by J Carr

Reading, understanding, loving, and living the truth of scripture do not come naturally. How then does it come? It comes supernaturally. What do we do when we want something supernatural to happen? We ask God to do it.

Psalm 119 is about God’s revealed and written truth, its glory, and our relationship to it. The psalm gives us numerous ways to pray, but I’ve picked up five prayers that are particularly helpful to me, and I’ve organized them with the acronym A.E.I.O.U.

A.E.I.O.U.

Awe my heart in your words (119:161)

Enlarge my heart to run in the way of your commandments (119:32)

Incline my heart to your testimonies (119:36)

Open my eyes to behold wondrous things in your word (119:18)

Unite my heart to seek you wholeheartedly (86:11; 119:2,113,145)

UNITE

I usually pray these in reverse order. So let’s begin with the “U.” I get the wording of this prayer from another psalm (86), but the idea of a united heart is all throughout psalm 119, like in verse 2: “blessed are those who…seek him with their whole heart.” In order to seek God with our whole hearts, we need him to unite our hearts. Our hearts are so divided. We have divided affections and divided allegiance, and it makes us feel the way Bilbo Baggins did when he told Gandolf, “I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” But Jesus can unite our hearts and give us substance and wholeness.

OPEN

As our hearts are united in our pursuit of God, our eyes need to be opened. I love how real and honest the psalmists are. The very existence of this prayer is the admission to God, “I am not seeing what I know I ought to see in your word.” How many of us have felt this way? It is okay to be honest with God; in fact, it is necessary. Ask him to open your eyes to behold wondrous things in scripture.

INCLINE

As we behold wondrous things, we should ask God to incline our hearts toward them. Not just see them, but love them. Because of sin, our hearts are inclined away from the testimonies of God. Through prayer, we partner with God to change our hearts to love his truth.

ENLARGE

As God inclines our hearts toward him, we want him to actually enlarge our hearts to hold his beauty and truth within us and be shaped by it. Like the Grinch, our hearts have grown far too small. God’s truth leads to an expansion of our hearts rather than a reduction of our hearts. Idols are all reductions; they crowd out other relationships and other pursuits; they shrink our hearts and lives and loves. The true God is the only expansion. When he calls us wholeheartedly to himself, it expands our hearts and lives, filling us with light and life and love that flows out into every good endeavor so that our relationships are more full, our pursuits are purer, and our lives are everlasting.

AWE

Finally, we ask God to make us “stand in awe of your words.” This is a bold prayer for me. When I’m being honest, most of life is a bit mundane. The thought of not just being interested in God’s word but actually standing in awe of it seems out of reach sometimes. But that is exactly why we should pray this because it is not something we can muster up. We need God’s grace. It is out of an awe-inspired heart that true godliness and wisdom come.

U.O.I.E.A.

To be truly awed by God, we need enlarged hearts; for our hearts to grow, they must be inclined toward God; for them to bend in his direction, the eyes of our hearts must see what is so compelling about him; for us to see his beauty, we must be looking fully in his direction rather than having divided attention and pursuits. Therefore, we pray to unite, open, incline, enlarge, and awe our hearts, O Lord.

J Carr lives in humbled gratitude at the care, beauty, and generosity with which God makes and gives. The four examples that most regularly stir his heart are the Bible, his wife Audrey, his daughter Evergreen, and trees…in that order. He is a pastor in Troy, IL.