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November 10
What more can David say to You? For You know Your servant, O Lord GOD. — 2 Sam 7:20 BSB
Who hasn’t felt the frustration of prayer, knowing that words just aren’t enough to express the deep longings of our hearts? We try to tell God about our sorrow for sin or our hunger for righteousness, but we can only manage to express a fraction of what we feel. Words are never enough to capture the fullness of our thoughts. No poet can fully express the beauty they imagine. No true orator can find words powerful enough to communicate the deepest passions of their soul. And no pure love can ever fully be put into language. Only the ordinary, surface-level parts of our inner life can be spoken in words. The rest remains unexpressed.
Paul offers us great comfort when he reminds us that God understands even the prayers we can’t put into words. In one of his letters, Paul speaks of God’s ability to do "exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think." God is able to answer our prayers not just beyond what we ask, but even beyond what we can imagine. He knows our deepest feelings, even when we can’t express them. We don’t need to worry about our inability to fully communicate our desires to God. He understands the longings of our hearts and answers, not just our words, but the yearnings that go unspoken.