The title is a little bit off today because I actually do not believe that you have to be or that there is a proper frame of mind one has to be in so that you can pray. I was thinking of this as I engaged with Psalm 35 and I heard a description of it as being an “imprecatory” prayer. When I used the Google dictionary, it could not define it but it did define the verb tense of the word which would be to imprecate – meaning “to invoke or call down (evil or curses), as upon a person.”

So what does that mean – are we giving ourselves permission for such a prayer because David prayed it? May be David prayed it because God Himself cursed those people for continued evil. One thing for sure, David’s choice of emotional words would indicate that he could not win the fight he was in alone. He needed God’s help and he asked for it. Maybe in really desperate times I might be moved to pray this way too.

Lift up your spear and war ax
    against those who pursue me.
Promise that you will save me. – Psalm 35:3 GNT

Here is the call for God to step in and get involved. I have to assume that I can only engage this kind of prayer if I myself am in right standing with God. This is not a wish for evil to happen, it is one where I am in real danger of harm, maybe death.

But destruction will catch them before they know it;
    they will be caught in their own trap
    and fall to their destruction! – Psalm 35:8 GNT

I think David knew the character of those who were trying to oppose him and he knew they would not stop unless they were made to stop by force. That force seemed to be such that it needed more than the strength of a person or of people. Even the most powerful people we know have limits on what they can do. I can imagine this prayer being so relevant to those of us who have no power at all.

In review, I can pray this kind of prayer when my cause is one God can support, I may experience terrible harm and there is no one else who can come to my rescue. This is not a prayer for vengeance but one of dependence on God as my only hope of help. When I try and put myself in this situation, I think of how will I have the patience to wait on God when I need Him to act so quickly?

They do not speak in a friendly way;
    instead they invent all kinds of lies about peace-loving people. – Psalm 35:20 GNT

It is not just about being annoyed or bothered, if you will. This is about verbal abuse that is cruel and unrelenting.

Rouse yourself, O Lord, and defend me;
    rise up, my God, and plead my cause. – Psalm 35:23 GNT

This is what goes through my mind while I am pleading for God to relieve me from the evil that I feel is coming my way – can my enemy be asking for the same relief because of my call for God to take action against them? This is why I need to be sure I am in right standing with God.

You are righteous, O Lord, so declare me innocent;
    don’t let my enemies gloat over me. – Psalm 35:24 GNT

This is not an issue of mutual recrimination – I am innocent and there is nothing I have done to bring on this kind of hatred. I believe that this kind of prayer does not come from a heart that simply wants to harm someone. I will know this for sure when God comes through for me – I should experience joy.

Then I will proclaim your righteousness,
and I will praise you all day long. – Psalm 35:28 GNT

How long will this joy last – how long will I be praising God? It could last all day long.

What does all of this look like in terms of my eternal life.

If you wait until the wind and the weather are just right, you will never plant anything and never harvest anything. – Ecclesiastes 11:4 GNT

This is another point about being in a proper frame of mind in order to pray. If I go by my feelings and do not remember that I have a Saviour who has infinite power to save me, I will not engage in prayer or in faith. If I continually look at my on condition in life, my own hopes, my own broken promises, then I will stay exactly where I am.

If I live by my frames and feelings I will get into the same situations. How often I have said, “I do not feel like praying,” and thankfully realize that this is the time I really need to be praying the most, where I am most evidently in need of prayer. If I wait until I am in a proper frame of mind to pray I will not pray. Maybe not so blunt and easy to be self-aware of but I could also say, “I cannot trust the promises of God” or another is “I should like to joy in God and believe in His Word, but I find nothing there.” How and what in the world can build myself up from there? Those are signals that I am on the wrong track – my hope is in the finished work of Christ. Winds and clouds will not get me there.

The worst sin is prayerlessness. Overt sin, or crime, or the glaring inconsistencies which often surprise us in Christian people are the effect of this, or its punishment. We are left by God for lack of seeking Him. The history of the saints shows often that their lapses were the fruit and nemesis of slackness or neglect in prayer. Their life, at seasons, also tended to become inhuman by their spiritual solitude. They left men, and were left by men, because they did not in their contemplation find God; they found but the thought or the atmosphere of God. Only living prayer keeps loneliness humane. It is the great producer of sympathy. Trusting the God of Christ, and transacting with Him, we come into tune with men. Our egoism retires before the coming of God, and into the clearance there comes with our Father our brother. . . .

Not to want to pray, then, is the sin behind sin. And it ends in not being able to pray. That is its punishment — spiritual dumbness, or at least aphasia, and starvation. We do not take our spiritual food, and so we falter, dwindle, and die. “In the sweat of your brow ye shall eat your bread.” – Peter T. Forsyth – “The Soul of Prayer,” in A Sense of the Holy, p. 137)