Prayer That God Loves
Our prayers go before God but they, alone, are not enough to please Him. It’s when they are mixed with Christ’s work that they become pleasant and acceptable to God.
Prayer That God Loves
When you and I pray, something happens more than just words and thoughts. Something happens in heaven every time we pray: God is pleased.
What about our prayers pleases God? Is it our beautiful words? Our pure hearts, holiness or good attitude?
Inside the pages of the Bible, we learn that there are several things that please God. He loves obedience, contrition, humility and love, but prayer is what pleases Him. David said this about prayer:
Psalms 141:2
“May my prayer be counted as incense before You.”
Scripture describes the elements of true worship as a sweet aroma to God. That’s talking about our prayers. God enjoys our prayers just like you and I enjoy a beautiful fragrance. Think of how much you enjoy the smell that follows a good rain or a dinner cooking on the stove.
In Revelation 4, 24 elders are in God’s presence when this happens:
Revelation 5:8
“…the twenty-four elders fell down before the Lamb, each one holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.”
Those are your prayers! Spurgeon once wrote that incense has a special mix of spices that makes it sweet and pleasant. He said, “Our prayers are made sweet only when there is a mixture of precious graces that God has put in us; faith, love, repentance and humility. These are the sweet qualities of Christ.“
Our prayers go before God but they, alone, are not enough to please Him. It’s when they are mixed with Christ’s work that they become pleasant and acceptable to God.
What Spurgeon said next changed how I would look at prayer forever. He wrote that our prayers become acceptable because they contain Christ Himself. We are members of His body and we pray in His name. Our prayers please God because they proclaim Christ and God delights to be reminded of His Son’s excellencies. This is why Jesus said that whatever we ask “in His name”, He will do.
It’s the very name of Christ that makes our prayer acceptable. When we pray in Christ’s name, we become one with Him, united with Him in deed, thought and purpose. God is delighted and our prayers become a sweet aroma to Him. That is what worship is, and it is what we are created to do.
