The following article is an excerpt from Praying with David: The Heart of Authentic Transparency by Michael Phillips.
What was the foundation of David’s greatness as a man of prayer? It was the nature of the prayers he prayed. He prayed prayers that anticipated eternity. He prayed prayers that focused not on the immediacy of need but on permanency of spiritual character. He was no worship leader but a man who understood God’s ultimate purposes in human life.
David prayed to become a certain kind of man.
Here we find the key that unlocks the entire dynamic of prayer. David’s prayers were inwardly focused, toward his thoughts, his sin, his frailty, his spiritual character—his need for God. And because internal, also eternal.
David’s prayer life anticipated the perfection of his being in eternity. He was ever conscious of his need to be remade from the inside out as only his Creator could remake him.
David was not a perfect man. In his very imperfection—in the weakness of his frail humanity, and his recognition of it, and furthermore in his struggle to overcome it—we discover the heart of prayer which made David God’s man. And thus, in the irony of God’s upside-down ways, out of David’s prayer-heart of imperfection has risen the image of his grand example as God’s man, a spiritual greatness that obviously inspired the magnificent artist to immortalize him as he did.
We will each take with us but one thing into the next life. We will take the Christlikeness of character we allow God to develop in his workshop within us during this life. That inner character is the gold that perisheth not. It is what David prayed for. He prayed that he would be a child.
