January 7

Let us lift up our hearts and hands to God in heaven: — Lam 3:41 BSB

When the Lord brings judgment according to His perfect standard, and when He causes the living soul to feel the weight of deserved chastisement for sin, He stirs up an earnest cry within us. “Let us lift up our heart with our hands,” not just our hands alone; not merely bending our knees; not just putting on a grave, solemn expression, which is often a cover for hypocrisy; not simply going through the motions of prayer, which has become an empty ritual in many cases. True prayer is when the heart is poured out before the throne of grace, when the Spirit intercedes within us with groans that cannot be expressed. “God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and in truth.” God sees the contrite heart, the broken spirit, the inward yearning for His presence, the heaving sigh, and the tear of repentance. These He acknowledges, while turning away from mere lip-service and external actions.

The phrase “God in the heavens” also implies something deeper. It portrays Him as high above the heavens, enthroned in indescribable majesty and glory, yet seated on a throne of mercy and grace, ready to bless the soul that seeks Him. He is full of love and compassion for the needy soul that lifts up its heart together with its hands, yearning for pardon and peace from the fullness found in Jesus, longing for the Lord to smile upon it and grant His love and favor.

But this lifting of the heart—this true and acceptable prayer—is not something we can produce by ourselves. Only God, who works all things according to His will, can make us desire and act according to His good pleasure. Nature, with all its efforts and its imitations of godliness, cannot accomplish this spiritual sacrifice. It may cry out, like the prophets of Baal, cutting itself and pleading, “Baal, hear us,” from morning until night, but it cannot call down the holy fire from heaven. Nature can lift the hand, but it cannot lift the heart. In this spiritual communion with the living God—hidden from the sight and reach of even the most refined hypocrite and self-deceiver—lies much of the power of true godliness. This lifting up of the heart when no one sees, in the daily and often moment-by-moment circumstances of life, in the quiet of the chamber or the stillness of the night, is a secret known only to God’s true family.