15th.: Speak not in your heart
Deut. 9:1-3, Moses prepares the children of Israel,
for when they would cross the Jordan River.
On the other side, the Israelites would have to fight a tribe of giants called the Anakims.
Moses warned them to not say,
“For my righteousness, the Lord has brought me in to possess the land.” (Deut. 9:4b).
Rather, God brought Israel in, because the inhabitants were very evil.
Moses further told them,
“Remember, and forget not, how thou provoked the Lord thy God to wrath in the wilderness.” (Deut. 9:7a).
This is not a prayer per-se.
Rather, Moses reminded the people of Israel to be careful how they think about themselves.
Moses was speaking to the descendants of the generation that had provoked the Lord (see Num. 32:13-14).
Yet Moses spoke to his audience, as if they had been the ones who were rebellious.
We must conclude that Moses was actually speaking to the nation of Israel as a whole,
both past, present, and future, as if it were one person.
It is easy to get all prideful, when God does great things for us. We can think that we did it
ourselves, or that God owes us. Pride will then make it so that we cannot pray well.
Second, we are just one part of the whole (neither more loved, nor less loved).
This attitude gives us a better perspective on how to present our requests to the Lord.
“For I say …, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think.” (Rom. 12:3b)