Read the transcript from today's video devotional.
Prayers That Go Deeper
Have you ever heard the term "dangerous prayer"? It's this idea that most of our prayers are centered around personal requests. Lord, help me find that new job. Lord, help us buy this house. Lord, help me ace this upcoming test. While none of these prayers are bad, and they are all things that we can and should be bringing before God, the Bible tells us that there are prayers we should be praying that go deeper than this—prayers that pull us into a closer relationship with God and help us grow spiritually.
One of these dangerous prayers we find in Psalm 139, and that's our Verse of the Day. Verse 23 and 24 say, "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. Point out anything in me that offends You, and lead me along the path of everlasting life."
What Makes It Dangerous?
You might hear this prayer and go, what exactly makes these sorts of prayers dangerous? To put it simply, it's dangerous because you need to be prepared for when God inevitably answers it. See, this sort of prayer requires an extreme level of humility. It calls us to open up our lives completely to God, saying, Lord, transform me in ways that I might not be ready for. Lord, uncover every single area of my life.
I mean, let's be honest—how many of us like to ask somebody to point out everything that's wrong with us? Yet that's exactly what David is doing here. He's saying, "Search me, O God." Let's look at how David invites God into his life through this dangerous prayer.
Search My Heart
First, he asks God to search his desires and motives. He says, "Search me, O God, and know my heart." See, in the Jewish worldview, the heart was the center of the person. Your desires, your character, your will, how you made choices—all of it centered around your heart. When David invites God to search his heart, he's saying, Lord, go to the deepest parts of me. I'm giving You everything. That's dangerous—to let God have everything—because we've got to be willing to let it all go.
Test My Anxious Thoughts
Once he invites God into those innermost places, he says, Lord, help me to trust You more. He says, "Test me and know my anxious thoughts."
I don't know about you, but I find myself praying against anxiety all the time. Usually that prayer goes like this: Lord, take away my anxiety.
David doesn't say, take away my anxiety. He says, "Test me and know my anxious thoughts." There's this idea of, Lord, show me all of the places that I'm faltering in my faith. Show me all of the ways that I'm not trusting You. Test me. Put me to the test and know all of my anxious thoughts so that I can rewire my mind and trust You more.
Point Out Anything That Offends You
Lastly, David invites God into his actions. He goes from this inward place of the heart to his mind, and then he says, Lord, if there is anything in me that offends You, Lord, point it out. See, for David, it wasn't just about intellectually knowing what God wanted him to do. It was about how he was living it out.
If anything was not in line with God's will, he wanted to know about it so that he could focus on it. The beauty of these sorts of dangerous prayers is that God isn't asking us to pray this way just so we can see the mess that we've made. It's about inviting God in so that He can heal us and help us grow in all of these ways.
Let's Pray Dangerously
I want to challenge us to pray dangerously, because this is the way that God leads us onto this path of everlasting life. Let's pray dangerously, and let's be ready for when God begins to answer.
