An Altar Of Prayer

Hi, I’m Joni, and I invite you today to sing with me about prayer, okay?

Sweet hour of prayer! Sweet hour of prayer!
 That calls me from a world of care,
 And bids me at my Father’s throne
 Make all my wants and wishes known.
 In season of distress and grief,
 My soul has often found relief,
 And oft escaped the tempter’s snare
 By thy return, sweet hour of prayer!

I’ll be the first one to admit I don’t often fill an entire hour with prayer and intercession, but if I come close to it, it is usually at night when I cannot sleep. Also if I come close to spending a whole hour in prayer, it’s because of my disability, and I think I better explain why. When I pray, I am usually lying down in bed, and when I am in bed, I really – I mean, I really – feel paralyzed. Oh, sure, I feel paralyzed when I’m sitting up in a wheelchair, but when I am lying down in bed, gravity is an enemy because I cannot move at all in that position.

And if anything drives me to pray, if anything pushes me into God’s arms, it’s that, well, that claustrophobic feeling that I can’t move and oh, Lord, please help me. Boy, I don’t want claustrophobic feelings to overtake me, and so I go to God in prayer because I need to pray. It reminds me of Psalm 10:17 where it says that, “God hears then the cry of the afflicted. He encourages the afflicted and listens to their cry.” And oh, boy does that speak to me because when I pray, I feel like I am afflicted; I feel as though my words are rising off my bed, as though they were coming up out of an altar before the Lord. My bed is an altar before God – an altar of praise and intercession. And my prayers are filtered through the grid of my disability and because of that – because of Psalm 10 – I believe that they resonate before the throne of God. I believe I am one whom God hears.

Now, you don’t have to be afflicted or disabled like me – or even pray a whole hour – to understand what I’m talking about. I’m sure that when you persevere in prayer through some extremely difficult time, it counts more, doesn’t it? Those prayers are so much more precious before God, because he can tell you attach a great deal of importance to them which, in turn, turns up the wattage on God’s glory. When you persevere through prayer in hardship, God is convinced that you attach great importance to the prayers you are voicing. When you hang onto prayer and fight off sleep, when you push your praise to him through pain, or like me through claustrophobic feelings where gravity is my enemy, then God can see that it costs you something, and that is what counts with him. It says that you take very seriously what you’re doing. And I’ll tell you something – that’s what makes any hour or any moment of prayer sweet.

© Joni and Friends