Rehearse Your Prayers

# 106 – Today's Du-votional comes from 1Sa 8:21 And Samuel heard all the words of the people, and he repeated them in the hearing of the LORD. 22 So the LORD said to Samuel, "Heed their voice, and make them a king." And Samuel said to the men of Israel, "Every man go to his city." (1 Sam 8:21,22) Samuel repeats the demands of the people in the “hearing of the Lord.” In other words, he takes the matter to the Lord in prayer. The repeating of the demands was not for God's benefit, it was for Samuel's. God already knew of their demands. The word “repeat” here is interesting. The King James says, “he rehearsed.” The Hebrew word means he “arranged his words.” This was not some spontaneous prayer that Samuel blurted out. He rehearsed what he was going to ask of the Lord! This is a very wise practice for us to follow even to this day. When time is not of the essence, I highly recommend this procedure of patiently organizing your words, write them down in a journal, fine tune them, and when you are at peace with them, bring your requests before the Lord. Did you ever hear someone say this about prayer? “Be careful, you might get what you asked for?” That's what happened here, and if the people would've patiently followed Samuel's method of rehearsing their prayer, this whole fiasco may have been avoided. It's easy to miss the tone of God's reply to Samuel's prayer. Make no mistake about it, God was not happy with the people's request. We read about it in Ho 13:11a “I gave you a king in My anger,” Is this the kind of response we want stir up in the heart of God with our requests and petitions? Have you ever had someone give in to a request of yours in anger? Did you enjoy it? One way to avoid this is to “rehearse” our prayers. See how they fit in with God's Word, remembering the words of Lu 12:32b “it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” Take the time to ask aright. Rehearse your prayers!