They have not prayed to me sincerely, but instead they throw themselves down and wail as the heathen do. When they pray for grain and wine, they gash themselves like pagans. What rebels they are! – Hosea 7:14 GNT

When hearts and mouths do not go together then it is not prayer. When I am pretending to worship God what kind of prayer am I doing – it may very well sound like the clanging of symbols. What am I praying for when all I want is what the world has to offer me and I have no plan to glorify God at all.

These are useless prayers. Why?

• It is the last thing that I do after everything else has failed.
• It is an insincere prayer and would make any prayer useless.
• It is a desperate prayer and in no way can be compared to the prayer of a dying Christian but rather to a condemned criminal.
• It is was not real based on the actions of those offering it. The show of devotion and reformation were exactly that – shows – and in them they mock God.

I remember Moses praying, he did not utter a word, but rather his heart prayed with faith and fervency. To pray is to lift up my soul to God – the very essence of prayer. Acceptable prayer begins with words well chosen. One cannot pray to God if they do not pray in the spirit. In fact, to Him it sounds like wailing. Why do I think that my noise matters or my self-infliction? Does not these very actions denote my hypocrisy? Does not the very action itself find itself to be offensive to God and even make Him angry at the prayer? I find it hard to believe that their priority was grain and wine. They did not pray for favour or the grace of God. When my heart is separated from God that is how I pray – for temporal relief. It is so short-sighted.

When I was in trouble, I called to the Lord,
    and he answered me.
Save me, Lord,
    from liars and deceivers. – Psalm 120:1-2 GNT

What a call to prayer – when in trouble pray – and God will hear – so pray with sincerity. Pray as if I believe that the God who created all things, the God who is bigger than the universe, hears me. God hears me when I pray.

All my prayers go through Jesus. There is no way out except that’s where prayer comes in. God hears me when I pray with this kind of attitude.

In his book, Stott distinguishes “confessing sin” (which he considers the same as admitting sin) from “forsaking sin” (which he sees as working a deeper attitude of contrition in the heart). I agree that “confession proper” is a more mental process in which you end blame shifting and take responsibility for sin as sin. What Stott calls “forsaking” sin is then the heart work that John Owen and the Puritans call “mortification.” I would rather refer to both the mental admission and the heart contrition as two parts of confession or repentance. – Timothy Keller