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He (Solomon) said, “O Lord, (YHWH) the God of Israel, there is no God like You in heaven above or on earth beneath, keeping covenant and showing lovingkindness to Your servants who walk before You with all their heart.”
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Today’s verse is King Solomon’s prayer as he and all the congregation of Israel assembled to dedicate the Temple there in Jerusalem, the fulfillment of the Lord’s promise to King David. {1Ki.8:20}

We have been given a model for prayer by the Lord Jesus Himself in that beautiful Sermon on the Mount when He instructed His disciples, including us today, “Pray then like this: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name….” {Mat.6:9} Hallowed means to consecrate, to treat as holy. Solomon’s prayer started by exalting God, just as ours should also.

James wrote that the effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much {Jas.5:16} and then points us to the prophet Elijah, a man who was filled with a jealous zeal for God. {1Ki.19:10} Our prayers are far more effective when they express our faith in the Lord as opposed to the fear of our situation. The apostle Paul, a man of prayer, has been used by God to train us to rejoice always, to pray without ceasing, and in everything to give thanks for that is revealed as God’s will for you and I in Christ Jesus. {1Thes.5:16-18}

Like David, a young man after God’s own heart {1Sam.13:14} who faced Goliath, a monster of a man clothed in armor on the battlefield and said to that Philistine, “You come to me with a sword, a spear, and a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel.” {1Sam.17:45} Of course we should always pray to the Lord, but there are times when we might want to also speak to the enemy coming against us and say, ‘I come to you in the name of the Lord!’ And if you really want to make him shake in his boots you can say of our champion, Jesus, “He is risen!” Satan will know then for sure that he is in for a fight, one he cannot win.

So, when troubles come upon you—and they surely will because as David said, many are the afflictions of the righteous—but he went on to say ‘But the Lord delivers him out of them all.’ {Ps.34:19} Just as that wonderful old hymn written by E.M. Bartlett in 1939 declares—There is Victory in Jesus!

Those victories are called testimonies. They reveal the love, the power, and the glory of our God and make us to be more and more overcomers! So, thanks be to God, who always leads us in triumph in Christ, and manifests through us the sweet aroma of the knowledge of Him in every place. {2Cor.2:14} And as it is written, and will be, the accuser of the brethren has been thrown down, he who accuses them before our God day and night. …

“And they overcame him because of the blood of the Lamb and because of the word of their testimony, and they did not love their life even when faced with death.” (Revelation 12:11)

TRUST IN THE LORD WITH ALL YOUR HEART