Tag: Prayer

Pray to God as God (Colossians 1:9–14)

As we turn from Paul’s thanksgiving (1:3–8) to his supplication (1:9–14) we might do so thankfully anticipating a conviction reprieve. “Paul’s thankfulness was convicting, but now he’s asking for stuff. This should be lighter on the heart. I’m good at asking for stuff.”

After the thanksgiving section we feel as though we ask too much and say thanks too little. Upon reading Paul’s petition, we’re jolted, seeing that it’s not that we ask too much, but too little, like a mortally wounded soldier begging a master surgeon for a bandage. Both our thanksgiving and petitions prove shallow. We ask for idols, when there is God to be had.

The deeper conviction in contrasting our prayers with Paul’s isn’t found in what Paul does, but why he does it. Paul’s prayers are God-centered. Our thankfulness and petitions are often small because they’re focused on small reference point. Draw a circle three meters in circumference around our feet. This is our bubble of thanksgiving. This is our sphere of petition.

The way to rectify our prayer problems isn’t found in simply doubling down on effort. This is likely nothing more than another expression of self-centeredness. Begin with God. Here is a simple principle to radicalize your prayer life, pray to God, as God. How’s that? Before you speak to Him, hear Him speak through His Word concerning who He is and what He has done. “There is a direct correlation,” John Piper writes, “between not knowing Jesus well, and not asking much from Him.”

Change the reference point. Both our thanksgiving and our petitions should be God-sized. We can never do either too much. We may do them sinfully quite frequently, but never excessively.

Thou art coming to a King,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For His grace and power are such,
None can ever ask too much;
None can ever ask too much.

—John Newton

The Penning Pastor: The Offense of Small Prayers

From “Ask What I Shall Give Thee”

Thou art coming to a King,
Large petitions with thee bring;
For his grace and pow’r are such,
None can ever ask too much.

—John Newton, Works

The Penning Pastor: How Often Should I Pray

From a letter concerning family worship:

Indeed, a person who lives in the exercise of faith and love, and who finds by experience that it is good for him to draw nigh to God, will not want to be told how often he must pray, any more than how often he must converse with an earthly friend. Those whom we love, we love to be much with. Love is the best casuist, and either resolves or prevents a thousand scruples and questions, which may perplex those who only serve God from principles of restraint and fear. —John Newton

Theology Is as Practical as the Prayers on Your Lips (1 Timothy 2:4–6)

In 1 Timothy 2 Paul urges Timothy to urge prayer. In doing so Paul not only tells Timothy what to do, he shows him how. Paul wants the Ephesian church to say all kinds of prayers for all kinds of people (2:1). Paul says that such prayer pleases God (2:3), and then goes on to describe God and what he has done (2:4ff). Paul’s solution to the prayer problem was theology. This is natural, for the prayer problem was caused by bad theology. Paul tells Timothy, “First of all, then.” The “then,” relates this admonition to the “certain persons,” like “Hymenaeus and Alexander,” who were teaching “different doctrine.” Theology is as practical as the prayers in your mouth.

If you are prayerless, or if your prayers are small and selfish the wrong place to start is with disciplines regarding the time, posture, and method of prayer. The proper place to begin is disciplines regarding Bible study, Bible reading, Bible memorization, and Bible meditation. The professional interviewer who spends all of his time practicing in the mirror concerning his posture, using the right intonations and emphasis in his speech, and making sure that the time and setting of the interview are perfect, rather than studying the interviewee, will be a poor interviewer. Likewise, the Christian who spends all their time thinking about posture, time, and method will pray small, selfish prayers because all their focus is on themselves. Get to know God, and you’ll pray. You’ll know the right kind of questions to ask. You’ll grow in prayer. Your prayer life can only be as big and deep as your theology.

House Rule Number One: Pray (1 Timothy 2:1–3)

First of all—pray. Paul begins a list of house rules with prayer (1 Timothy 3:14–15). But this isn’t merely serial list so that number one could have easily been number two. Prayer is a priority. House rule number one is emphatically this: the family must pray to the Father. Paul says, first of all “then.” The calling for Prayer is related to the good warfare mentioned previously. In the very heat of this battle against false teachers, Paul says, first of all, pray.

When you move from the church to the temple there is continuity and discontinuity. Some things go, some things remain, but everything is changed because of Jesus. I’m afraid the American church has kept the bad and failed to carry over the good. We’ve carried over what was never meant to have a place among the people of God. When Jesus cleansed the temple He said, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.” We have carried over the commercialization of the temple and not its supplications. The church today majors on entertainment, not intercessions; on production, not prayer. D.A. Carson captures the sin adequately,

We have become so performance-oriented that it is hard to see how compromised we are. Consider one small example. In many of our churches, prayers in morning services now function, in large measure, as the time to change the set in the sanctuary. The people of the congregation bow their heads and close their eyes, and when they look up a minute later, why, the singers are in place, or the drama group is ready to perform. It is all so smooth. It is also profane.

I don’t think God is impressed with the show. Our acting betrays a boredom with God’s drama of redemption. Our productions indicate a faith in our works instead of God’s. We must pray when there is false teaching, but what evangelicals now also know is that we must pray lest false teaching.

The Pilgrim: How to Come Boldly

To tell you what it is to come boldly, is one thing; and to tell you how you should come boldly, is another. Here you are bid to come boldly, and are also showed how that may be done. It may be done through the blood of sprinkling, and through the sanctifying operations of the Spirit which are here by faith to be received. And when what can be said shall be said to the utmost, there is no boldness, godly boldness, but by blood. The more the conscience is a stranger to the sprinkling of blood, the further off it is of being rightly bold with God, at the throne of grace; for it is the blood that makes the atonement, and that gives boldness to the soul (Lev 17:11; Heb 10:19). It is the blood, the power of it by faith upon the conscience, that drives away guilt, and so fear, and consequently that begetteth boldness. Wherefore, he that will be bold with God at the throne of grace, must first be well acquainted with the doctrine of the blood of Christ; namely, that it was shed, and why, and that it has made peace with God, and for whom. Yea, thou must be able by faith to bring thyself within the number of those that are made partakers of this reconciliation, before thou canst come boldly to the throne of grace.  —John Bunyan, The Throne of Grace

The Pilgrim: No Back Door to the Throne of Grace

I must come by his blood, through his flesh, or I cannot come at all, for here there is no back door. —John Bunyan, The Saints’ Privilege and Profit

The Pilgrim: Prayer?

Prayer is a sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ, in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God has promised, or according to His Word, for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God. —John Bunyan, A Discourse Touching Prayer

The Pilgrim: No Dichotomy in Prayer

For God, and Christ, and his people are so linked together that if the good of the one be prayed for, to wit, the church, the glory of God, and advancement of Christ, must needs be included. For as Christ is in the Father, so the saints are in Christ; and he that toucheth the saints, toucheth the apple of God’s eye; and therefore pray for the peace of Jerusalem, and you pray for all that is required of you. For Jerusalem will never be in perfect peace until she be in heaven; and there is nothing that Christ doth more desire than to have her there. That also is the place that God through Christ hath given to her. He then that prayeth for the peace and good of Zion, or the church, doth ask that in prayer which Christ hath purchased with his blood; and also that which the Father hath given to him as the price thereof. —John Bunyan, A Discourse Touching Prayer

The Pilgrim: Praying like the Pharisee

In all that thou sayest, thou dost but play the downright hypocrite. Thou pretendest indeed to mercy, but thou intendest nothing but merit. Thou seemest to give the glory to God; but at the same time takest it all to thyself. Thou despisest others, and criest up thyself, and in conclusion fatherest all upon God by word, and upon thyself in truth. Nor is there any thing more common among this sort of men, than to make God, his grace, and kindness, the stalking-horse to their own praise, saying, God, I thank thee when they trust to themselves that they are righteous, and have not need of any repentance; when the truth is, they are the worst sort of men in the world, because they put themselves into such a state as God hath not put them into, and then impute it to God, saying, God, I thank thee, that thou hast done it; for what greater sin [is there] than to make God a liar, or than to father that upon God which he never meant, intended, or did. And all this under a colour to glorify God; when there is nothing else designed, but to take all glory from him, and to wear [it] on thine own head as a crown, and a diadem in the face of the whole world. —John Bunyan, The Publican and the Pharisee