Prayer out of gratitude

It sometimes takes a lot of effort to get myself up to pray, especially now that we are in lockdown during the corona pandemic and can no longer go about our everyday routines for a long time. I even find it difficult to remember what day of the week it is. So what can one do when the relationship with God and especially the prayer life suffers from indolence or - I admit it - from listlessness?

I'm not an expert on prayer, and in fact, I often find it difficult to pray. So that I can even find a beginning, I often pray the first verses like from this psalm: «Praise the Lord, my soul, and what is in me, his holy name! Praise the Lord, my soul, and do not forget what good he has done you: who forgives you all your sins and heals all your ailments "(Psalm 103,1-3).

That helps me. Right at the beginning of the Psalm, however, I asked myself: Who is David talking to here? In some psalms, David addresses God directly, in other cases he addresses the people and gives instructions on how they should behave towards God. But here David says: Praise the Lord, my soul! So David talks to himself and admonishes himself to praise and praise God. Why does he have to tell his soul what to do? Is it because he lacks motivation? Most people believe that talking to yourself is the first sign of mental illness. However, according to this psalm, it is more about spiritual health. Sometimes we need to coax ourselves well to motivate us to keep going.

To do this, David remembers how wonderfully God has blessed him. It helps us to recognize God's generous goodness through Jesus and the many blessings we have received. This fills us with a desire to worship and praise him with all our soul.

Who is the one who forgives all of our sins and heals us from all diseases? Only God can that be. These blessings are from him. In his gracious and compassionate love, he forgives our misdeeds, which is truly a reason to praise him. He heals us because he cares for us with compassion and generosity. That does not mean that everyone and in all cases will be healed, but when we recover, he is gracious to us and it fills us with great gratitude.

Because of the pandemic, it became clear to me how much the health of all of us is at risk. This has an impact on my prayer life: I thank God for my health and ours, for the recovery of the sick, and even when loved ones or joy have died, I praise God for their lives knowing that their sins are forgiven through Jesus are. In the face of these things, I feel a strong motivation to pray where I was so listless before. I hope this will inspire you to pray too.

by Barry Robinson