DON’T WAIT TO PRAY
Psalm
51:1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your
unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
You
must pray when you are in the heat of temptation – when your mind is
preoccupied with thoughts of lust or revenge. If someone urges you to pray
under these circumstances, your mind often insists that it’s too impure – as if
your dirty thoughts leave no room for prayer. But you must not wait for
temptation to end or the thoughts of lust and other sins to totally disappear
from your mind before you pray.
At
precisely the moment when you feel the strongest temptation and are least
prepared to pray, go to a place where you can be alone. Pray the Lord’s Prayer
or any other prayer you can think of to defend against the devil and his
temptations. Then you will feel the temptation decrease, and Satan will run
away. Those who think you should wait until your mind is free from impure
thoughts to pray only help Satan, who is already far too strong. Waiting to
pray is an unchristian approach to prayer. It’s a teaching that comes from the
devil.
In
order to keep yourself from believing these kinds of wrong ideas, you must
follow David’s example in this psalm. Even after David admitted his terrible
sin with Bathsheba, he didn’t run away from God. He didn’t say what Peter
foolishly said while in the boat: “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man!”
(Luke 5:8). Instead, David trusted in God’s mercy and began to pray, “Lord,
even though I am a sinner, have pity on me.” The time when you feel your sins
the most is exactly the time when you most need to pray to God.
Faith Alone: A Daily Devotional, By Martin Luther.
January 20.
