How Early Morning Prayer Will Transform Your Life (& Heart)

1 For the director of music. For flutes. A psalm of David. 

Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my sighing.
2 Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for to you I pray.
3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.

Psalm 5:1-3

How do you feel about early morning prayer?

Today’s message is titled “How Early Morning Prayer Will Transform Your Life (and Heart)” and it is taken out of Psalm chapter 5.

On a spring day in 2006, a group of new seminary students, including me, were having a conversation about early morning worship. “I’m already worried about my future in ministry because of the early morning worship service. I’m a man who needs a lot of sleep in the morning,” said one.

Another said: 

“I agree. Do we have to do an early morning worship service? I don’t think God only prefers and receives our worship in the early morning. Besides, if we don’t wake up at dawn, we will have much more energy to do church work much more vigorously…”

What do you think about this?

Some of us may have a habit of starting the day with the Bible and prayer. But even for those who have a habit of praying at dawn, it would have been much more difficult to get up for dawn worship services in the past.

So, is early morning prayer a specific duty for Christians?

And what difference does it make between praying at dawn and praying at other times?

Why pray at dawn?

Psalm 5:3

3 In the morning, O LORD, you hear my voice; in the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation.

In the text, David, the Psalmist, has come to the sanctuary early in the morning and laid out his heart before God about his difficult situation. 

‘In the morning I lay my requests before you and wait in expectation’

In this sentence, the key phrase “I wait in expectation” indicates that the Psalmist is observing his predicament from afar and waiting in nervous, yet hopeful, anticipation for God’s answer. In fact, many prayers appear in the Bible like this, particularly in the Psalms. 

In these instances, the people who prayed these prayers were waiting in such hopeful anticipation for God’s intervention in their situation that they purposefully approached him in prayer at the earliest start of the day. Here are three more examples of people waiting on God at dawn: 

2 Kings 3:20

20 The next morning, about the time for offering the sacrifice, there it was — water flowing from the direction of Edom! And the land was filled with water.

Psalm 46:5

5 God is within her, she will not fall; God will help her at break of day.

Psalm 143:8

8 Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I lift up my soul.

Why did the people in the Bible often seek God early in the morning?

The words indicating ‘morning’ in the passages we read are called ‘boker’ in Hebrew, which means ‘dawn’ or ‘early morning’.

Consider a person who is undergoing a serious hardship or trial in their lives that cannot be solved through human wisdom alone. In such dire straits, when would be the best time to meet God? 

Usually, the best time to meet God when your life is in chaos around you is when you are at peace. For biblical characters, this would be a time when they weren’t surrounded by other people, distractions, or enemies. It would ideally be a quiet time when everyone else was asleep and when the seeker could meet God alone in peace and solitude.

In biblical times, the main reason a person came to pray at the temple at dawn was because there was a desperate prayer he wanted to convey to God.

Mark 1:35

35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.

The desperate heart of this type of prayer is revealed in the image of Jesus who also prayed at dawn in earnest.

In our text today, the next verse reveals David’s motivation for his early morning prayer as well as his conviction that God will answer him.

What is the basis for prayer?

Psalm 5:4

4 You are not a God who takes pleasure in evil; with you the wicked cannot dwell.

In this passage, David is both reminding God and reminding himself that God hates sin. David speaks of ‘the wicked’, which also includes the arrogant, the liar, the fighter, the crook, and all others who commit sin. With his confession that God hates sin, David is laying the groundwork for God to respond to his prayer and to protect him from the wicked and punish them. He anticipates that God will, even must, respond to his prayer because he is good and cannot tolerate evil.

But David doesn’t merely stop with prayer presenting the basis for God’s prayer response. Next, he will talk about his strong confidence that God will respond to his prayer.

What gives us confidence in answered prayer?

Psalm 5:7

7 But I, by your great mercy, will come into your house; in reverence will I bow down toward your holy temple.

A sinner who has not repented can not enter the temple of God. But, as David confesses here, because he is able to come into God’s holy temple, he is fully convinced that he will be answered by God.

So, in what condition must we be in order to enter the sanctuary? Like David throughout his life, we must be in awe of God. In the Bible, this is also referred to as the ‘fear of God.’ As Proverbs 9:10 asserts, reverence for God (the fear of the Lord) is the foundation of wisdom and a life that pleases God. In other words, this ‘fear’ does not mean anxiety about punishment, but rather a holy respect and reverence toward God.

But, what motivates man to serve God? We serve God not because he is a fearful judge, but because he is our master and creator.

And with what attitude should we serve God? What is the right relationship between us and God? First, God doesn’t want us to succumb to him like slaves. He doesn’t want us to be mindless robots either.  And he certainly also doesn’t want us to act brash nor disrespectful.

Rather, the ideal relationship between us and God is a relationship filled with respect and trust. The New Testament says that awe is an appropriate expression of love for God.

What prayer result should we seek?

When we ask God to help us overcome our hardships and adversity, should we expect his favorable response right away? And if God does solve our problems immediately, does that mean that he always solves them according to our greatest expectations? And even if God does solve our problems exactly as we prayed, does that mean that there is no longer any reason to continue to pray? Verse 8 gives us a good answer to all of these questions.

Psalm 5:8

8 Lead me, O LORD, in your righteousness because of my enemies — make straight your way before me.

Remember that at the beginning of this Psalm, David prayed for the destruction of the enemies who were hostile toward him. This is a very common practice in the Psalms, as the prayers very often seek God’s help in overcoming enemies.

But while the beginning of the Psalm is focused on the outcome of his enemies, this verse instead focuses on his own attitude and response toward his enemies. It is true that at times, there may be certain enemies in our lives that cannot be overcome quickly nor easily. And sometimes, no matter how earnestly we pray for their end or destruction, the end remains far away. In such instances, the only thing that we can do is what the Psalmist here has done. In verse 8, David takes a proactive stance in his prayer when he prays that God will protect and guide him, making his way straight before him, in light of his overwhelming enemies.

In the Psalms of kings and Israelites, strangers and foreign peoples are often regarded as enemies. But in general, the enemies of the Prayer are more often other Israelites and may even be the Prayer’s closest neighbors. What does this mean?

In fact, our enemy is not always an enemy who is far from us, geographically or spiritually. Someone who appears as an enemy to us may even be a person within our own church community or family. This is because the evil spiritual forces that oppose God can also make us shake and feel discouraged through the people we love and are closest to. This is Satan’s scheme. For this reason, the Psalmist often avoided the people around him, seeking God in the early morning stillness, and regarded the sanctuary of God as a refuge. And there, he expected God to take his side and prove him right.

When David asked God to intervene in his problems, he wanted God to restore to him his rights which had been stained by his enemies. But as he prayed, he realized one very important key to prayer. The response a Prayer should seek from God is not his own path, his own idea of what is right. Rather, a Prayer should seek God’s will and sovereignty in all situations above all other things. Even Jesus did this in the Garden of Gethsemane before he was crucified when he prayed, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done.” (Luke 22:42)

In the earlier text of the psalm, the Psalmist does not hesitate to petition God to take revenge on his enemies on his behalf. In fact, the Psalmist pours out his boiling emotions before God and holds nothing back. This is something we also have the ability to do, because prayer is in essence a pouring out of our hearts to God. It is often a raw, emotional conversation with him.

But the Psalmist then gives God space to answer his prayer in the way that God sees fit. He does not demand that God meet his expectations for the exact execution of punishment for his enemies. But instead, he gives God room to work according to his will and sovereignty. The reason for this is that he understands that only God had the ability and right to take revenge or enact punishment. 

In this way, by making a request to God, but also stepping back to allow God to work in the manner that he has chosen to, the Psalmist expresses his complete faith in God.

Furthermore, in the New Testament, Jesus flipped the common wisdom about hate for one’s enemies on its head.

Matthew 5:43-44

43 “You have heard that it was said, `Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.`
44 But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,

In the Old Testament, a person who lived by the Law that God gave Moses was regarded as a “righteous person”. Such a person was seeking the will of God and obeying him in their lives. Matthew expresses the same idea in a similar sense by showing how the teaching of Jesus was given by God, accepted, and conveyed by the Christian Church.

Also in the New Testament, Paul uses the word ‘righteousness’ in a different way. Even if a person strives for ‘righteousness’ on their own, they can not achieve God’s will by themselves. Therefore, God looks to recognize the obedience of Jesus Christ in a person, who was the representative of God’s righteousness for all mankind. When Jesus lives in a Christian’s heart, the righteousness that is Jesus’ righteousness is transferred on to the Christian who believes in him. 

God regards any person who confesses the belief that Jesus died for their sins, in their place, as a righteous person because Jesus traded his righteousness for their sin and shame on the cross. Any person who is recognized by God as a righteous person in Jesus Christ will be able to do God’s will after that.

How does prayer change us?

Remember the deep hurt and anguish in the mind of the Psalmist who came to the temple at dawn to pray in the beginning of this Psalm? His heart was completely changed and recovered through his meeting with God.

Initially, David cried out to God with raw emotion about the pain and injustice he had suffered. But, during prayer, which is a conversational dialogue with God, his heart slowly changed as he listened and waited on the Lord. In the end, he decided to leave the judgment of his enemies entirely up to God’s sovereignty. And eventually, even his great anger toward his enemy turned into forgiveness and love.

This is the grace God gives to those who seek him early in the morning.

But don’t be dismayed if you cannot have a dawn prayer time with God due to your personal circumstances. You can still give God the first (and best) part of your day as a kind of tithe of your time in the morning.

For those who earnestly seek him through prayer, God will deepen their realization of the love of Jesus Christ. And if we live each day with Jesus’ heart in our hearts, and Jesus’ spirit guiding our spirits, the enemies who make us fear and hate will be transformed into those who need Jesus’ love just as we do.

This is the heart God gives us, and the beautiful transformation we can experience through a regular prayer time with Him, and the privilege that we can enjoy heaven in this land.