Day 144: I am Prayer (Psalm 109:4)

Through the Bible Reading: Psalm 108-110

109 Be not silent, O God of my praise!
2 For wicked and deceitful mouths are opened against me,
    speaking against me with lying tongues.
3 They encircle me with words of hate,
    and attack me without cause.
4 In return for my love they accuse me,
    but I give myself to prayer.

Psalm 109:1-4

In Psalm 109:4, David writes “I give myself to prayer.” The ESV points out that in Hebrew, it says, “But I am prayer.” Wow.

People ask you all the time, “How are you?” What is your answer?

• I’m good.
• I’m fine.
• I’m okay.
• I’m busy.
• I’m stressed.
• I’m tired.
• I’m worried.

And the list goes on. On any given day, we are happy, stressed, anxious, exhausted, confident, quiet, sad, lonely, depressed, discouraged, hopeful, excited, optimistic, pessimistic, half-empty, half-full. And it changes throughout the day. Our answer is the mercury in the thermometer.

Of course, most people don’t say any of those. The standard answer is the superficial one: How are you? “Fine. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”

Someone has said FINE stands for:

• Freaked out
• Irrational
• Neurotic
• Emotional

And there are days I feel that in my bones.

How would people react today if they asked you, “How are you?” and you had the same answer the Psalmist had: “Prayer. I am prayer. Everything is prayer.”

I am prayer.

It sounds weird, doesn’t it? That someone asks you for an emotion, or an attitude, or a state of mind, and you respond with an action. But the truth is, we define ourselves by what we do all the time: I’m a parent. I’m a teacher. I’m an accountant. I’m a pastor.

So why not, “I am prayer”? God, how I’d love to be defined by that one thing!

Imagine that each day was a blank page with “I am _____________” at the top of the page, and “I was ______________” at the bottom? What if, at the beginning of the day, I filled in the blank with what I hoped to be defined by for that day?

I am prayer.

And what if, at the end of each day, I filled in the blank with one action that defined me for that day? I’m afraid “prayer” wouldn’t complete the sentence very often. “I was pride” would be there pretty often. So would “I was anxiety,”

“I was doubt,”

“I was insecurity.”

Or, on my worst days, “I was unbelief.”

Lord, I begin today with a desire to be defined by prayer. Please reduce me to only those actions that bring glory to you. And if, at the end of today, the blank gets filled in by something else, thank you that tomorrow is a new journal page.