“Your heavenly Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8). We sometimes pray for what we think we need but overlook what we really need. For instance, we may pray for health, material blessing, and opportunity, but what we really need is the ability to trust, the willingness to surrender our lives to God without qualification, and the grace to see the good in others and not their faults. These needs are just as real as our need for food and clothing, since apart from grace to extend empathy and love toward others, we will never be truly happy. Love “overlooks” a multitude of sins; it looks beyond the present moment to see with compassion, kindness, and empathy… What we really need, then, is to be after God’s own heart, to see other people as God sees them, and to overlook matters that offend or feed our sense of pride. This is what we truly need, and therefore we trust that the Lord our God mercifully “decodes” our apparent petitions to express what the Spirit of God groans and sighs on our behalf (Rom. 8:26).
Hebrew Lesson:
Note that the word translated as “wounded” is challal (חָלַל), meaning “stricken, pierced, polluted, defiled, or brokenhearted.” This is the condition of heart that is prerequisite for doing real business with heaven. “God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn’t. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down…. I need Christ, not something that resembles Him.” (C.S. Lewis: A Grief Observed)
