“If now I have found grace in Your sight, O Lord, let my Lord, I pray, go among us, even though we are a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance” (Ex. 34:9b).
Moses responded humbly to God’s revelation of His glory in the proclamation of His divine perfections of power, mercy, patience, goodness, and justice. He spent no time waiting to show God the reverence and honor that He deserved, but “made haste and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshiped.” Worship is the only proper response to God, and it should never be delayed because of earthly concerns or personal fears. If we are to give God His due, we must not suppress the truth, rather, we must humble ourselves and exalt Him with words of praise and acts of worship.
Moses recognized that he had found grace in God’s sight, and on the basis of that grace, he prayed a most earnest and affectionate prayer. He prayed for the presence of God to go with His people into the wilderness, for he knew, even though the rest of Israel didn’t, that their safety and their success depended totally on the strength of the Lord. This should be one of the main subjects of our prayers: a confession of our total dependence on the Lord and of our desire for Him to be with us. We should not fill our prayers only with concerns about what we need in this life, but we must express our desire to be with the Lord, and confess our hope that He will be with us in all we do.
Second, we should ask God to pardon us of sin. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, part of that prayer was a request for pardon: “Forgive us our sins, even as we forgive those who sin against us.” This idea is repeated in 1 John where it is written that we all sin and need to come before the Lord, confessing our sins to Him. If we do this, He is faithful and just to forgive all our iniquity. Confession of sin should be a part of our daily prayers because we fall short of the glory of God by sinning in one way or another every day. Like Israel, we are a stiff-necked people who are totally reliant on God’s mercy and grace.
Third, we should include in our prayers, as Moses did, a request for the privileges of a peculiar people: “Take us as Your inheritance.” God has already promised to make us His inheritance, to bring us into His kingdom, and to give us eternal life. Such a promise should encourage us to pray that the benefits of salvation be applied to us. We have the promise of these things, of pardon and of glory, but we should also continue to pray for these things as an act of faith.
Spend some time in prayer today. Using Moses’ prayer as a model, worship the Lord. Thank Him for the grace He has shown you. Ask Him to be with you in all you do, and to give you the grace to abide in Christ. Confess that you are sinner, and ask God to forgive your specific, known sins. Pray that you enjoy the promises of salvation.
