“O LORD, in the morning you hear my voice; in the morning I prepare a sacrifice for you and watch.” Psalm 5:3
Devotion:
Does God care when we come to Him? In one sense, no—anytime is a good time to come to God. But in another sense, the time that we come to Him actually says something. So when David prays in the morning and prepares a sacrifice in the morning, we shouldn’t think that this is some hard and fast rule for when we should approach God, but it does teach us something about our walk with God.
So if it is not that the morning is some uniquely special time of the day, then what is the point? There are two things that stand out. First, praying in the morning recognizes our neediness. When we come to God at the beginning of something, whether the morning or a new season we are in, it shows God that we don’t think we can survive without Him. It displays that we don’t even want to get part of the way through the day without turning to God for our needs.
So praying in the morning recognizes our neediness, but second, praying in the morning recognizes God’s faithfulness. Notice how David tells God that he will “watch.” David knows that God holds him up. He knows that his faithful God comes through every time. So coming to God early is a declaration that we trust God to move in His way and in His time. We bring our cares before the Lord at the beginning because we know we are needy and because we know He is faithful.
Prayer:
God, the temptation in us to try and live without You is so strong. We know how prone we are to foolishly moving on ahead of You. So we turn to You now asking that You draw us to see how needy we really are.
If we were to see ourselves correctly, we know that we would understand how important it is to depend on You. We take every breath from You and we exist moment by moment because You uphold us. So we want to acknowledge Your power in our lives.
Whatever requests we place before You, we watch with expectancy because we know how faithful You are. You have never and will never let Your people down. We are absolutely certain that Your goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. In Jesus’ name, we worship and pray. Amen.
