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Lord, I will praise you with all my heart. In front of those who think they are gods I will sing praise to you. I will bow down facing your holy temple. I will praise your name because you are always loving and faithful. You have honored your holy word even more than your own fame (Psalm 138:1-2).

If the psalms of the Old Testament are our prayer book, then it is wise to both pray them and learn to pray from them. So, as we read Psalm 138, what do we learn about prayer?

Let\u2019s begin with the phrase, \u2018all my heart.\u2019 What does it mean to pray with \u2018all my heart\u2019? Prayer is interior work. That is not a phrase which we use very much today but has long been used by Christians to describe the soul work. In a recent devotion I encouraged us to get our bodies involved in our devotional acts. This opens us to the temptation of allowing our acts of devotion to drift towards being only rote physical acts. When the psalmist prays \u2018with all my heart, we are reminded that our souls, our spirits must be involved.

Today, many of us thing of our hearts as the place of feeling. When we pray, we want an experience that we feel. Many Christians have stopped praying because their hearts are \u2018no longer in it\u2019 so that they do not \u2018feel sincere.\u2019 We tend to identify sincerity with emotional spontaneity. There is nothing wrong with spontaneity. It is good to have the feeling of experiencing intimacy with God. But this is not what our psalmist is hinting at. An intense spiritual experience while at prayer has always been the exception, rather than the norm. It\u2019s a gift God gives us of his own choosing, not something we create or may demand from him.

The word \u201cheart,\u201d in the biblical and traditional vocabulary of prayer means \u2018from the very core of ourselves, the center of decision and resolve, a region vastly deeper than our emotions\u2019. It includes our emotions but is not dependent on them. It is at that level that God speaks to us. When Jesus conversed with the Samaritan woman, he told her that true worshippers worship God \u2018in spirit and in truth\u2019 (John 4:24). In prayer, we direct our attention and words towards God and offer him the truth about ourselves. We might say that we allow God to reveal the truth about our hearts to our conscious minds.

Our psalmist speaks about praying, \u201cin front of those who think they are gods\u201d. But this is difficult to do. We worship a multitude of gods that hide in the shadows. We turn to God in prayer so that our hearts are laid bare. This will take decision and effort on our part because our hearts will resist giving up those other gods. In prayer, we seek to name the false gods that we worship secretly, so that we can renounce them and worship the Lord God alone.

When we begin to pray, we endeavor to involve, as best we can, our inner core of decision and resolve. To the extent that we can find them or know them at all, we turn our hearts to God, and we confess Him Lord of all gods. From our heart we turn ourselves to God in His throne room, in spirit and in truth.

Continuing, the psalmist says, \u201cI will bow down facing your holy temple. I will praise your name because you are always loving and faithful.\u201d The temple that the psalmist was referring to is long gone. In John\u2019s gospel, Jesus makes the case that he is the new, the true temple of God (John 2:19-22). He is the abiding-place where we find God. The goal of prayer, after all, is our union with God, so the proper foundation of prayer is the Incarnation, in which God and man are joined. Jesus prayed, \u201cAs you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us\u201d (John 17:21). Thus, we come to the Father in Christ\u2019s name.

As Christians, we know nothing of prayer outside of Christ. Our psalmist prays, \u201cI will praise your name because you are always loving and faithful. You have honored your holy word even more than your own fame.\u201d It is in God\u2019s glorification Jesus\u2019 name that all Christian prayer is safely placed. In Christ, we see the full richness of God\u2019s love and faithfulness. The fundamental confession that we make in our hearts is \u201cJesus is Lord!\u201d

Not every pray we utter needs to run this deep. Even in the Bible, there are many kinds of prayers. But to grow deeper into our Christian faith, we do need to take the time for this kind of deep praying. This is the kind of praying that takes effort, our bodies and souls will resist. It is good work. It is the kind of prayer that usually takes place in \u2018the closet\u2019 that Jesus speaks of. And when our souls learn to commune with God this way, they begin to long for it, they begin to feel at home in his presence and it will become easier.