Before the Throne

by Tim Sweetman

May the Words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, my Rock, and my Redeemer.”

— Psalm 19:14

If you are a believer — someone saved through grace by the death of Jesus Christ—you certainly know how to pray. You may not enjoy praying, whether it is praying out loud or not. But you have prayed in your lifetime. It may have been only before a test or during a trying time in your life, but you’ve prayed. That’s my assumption.

I begin to wonder, though, if we pray correctly. Do we really speak to God as we should? Perhaps you are familiar with the “Lord’s Prayer”:

“Our Father in heaven,
Hallowed be your name,
Your Kingdom come,
Your will be done,
On earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our debts,
As we also have forgiven our Debtors. And lead us not into temptation,
But Deliver us from the evil one.”

- Matthew 6:9-13

In a future article, I plan on looking more closely at these verses, but for now I want to look at the spirit of prayer. Hebrews 4:16 tells us to “approach the throne of grace with confidence,” speaking of those whose sin has been washed away through Jesus Christ. So many times we treat prayer as a chore—something that we must do daily to please God. Should we not have a great sense of fear and admiration when we pray? Are we not talking to the creator of the Universe? The one who created you and created me? We stand before the throne of God, kneeling in His shadow, having the opportunity to speak to Him and lay before Him our every care.

And yet we daily turn down the opportunity to speak to our Maker or we do not give Him the awe and respect he deserves from His very own creation. Should we not tremble, fall to our knees, and remain speechless with the thought that we are talking to God? Perhaps we do not fully comprehend who God is.

Yet we need not tremble nor fear for our lives. We can approach the throne of grace with confidence, knowing that Jesus Christ has swept us clean of all our iniquity.

It must totally blow your mind away every time you pray that you a sinner, can pray to a perfect God. We must give God respect and awe. We must give Him glory and honor. And we must give him praise for this awesome privilege that we don’t deserve.

“May the words of my mouth…be pleasing in your sight.”

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Tim Sweetman is a 15 year-old writer, artist, and soccer player from the D.C. area. He is home schooled along with his four other siblings, and is also currently running a web blog located at agenttim.blogspot.com. He writes other articles on his site and is currently working on a spy novel.