get around to praying is that even the free days are not free. There are things happening around us that distract us consistently. So, you must have a plan. If you wait for the free days you may never pray, you must have a plan. There are three practical ideas that are very helpful in having a vibrant prayer life and I am going to share them with you.

The first is, I realize that I am so busy, I cannot afford not to pray. Change your mindset, your paradigm; rather than seeing busyness as a problem, or an excuse not to pray, but see it as a justification for praying. Look at all you have to do in your life and admit to yourself the truth is you need help. The busier we are, the more we know we need to pray. Martin Luther puts it this way, “Work, work, from morning until late at night. In fact, I have so much to do that I shall have to spend the first three hours in prayer.” See that paradigm? What the enemy tells people is you have so much to do you do not have time to pray. But what we are saying is you need to change that mind set. Let all that you have to do help you realize that you cannot afford to even start without prayer because you need God’s help to do it. Does that make sense?

Prayer: Lord Jesus, it is clear that my strength cannot achieve Your call. So, I come before You today and I ask for the grace to seek and depend on You daily, in Jesus Name. Amen!