Gen 25:21, And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. 
	This week in our study of effective intercessory prayer, we want to begin to consider the first of two prayers that are recorded in scripture. One is from the Old Testament and the other, which we will study next time, Lord willing, is from the New Testament. We are going to look at them in terms of the manner in which they show forth the heart of the penitents toward God and toward those so lifted up before the Throne of the Most Holy and Gracious One. In so doing, we hope to bring into the forefront of our thoughts and perceptions the deepening value that prayer should hold in the continuous practice of God’s Church on this earth. 	
	Turn with me to the prayer of the Psalmist as recorded in Ps 119:145-152. Ps 119:145-152, I cried with all my heart; answer me, O Lord! I will observe Thy statutes. I cried to Thee; save me, And I shall keep Thy testimonies. I rise before dawn and cry for help; I wait for Thy words. My eyes anticipate the night watches, That I may meditate on Thy word. Hear my voice according to Thy lovingkindness; Revive me, O Lord, according to Thine ordinances. Those who follow after wickedness draw near; They are far from Thy law. Thou art near, O Lord, And all Thy commandments are truth. Of old I have known from Thy testimonies, That Thou hast founded them forever. Amen.
	In this prayer, we have the everyday petition of one who is in this world and is dealing with those who do not know the Lord. It is the same situation that each one of us faces in our everyday lives on this earth. As we saw with Epaphras, we are not just dealing with the supposed extraordinary men and women, but with the common and ordinary believers in this realm who are the victorious and revered saints of God Most High. This could be a prayer that you or I should be uttering in our earliest thoughts of the morning until our receding consciousness of sleep. 
	As Warren Wiersbe states concerning this prayer, quote, The writer prayed throughout this entire psalm, but in these verses he concentrated on prayer and cried out to God day and night. From his experience, we receive some basic instructions about successful prayer. 
Pray wholeheartedly (…). We must seek God with our whole heart (…) and obey Him with our whole heart (…). "In prayer, it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart" (John Bunyan). In the Old Testament sanctuary, the golden altar of incense represented intercessory prayer (…). The special incense was burned on the altar, and the fragrant smoke rising heavenward pictured prayer going up to the Lord (…). The devotion of the heart is what "ignites" our prayers and enables us to present our requests to the Lord. The phrase "and I will keep" may be translated "that I may keep." The psalmist was not bargaining with God ("Answer my prayers and I will obey you") but dedicating himself to God to obey Him no matter how He answers his prayers. Before we can pray as we ought, we must pray for ourselves that God will give us a heart ignited by the fire of the Spirit. End quote. (from The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament © 2001-2004 by Warren W. Wiersbe. All rights reserved.)
This matter of praying with all our heart is imperative to the effectiveness of our prayers for the simple reason that to pray in such devotion and with such determination from before sunrise until its going down means that we are focused on the fullness of God’s will in our prayers. We are not putting before him those prayers that seek to benefit us and our way of life. We are setting ourselves before Him to do as He sees best in these lives that we offer Him. It means that we desire to obey Him in the every facet of His Word as opened in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. 
This is the course of true prayer after all, as we commune with the Holy Spirit in the study of His Word as it relates to the every manner of our interaction on this earth. To pray with all our heart is to pray that God’s will is accomplished on this earth as it is in heaven, no matter what the cost to us in any measure. 
The Psalmist then relates the totality of the measure of this prayer life that is offered willingly unto God. Again quoting Wiersbe, Pray without ceasing according to the Word (…). Two important elements of successful prayer are involved here. The first is that we constantly cultivate an attitude of prayer and remain in communion with the Lord. At morning and during the watches of the night (…), the psalmist prayed to the Lord. Jesus called this "abiding" (…). To "pray without ceasing" (…) does not mean to walk around muttering prayers. It means to "keep the receiver off the hook" so that nothing comes between the Father and us.
The second element in successful prayer is the Word of God, for apart from God's Word, we cannot know God's will. Each verse in this section mentions the Scriptures and the writer's devotion to God's Word. We must balance the Word and prayer in our devotional life and ministry, for all Bible and no prayer means light without heat, but all prayer and no Bible could result in zeal without knowledge. Samuel emphasized both the Word and prayer in 1 Sam 12:23,  Moreover, as for me, far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing to pray for you; but I will instruct you in the good and right way and so did Jesus in John 15:7, "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it shall be done for you. The spiritual leaders in the early church gave themselves to prayer and the Word (Acts 6:4, "But we will devote ourselves to prayer, and to the ministry of the word). When we meditate on the Word, the Father speaks to us, and when we pray, we speak to the Father. We need both instruction and intercession if we are to be balanced children of God. End quote. (from The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament © 2001-2004 by Warren W. Wiersbe. All rights reserved.)
	We cannot separate prayer from the Word of God. These are not two distinct elements of our Christianity. Many Christians, even possibly in this room, are given over to the idea that prayer and the study of the Word can be categorized as separate characteristics of our spiritual life. Some would argue that to study the Word is a calling and that to pray is another calling, thereby becoming mutually exclusive of the other. The reality is that one cannot study the Word without seeking the Holy Spirit to open it through intensive and sustained prayer unto God. As well, one cannot effectively pray without the knowledge of the will of God opened by the Holy Spirit in the study and the love of the Word. 
    	Our Lord taught us this in John 14:26 as He promised the Helper from the Father. "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. 
The Holy Spirit is tasked with teaching us all things. He does this through the intense study and understanding that He develops in our hearts through prayer and the reading of the Word. He is the One Who makes the Word become life within us. This is something that we cannot neglect. It is a core reason that we want to read the Word together as a Fellowship, with the prayer that the Holy Spirit will cause us to go to it throughout the week in order to gain a fuller understanding of what He wants to open in our hearts and minds. 
	As well, the Apostle Paul tells us, in Rom 8:26+27, that it is a ministry of the Holy Spirit to help us to pray as we need to. And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 
The Holy Spirit intercedes for us as we do not often know how to pray. He will teach us as we search out God’s will in our Bibles. We also need to trust the Holy Spirit to make us come ever more fully into line with His direction and His course of action as it is presented to us. 
This takes intensity of heart and mind and soul after the Lord, which is the focal point of what needs to be in place in our prayer lives. It is not enough to just present our requests with casual disregard for whether or not they mean anything more in the scope of the eternal glory of God on this earth. So often we will just pray with rote memorization or habitual phraseology not even asking the Holy Spirit to make our prayers those which are pleasing and in line with His plan and purpose. This takes the effort and the dedication of losing ourselves in His Word with a heart unto all that would honor and please Him in our lives and in the lives of those we lift before Him.
This brings us back to this prayer of the Psalmist as he addresses the core element of our intercessions. Quote, Pray as an act of love (…). This verse combines both love and law, for if we love the Lord, we will keep His commandments. Too often we think of prayer as an emergency measure, rushing into God's presence and crying for help. But what would you think of children who spoke to their parents only when they needed something? Prayer is more than asking; prayer is loving. If we love the Word of God, we must also love the God of the Word and express that love to Him. To tell Him we love Him only because we want to receive something is to practice prayer on a juvenile level. When we share our love with the Lord, we receive new life from Him. End quote. (from The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament © 2001-2004 by Warren W. Wiersbe. All rights reserved.)
The reality of the intertwining of our prayer life and our study of the Word of God comes to the forefront at this juncture of prayerfully expressing our love to God. The greatest means of telling God that we love Him is as we lift before Him His very Word in our prayers. It is more than appropriate to incorporate those passages of scripture in our prayers which give expression to the heart of humanities’ love to our Lord God Almighty. It is the Holy Spirit Who will direct us to those verses and those poetic sections which declare our deepest love to God. 
To pray unto Him with our Bibles open before Him is a marvelous journey into the very depths of our living relationship with Him. Not only is it an expression of love, but it is a searching out of what the various passages entail with regard to making our lives ever more certainly pleasing unto Him in utmost Honor and humble Adoration. 
Our final consideration of the Psalmist’s prayer, this morning, is that we are to come before Him with an awareness of seeing Him in action. Quote, Pray with your eyes open (…). As he prayed, the psalmist saw his enemies drawing near, so he asked for God to draw near to help him. The familiar phrase "watch and pray" goes back to when Nehemiah was leading the people in rebuilding the walls of Jerusalem and restoring the gates. The enemy did not want the holy city to be rebuilt, so they used fear, deceit, and every kind of ruse to hinder the work. What was Nehemiah's defense? "Nevertheless we made our prayer to our God, and because of them [the enemy] we set a watch against them day and night" (Neh 4:9,).End quote. (from The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament © 2001-2004 by Warren W. Wiersbe. All rights reserved.)  
Jesus tells us to be watchful and alert in several passages.  Matt 26:41,  "Keep watching and praying, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. And in Mark 13:33-37, "Take heed, keep on the alert; for you do not know when the appointed time is. "It is like a man, away on a journey, who upon leaving his house and putting his slaves in charge, assigning to each one his task, also commanded the doorkeeper to stay on the alert. "Therefore, be on the alert —  for you do not know when the master of the house is coming, whether in the evening, at midnight, at cockcrowing, or in the morning —  lest he come suddenly and find you asleep. "And what I say to you I say to all, 'Be on the alert!.
Again quoting Wiersbe concerning our watchful alertness in prayer, Paul (Col 4:2, Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with an attitude of thanksgiving), and Peter (1 Peter 4:7,  The end of all things is at hand; therefore, be of sound judgment and sober spirit for the purpose of prayer) commanded God's people to "watch and pray," to be on guard and pray with intelligence and alertness. We are soldiers in a battle and we dare not go to sleep while on duty. End quote. (from The Bible Exposition Commentary: Old Testament © 2001-2004 by Warren W. Wiersbe. All rights reserved.)    
	We are to pray with an alertness in our hearts and minds as to the fact that God is in control of every aspect of our lives and of those whom we lift before Him. In true and effective intercession, we do not come to convince God to do anything that we ask Him to do. We come before Him to learn His way and His plan and His course of what needs to take place. It is with the eagerness to learn and with the alertness against all that would distract us that we learn to pray and to trust Him. We must be ever vigilant never to compromise our stand in His so great love and tremendous victory over all the powers of sin and death. We stand for Him in this world and our prayers are to reflect that watchful knowledge that He is our only source of life, today and forever more. So be it.
And Isaac prayed to the Lord on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and the Lord answered him and Rebekah his wife conceived. Amen.

This morning’s benediction is Jude 24+25. Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.