Prayer is a delight to God because it is that indescribably great transaction where the wealth of God's glory is magnified and the wants of my soul are satisfied.

So why does God delight in our prayers?

That's the question John Piper answers from Proverbs 15-8 in this episode of Light and Truth.

This sermon was originally preached at Bethlehem Baptist Church on March 22nd, 1987.

Now, today's text is simply an expansion, an outworking of last week's text which said God

has pleasure in those who hope in him.

Today it says God delights and those who pray to him from an upright heart.

My prayer is that the effect of this message will be yes to encourage you to pray.

I think people will pray more if they think God smiles when they pray.

If they think God is delighted with their prayers instead of being up their kind of, you know,

oh, this is a bad prayer, this is a sinner that's praying here. If you could be convinced

this morning, as I'm going to try to convince you, that God is filled with pleasure when sinners pray,

then I think you'd pray more. And the other other reason or the other thing I hope that you will get from this message is simply a reaffirmation that we have a kind of God who is glorified by and delights in meeting needs more than making demands. We're going to talk about obedience in two weeks I think, but I want you to see first and foremost that

God delights more in meeting needs than he does in making demands. That's the point of the second half of this verse, isn't it?

What is prayer? It's drinking, it's asking, it's needing, it's depending, it's hoping,'s depending it's hoping and God is rejoicing when we're like that.

Prayer is a delight to God because it displays the reaches of our poverty and the riches of his

grace.

Prayer is a delight to God because it is that

indescribably great transaction

where the wealth of God's glory is magnified and the wants of my soul are satisfied.

You know, if you were to just try to dream up such a thing, dream up such a gospel, that there might be a place in the world where a sinner could go and in one act find God's sufficiency magnified and his once satisfied, you could hardly dream of a better thing than to say,

it's just prayer. It's the place of prayer where that happens.

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