43 Quotes About Prayer To Inspire Your Prayer Life

Stephen Altrogge

When I need inspiration to pray, which is often, I regularly turn to quotes about prayer.

See, here’s the thing…

There are few things more powerful than prayer. Through prayer, God does staggering, miraculous, overwhelming things.

And yet so often I forget all that God does through prayer.

Can you relate to me?

To encourage you in your prayers, I compiled 43 of the BEST quotes about prayer. I pray that these quotes about prayer encourage you to pray faith-filled prayers that accomplish great things for God.

43 Profound Quotes About Prayer

1.”Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.” – Max Lucado

2. “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” – Martin Luther

3. “True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is a spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.” – Charles Spurgeon

4. “If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to hear you. If you do not expect, you will not have. God will not hear you unless you believe He will hear you; but if you believe He will, He will be as good as your faith.” – Charles Spurgeon

5. “Prayer makes a godly man, and puts within him the mind of Christ, the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying.” – E.M. Bounds

6. “Prayer should not be regarded as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty.” – E.M. Bounds

7. “God can handle your doubt, anger, fear, grief, confusion, and questions. You can bring everything to him in prayer.” – Rick Warren

8. “Prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.” – E.M Bounds

9. “Prayer delights God’s ear; it melts His heart.” – Thomas Watson

10. “It is possible to move men, through God, by prayer alone.” – Hudson Taylor

11. “To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.” – Billy Graham

12. “Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue; God’s voice is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.” – Andrew Murray

13. “To desire revival… and at the same time to neglect (personal) prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.” – A.W. Tozer

14. “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.” – George Mueller

15. “Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails.” – E. M. Bounds

16. “God does nothing but by prayer, and everything with it.” – John Wesley

17. “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.” – Oswald Chambers

18. “Search for a person who claims to have found Christ apart from someone else’s prayer, and your search may go on forever.” – E. Bauman

19. “Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.” – John Wesley

20. “God will do great things for you if you will wait for Him. Yield to Him. Cooperate with Him.” – John Smith

21. “A day without prayer is a day without blessing, and a life without prayer is a life without power.” – Edwin Harvey

22. “Quit playing, start praying. Quit feasting, start fasting. Talk less with men, talk more with God. Listen less to men, listen to the words of God. Skip travel, start travail.” – Leonard Ravenhill

23. “None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience. It is a great matter when in extreme need to take hold on prayer.” – Martin Luther

24. “You know the value of prayer: it is precious beyond all price. Never, never neglect it.” – Sir Thomas Buxton

25. “Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary to a minister. Pray, then my dear brother; pray, pray, pray.” – Edward Payson

26. “It is not enough to begin to pray, nor to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray; but we must patiently, believingly, continue in prayer until we obtain an answer; and further we have not only to continue in prayer unto the end, but we have also to believe that God does hear us, and will answer our prayers. Most frequently we fail in not continuing in prayer until the blessing is obtained, and in not expecting the blessing.” – George Müller

27. “Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things!” – Andrew Murray

28. “The reason why we obtain no more in prayer is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts.” – Richard Alleine

29. “Satan cannot deny but that great wonders have been wrought by prayer. As the spirit of prayer goes up, so his kingdom goes down.” – William Gurnall

30. “The devil is aware that one hour of close fellowship, hearty converse with God in prayer, is able to pull down what he hath been contriving and building many a year.” – Flavel

31. “Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect unexpected things ‘above all that we ask or think.’” – Andrew Murray

32. “If we would pray aright, the first thing we should do is to see to it that we really get an audience with God, that we really get into His very presence. Before a word of petition is offered, we should have the definite consciousness that we are talking to God, and should believe that He is listening and is going to grant the thing that we ask of Him.” – Dr. R. A. Torrey

33. “What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul.” – Samuel Chadwick

34. “Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality…plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way…Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it.” – Charles Spurgeon

35. “Where there is much prayer, there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the Spirit, there will be ever-increasing prayer.” – Andrew Murray

36. “A godly man is a praying man. As soon as grace is poured in, prayer is poured out. Prayer is the soul’s traffic with Heaven; God comes down to us by His Spirit, and we go up to Him by prayer.” – Thomas Watson

37. “Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.” – D. L. Moody

38. “There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer.” – Jonathan Edwards

39. “As it is the business of tailors to make clothes, and the business of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray!” – Martin Luther

40. “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.” – Martin Luther

41. “Intercessory prayer is exceedingly prevalent. What wonders it has wrought! The Word of God teems with its marvelous deeds. Believer, thou hast a mighty engine in thy hand, use it well, use it constantly, use it with faith, and thou shalt surely be a benefactor to thy brethren.” – C. H. Spurgeon

42. “The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.” – Samuel Chadwick

43. “What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men who the Holy Spirit can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not come on machinery but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.” – E. M. Bounds

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Be Stirred To Pray!

My hope is that these quotes about prayer have stirred your heart to pray big, audacious prayers to God.

To take hold of God by faith and not let go until God answers.

Because when we pray, things happen. God moves. Circumstances change. Our hearts conform more to his will.

Prayer does mighty things.

Posted at: https://theblazingcenter.com/2019/05/quotes-about-prayer.html

The Blessing of the Gift of Prayer

by David Qaoud 

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the benefits of being a Christian. There are so many that I hardly know where to start. I can easily write about the gifts of justification, sanctification, or adoption (and many others similar to it). But in this post, I want to keep it simple. I want to focus on a blessing that we may sometimes overlook — the blessing of the gift of prayer.

Isn’t it amazing that the God of the Bible allows his people to communicate with him through prayer?

I think sometimes we take for granted this access we have to God. But if you pause and think about the various dimensions of prayer and just how beneficial this access to God is, it will bless your soul.

The Blessing of the Gift of Prayer

When I think about prayer being a blessing, here are some things that come to mind:

We have 24/7 access to God.

There have been times when I couldn’t fall asleep because I felt restless. During these times, it’s almost impossible to cast your burdens on anyone else since they are likely asleep. And yet, even in the middle of the night when everyone else is unavailable, God is up, ready and willing to hear your prayer.

This is amazing. You might have close family, friends, mentors, and other such relationships where people are helpful to you in many ways. But they cannot always be there for you because they are not always available. But God is incessantly accessible.

The Lord doesn’t need sleep. He’s always awake. You can always go to him — at 2:00 am when your screaming baby can’t sleep, at 6:30 am when you’re anxious and scared about facing the day, at noon when the day isn’t going how you planned. This 24/7, 365 access to God we have in prayer is truly astounding.

We don’t need to use physical words when we pray.

I once led a small group with someone. I told this person I was praying for our group at work, to which the response I received was something like, “God loves cubicles prayers, too!”

It’s true: because God is omniscient (all-knowing), he can understand what you pray in your mind with 100% accuracy, every single time. Yes, using words and praying out loud is essential. Soundless prayers should not summarize the entirety of our prayer lives. But sometimes words aren’t possible, and God gets your thoughts.

We don’t need to always pray long-winded prayers.

I love this exchange between the King and Nehemiah.

The King asks: “What are you requesting?” (Nehemiah 2:4a). And this is the little line I love: “So I prayed to the God of heaven” (Nehemiah 2:4b). And then Nehemiah tells the king what he wants.

The footnote from my ESV Study Bible says: “Nehemiah had prayed a great deal, of course (Neh. 1:4), but here he quickly speaks to God (probably silently) before he answers the King.”

I’m not knocking long-winded prayers. I love praying extensively, and I find my prayer times with the Lord to be some of the best parts of my day. But there is a time and place for everything, which means sometimes your prayers should be long-winded and other times they simply will not. Sometimes, you can just say a quick prayer, move forward, and trust God with the results.

I heard a story of a Christian leader who was on a panel discussing a tough cultural topic. He was asked a hard question and didn’t know how to respond. He knocked his pen from the table to buy himself time to pray quickly and silently in his mind as he picked up his pen. He said after he prayed and picked up his pen, he felt as if the Lord gave him a response.

Who am I to doubt him? I believe these sorts of little prayers throughout the day are powerful.

Prayer changes things.

John Piper says: “Prayer causes things to happen that would not happen if you did not pray.”

As it’s been said before, God ordains all ends (the end result of everything that happens), but he also ordains the means to every end (the things that he uses to make the ends happen), and he sometimes uses your prayers to accomplish the ends.

I bring this up because it’s not talked about enough. Too often we treat prayer as something we should do only to sustain us, to give thanks, and to ask for general things. These things are good — very good. But don’t forget that God is a Father and you are his child. And as his child, you are free to pray prayers with particular specificity for things that you want to see happen. Pray big, bold, specific, prayers.

Prayer changes you.

Back to the previous one: prayer can change things. But sometimes it doesn’t. Why? It could be for a number of reasons. But it’s usually because your prayer does not align with God’s will. But that’s a good thing because God knows better.

And yet, we must recognize that while prayer does not always change your circumstances, prayer often changes you. The Lord meets with you when you pray. He sanctifies you. He changes your character and provides what you need to get through your situation, even if he does not give you exactly what you want.

We can go to other Christians for prayer.

When we take prayer requests at church or after small groups or after that one-on-one coffee meeting, we are not playing games. We’re not just going through motions. We’re not just saying Christian stuff just to be saying it. No, we ask for prayer requests because we know our God answers prayer. It is such a privilege to belong to a group of people — namely, the church — where we know we can have other brothers and sisters pray for us.

There are many aspects to prayer which are a blessing. Often, we take it for granted. But when we reflect on the many ways in which prayer is a blessing, it will help us appreciate this great gift from God.

Posted at: http://gospelrelevance.com/2019/03/18/the-blessing-of-the-gift-of-prayer/

15 Prayers for God's Power

Article by John Piper

I love strength. I love the word “mighty,” as in “mighty woman of God” and “mighty man of God.” I love to hear that Moses “was mighty in his words and deeds” (Acts 7:22), and that Apollos was “mighty in the Scriptures” (Acts 18:24 NASB).

I love it when Paul says, “Act like men, be strong” (1 Corinthians 16:13), or, “Be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might” (Ephesians 6:10), or, “Be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus” (2 Timothy 2:1 NASB).

But make no mistake, the pursuit of this might is not the path to human power and pride. It is the path of ceaseless warfare with your own self. The greatest power in the world among human beings is the power not to sin. The power of holiness and love.

So, if you are up for it, would you join me in these fifteen prayers that you would be a mighty man of God or a mighty woman of God?

1. Lord, make me so mighty in wisdom that I know and taste that the height of might is childlikeness (Matthew 18:4).

2. Lord, make me so mighty in war that I defeat every impulse in my soul that destroys peace (Hebrews 12:14; Romans 14:19; Matthew 5:9).

3. Lord, make me so mighty in my hardness against bitterness that tenderness of heart is not destroyed by wounds (Hosea 11:8; Ephesians 4:32; 1 Peter 3:8).

4. Lord, make me mightily unbending and inflexible in my Christ-exalting resolve to bend and become all things to all people that I might save some (1 Corinthians 9:22).

5. Lord, make my trunk and branches so mightily tough and impervious to wind and drought that I never cease to bear the fruit of gentleness (Galatians 5:23; James 3:17; 1 Peter 3:4).

6. Lord, make me so mighty in serpentine discernment that I see every opening for dove-like love (Matthew 10:16).

7. Lord, make me so mightily unmoved by the sting and deceits of injustice against me that I may feel and show the miracle of undeserved compassion (Luke 10:33; 15:20; Hebrews 10:34; 1 Peter 3:8).

8. Lord, make me so mightily unyielding to the enticements of selfishness that from my heart kindness forever flows (2 Corinthians 6:6; Galatians 5:22; Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:12).

9. Lord, make me so mightily unresponsive to the honeyed lure of self-pity that I may have ever-replenished resources to return good for evil (Romans 12:17; 1 Thessalonians 5:15; 1 Peter 3:9).

10. Lord, make me mighty with ruthless courage to cut off my hand at every trace of greed that I may be content with what I have (Philippians 4:11; 1 Timothy 6:8; Hebrews 13:5).

11. Lord, make me mighty with happy thoughts of child and wife and King to tear out my eye lest I betray their trust and lose the purity that sees my God (Matthew 5:8, 29).

12. Lord, make me so mighty against the powers of self-justification that I never lose the humility to repent and weep for my sin (James 4:9; 5:16).

13. Lord, make me so mighty in resisting the bait of frenzied productivity that I never cease to enjoy the still waters of prayer and your sweet presence (Psalm 23:2; Isaiah 46:10; Luke 10:42).

14. Lord, make me so mighty against the deadly undertow of self-reliance that I am never ashamed to trust your arm, like a child with his father, in every breaking wave (Psalm 37:3, 5; Proverbs 3:5; Galatians 2:20).

15. Lord, make me so mighty in seeing and mighty in savoring the promises of your sovereign grace that in all my sorrows I might never cease to sing your praise (Matthew 5:11–12; Acts 16:25; 2 Corinthians 6:10; 1 Peter 4:13).

Why is it So Hard to Pray

By Burk Parsons

It’s hard to pray because humbling ourselves, getting over ourselves, and coming to the end of our stubborn and sinful selves is hard. When we pray, we die to self, and death hurts. That’s why our flesh fights so hard against prayer. When we pray, we are entering into real warfare against our flesh and against the flaming arrows of our accuser and his host. Although they are not afraid of us, they are terrified of the One within us and who is for us, and they despise that we are praying to the One who has crushed them and will destroy them.

Moreover, it’s hard to pray because our focus is too often on praying itself and not on God. We learn about prayer not so that we might know a lot of facts about prayer, but so that we might pray with our focus on God. By His sovereign grace, we know Him, and we know He is there and that He not only hears but listens—that He is not silent but that He always answers our prayers and always acts in accord with His perfect will for our ultimate good and for His glory. When we recognize God’s sovereignty in prayer, we are also reminded of His love, grace, holiness, and righteousness, and we are thereby confronted with the harsh reality of our own wretched sin in the light of His glory and grace.

We will always to some degree in our lives find it difficult to pray, but, nevertheless, we must always pray.  SHARE

Thus, Christians don’t actually believe in the power of prayer—we believe in the power of God, and that is why we pray. So, when we pray, we are reminded of who we’re not—we’re reminded that we’re not God and that we’re not in control. We’re reminded that God is sovereign and in control, and so we must recognize that prayer is our daily and continual surrender of our perceived control over our lives to the One who has control of them and cares about them more than we do.

If I thought for a second that my feeble prayers changed God’s mind and His perfect will, I would stop praying altogether. I’m sinful. I don’t know everything, and I can’t control everything. Yet because God is omniscient and omnipotent, and because He has our ultimate good and His glory in mind, we can trust Him. Sometimes, God’s answer to our prayer is “no,” sometimes “wait,” sometimes “yes,” and sometimes “yes, and beyond what you could even imagine.” We will always to some degree in our lives find it difficult to pray, but, nevertheless, we must always pray. We must also pray for God to help us pray, treating prayer less like a grocery list and more like a letter of love, not simply talking to God but communing with our closest and most loving companion.

Dr. Burk Parsons (@BurkParsons) is editor of Tabletalkmagazine, senior pastor of Saint Andrew’s Chapel in Sanford, Fla., and a Ligonier Ministries teaching fellow. He is cotranslator and coeditor of A Little Book on the Christian Lifeby John Calvin. 

Posted at: https://tabletalkmagazine.com/article/2019/03/why-is-it-so-hard-to-pray/

Prayer: A Source of Living Water and Strength For Desert Wanderers

by James Williams 

We know we need to pray. We also know the Scripture commands us to “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17). After all, the forces of evil will do everything in their power to stop God’s people  from praying. Even though, we know all that (or should know that),  yet we often find our prayer life lacking.

Why?

Perhaps the most common excuse is that we’re so busy. I can relate to this. The demands of life are ever-increasing without a single minute being added to the day. On top of the normal demands of a full-time job, kids must be taken to practice, yards must be mowed, and somebody has got to figure out what’s causing that funky smell in the mini-van. On top of all this, any ‘spare’ moment I can find is spent trying to complete my dissertation. While your situation might look different than mine, chances are you are extremely busy too. Is that the real reason we don’t pray enough?

No.

A DEEPER ISSUE

While it’s true, we are very busy, that’s simply the surface excuse. The problem is much deeper. As Jackie Hill Perry perceptively states, “Our busy schedules aren’t keeping us from prayer, our hearts are.” Our continual lack of prayer is an indication of something deep within our heart. Maybe it’s pride telling us that we’ve ‘got this’ on our own. It could be our unbelief telling us to that prayer is a waste of time when there so much more ‘practical’ things to do. Of course, most of us would never say these things explicitly, but our actions show what a portion of our heart truly believes. These deep-seeded issues in our heart come out in many different ways:

• Perhaps we don’t pray for our spouse enough because we think we’ve got the whole marriage thing figured out.

• Perhaps we don’t pray for our kids enough because we subconsciously think that our ability to ‘raise them right’ is enough for them.

• Perhaps we don’t pray for our fellow church members enough because we’re ignorant of the forces of darkness that are seeking to destroy their faith or the temptations they face daily.

• Perhaps we don’t pray for the government leaders enough because we don’t believe it really does anything.

• Perhaps we don’t pray for our pursuit of holiness because, compared to some, we’re doing ok.

• Perhaps we don’t pray for God to work in a difficult situation because we simply think we’re capable enough to fix it on our own.

• Perhaps we don’t pray for lost loved ones because we doubt the power of the Gospel to work in the hardest hearts.

The main problem isn’t that we are too busy (although we probably are), it’s that we are too self-sufficient, too prideful, or too unbelieving to pray. At times, God pulls back the curtain and gives us a glimpse into how needy we are.

DESERT WANDERERS

I don’t like to think I’m weak, but the reality is I’m a needy wanderer walking barefoot in a sun-scorched desert. My pride might tell me I’m ok, but every step in the blistering sand sears my feet and elevates my body temperature. The great Accuser reminds me of past sin that zaps my mouth of any drop of moisture, causing my tongue to stick to the roof of my mouth. Every failure is another bead of sweat that gathers on my drenched forehead, reminding me that my body is slowly withering away in dehydration. At last, I see a fountain of water ahead and desperately hobble to it only to discover the mirage of my own self-sufficiency. By my own fading strength, I’m crawling through life on the verge of death, longing for a drink.

It’s only when I see the truth about my situation that I’ll make time to pray. With a dry mouth and sandy hands, I’ll adjust my schedule to drink deeply of the water of life. Jesus said, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink” (John 7:37). The truth is we are all thirsty, we just don’t always realize it. Rather than see ourselves as desert wanderers, we like to imagine our life as a well-equipped day at the beach. However, when we come to see our inabilities, insufficiencies, and unholiness, we’ll fall down before our Maker in humble desperation.

Do we cry out with the Psalmist, “O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water” (Psalm 63:1)? As Kevin DeYoung says, our life shows what we truly cherish:

If someone recorded your life for a week and then showed it to a group of strangers, what would they guess is the “good portion” in your life? What would they conclude is the one thing you must get done every day? Folding the laundry? Cleaning the house? Catching up on e-mails? Posting to Facebook? Mowing the lawn? Watching the game? I know you have things to do. I have plenty to do myself. But out of all the concerns in our lives, can we honestly say and show that sitting at the feet of Jesus is the one thing that is necessary?

My fellow desert wanderer, let us drink deeply today through prayer and God’s word that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Given our state of absolute need and desperation, and given the mighty abundance of grace and mercy available in Christ, it’s foolish not to pray. Let us not die of thirst and exhaustion when living water and strength are only a prayer away.

Posted at: http://servantsofgrace.org/prayer-a-source-of-living-water-and-strength-for-desert-wanderers/

The Parent's Daily Commute

Erik Raymund

I awoke recently to a nice, fresh snowfall. Curious to see how much we received I ventured outside to take a look. It was a modest amount, maybe 3 to 5 inches. It was early, and I noticed the sidewalks had yet to see any foot traffic. I made my coffee, resolving to shovel after doing some reading. Soon I went outside and there several footprints in the freshly fallen snow. Neighbors and others living nearby had made their way out, venturing to work or to take their dogs for an early morning walk. The soft blanket of snow had been disturbed by the shuffling of feet.

As I went out to shovel our steps and clear the sidewalk, a word picture emerged reminding me of the parental privilege and priority of prayer.

Think of each day when you awake as a fresh snow. There are no tracks. All is quiet. Then you get up and bring your petitions to God for your children. You pray for their salvation. You pray for them to honor Christ. You pray for their studies in school. You pray for their potential spouses. You pray for them to serve in Christ’s church. You pray for them to grow in their understanding and love of the Bible. You pray for them to be faithful. You pray for God to supply a rich gospel legacy. You pray for them to steward their lives and the gospel well. You pray for them.

Think of this parental praying as making new tracks in the fresh, previously undisturbed snow. You are, as their parent, bringing your petitions to the throne of grace. You are interceding for them. You are begging God that you would not do anything that would hinder their love for and faithfulness to Jesus. You are making a lot of tracks as you commute to the throne of grace. This is a privilege given to believing parents. We are instructed to pray for our children. We are blessed with the opportunity to do so. What a privilege!

But this is also a priority. They need us to pray. What happens if we get lazy as parents? If we presume upon God’s grace, then we won’t pray. If we minimize the danger of sin, then we won’t pray. If we undervalue the joy of holiness, then we won’t pray. If we overestimate our ability to parent them, then we won’t pray. This troubled me. It convicted me. I was unsettled a bit as a parent. To not pray for our kids is not to do one of the best things we can do for them. To not pray for our children is to neglect their souls. It is to fail to do them spiritual good. We may rightly impugn those who ignore their children’s most basic needs (food, shelter, clothing, time, development, and so on). However, how indicting is it Christians, if we remain we fail to make tracks to the throne of grace? What if we are mute at the bench of petition on our kids’ behalf?

Parents have the privilege and priority of making the daily commute to the throne of grace for their kids.

If you are a parent, think about what the “snow” looks like in front of your child’s house. Is it smooth and undisturbed? Or, have you been making fresh tracks commuting to the presence of God on their behalf?

Parents, if we don’t pray for our kids, then who will? It’s good to feel this burden. And, it’s good to know this privilege. Put together then, Christian parents should have a priority of daily praying for their children.

Be grateful, then, that God hears your prayers through the merit of Jesus. Know that he is gracious to imperfect parents like us. Be reassured that he is both sovereign and good; whatever he has decreed will come to pass. And so pray—and make some tracks in the snow.

Posted at: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/erik-raymond/parents-daily-commute/

What To Do When You Are Prayerless

Article by Jon Bloom

Prayerlessness is not fundamentally a discipline problem. At root it’s a faith problem.

Prayer is the native language of faith. John Calvin called prayer the “chief exercise of faith” (quoted in “Enjoying Your Prayer Life,” 12). That’s why when faith is awake and surging in us, prayer doesn’t feel like a burden or an obligation. It feels natural. It’s how faith most instinctively speaks.

Throughout the Bible, faith and prayer are inextricably linked. One of the clearest examples is Jesus’s statement in John 15:7: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” “Abiding” in Jesus is faith — fully believing his words. Asking whatever you wish is prayer. The Bible tells us to “trust in [God] at all times” (Psalm 62:8), to “[pray] at all times in the Spirit” (Ephesians 6:18), to “believe in God” (John 14:1), and to ask of God (Luke 11:9). Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.

John 15:7 also shows us that God’s word and faith and therefore prayer are inextricably linked. Faith is a response to God’s word: “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:17). As Tim Keller rightly says, “If God’s words are his personal, active presence [see John 1:1–3 and Isaiah 55:10–11], then to put your trust in God’s words is to put your trust in God” (Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, 53). So if our trust is in God (in God’s promises — 2 Peter 1:4), and God says if you trust me “ask whatever you wish” (John 15:7), then the natural expression of our faith in God is prayer.

The Primary Cause of Prayerlessness

First, when I say “prayerless,” I don’t mean completely prayerless. I mean relatively prayerless. I mean that we aren’t anywhere close to “pray[ing] without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). We aren’t communing with God in prayer, so prayer feels like a burdensome, boring, perhaps futile exercise that we rush through in a perfunctory way or avoid. When we do pray, our prayers seem feeble and powerless, which just leads to less praying. We don’t have it in us “to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).

So what’s wrong?

“Prayer is the chief exercise of faith.”

If prayer is the native language of faith and we’re struggling with prayerlessness, then the first thing we need to do is look for a faith problem. There’s a faith breakdown somewhere and, until we get that fixed, our problem will remain.

How do we fix this? We’ll talk about that in a minute, but first let’s talk about what not to fix first.

The Role of Discipline in Prayer

Often our first attempt at fixing our prayerlessness is to try and be “more disciplined” in prayer. We look at heroes, mentors, and peers who seem to have vibrant, powerful prayer lives and figure the solution might be doing what they do or did. If we get up earlier and use a more effective list or app or acronym we’ll fix our problem. Methods are necessary and beneficial as we’ll see, but “more discipline” is a false hope if faith is the problem.

Think of prayer as a train. Faith is the engine of prayer, God’s promises are the fuel, and discipline is the rails. Prayerlessness is almost always due to a stalled engine. For prayer to get going again, we first need to fire up our faith engine again with fuel from God’s promises.

You see, discipline doesn’t power the train of prayer. Faith powers the train as you trust God’s word. But discipline will guide the train. The rails of planning, structure, and methods are necessary. But the best time to address those is when you’ve stoked your engine, because when faith is firing you want to move forward in prayer and you are more likely to be led by the Spirit to choose the rails that are best for your prayer train.

Help for Fighting Prayerlessness

“Faith is the engine of prayer, God’s promises are the fuel, and discipline is the rails.”

So when we’re prayerless, the first thing we must address is the cause of our faith deficit. Here are a few suggestions for doing that:

1. Recall God’s past grace: I put this first because in my experience, when my faith is ebbing low and I’m not even sure why, remembering how God has been faithful to me in the past primes my faith engine to trust in God’s future grace for whatever is causing my current unbelief. “This I call to mind, and therefore I have hope” (Lamentations 3:21).

2. Find the leak: Where is the leak in your fuel tank? If the fuel of faith is God’s promises, then there is a promise(s) that you are not believing. Look for fears, doubts, indulgent sinful habits, unresolved anger, bitterness, disappointment, etc. Often these don’t take long to find. But sometimes they are tricky because something has tapped into a buried past experience that is still muddled in your mind. If this is the case, ask trusted believers to help you figure it out. But when you identify it, name it. Get it clear.

3. Repent of unbelief: A lack of faith is sin. It’s dishonoring to God whose every word is true (Proverbs 30:5). We must repent of unbelief. But God loves to help our unbelief (Mark 9:24) turn into belief. In fact, sanctification is largely a process of growing towards trusting in the Lord with all our hearts (Proverbs 3:5). Like he did with Thomas, Jesus holds out to us his scarred hands to remind us that our unbelief is paid for and says, “Do not disbelieve, but believe” (John 20:27).

4. Fuel your faith engine with promises: God’s promises are the fuel that fires the engine of faith. Get your eyes off of the focus of your unbelief and get them on the promises that God wants you to believe instead. This is often not as hard as it feels like it’s going to be. It’s amazing how powerful God’s promises are. You can feel completely different in a half hour after recalling God’s past faithfulness and remembering some promises without any change in your circumstances. The difference is believing.

5. Fan your faith engine fire with resources: Here are just a few of many resources that can help you tune your faith engine and build helpful rails for your prayer train:

“Enjoy Your Prayer Life”: a short booklet by Michael Reeves that you can read in 30–40 minutes. It’s broken into 14 chapters of a couple pages each, which makes it easy to incorporate into your devotions. I have found this very helpful.

Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God: an excellent new book by Tim Keller that addresses in-depth both engine and rail issues. I’m reading it currently and greatly benefitting.

A Praying Life: Connecting with God in a Distracting World: this book by Paul Miller has been a strength to me. He compassionately pastors all of us prayer-strugglers and helps us both tune our engines and build helpful rails.

Battling Unbelief: Defeating Sin with Superior Pleasure: this book by John Piper is a wonderful place to fill your tank with promises to fuel your faith engine and will help you fight our most common forms of unbelief.

“Get your eyes off of the focus of your unbelief and onto the promises God wants you to believe.”

“Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit” (John Piper, video or audio, 53 min): a great sermon for your engine and your rails.

“Prayer as a Way of Walking in Love” (Francis Chan, video or audio, 1 hr): mainly for your engine. I’ve listened to this numerous times.

“George Mueller’s Strategy for Showing God” (John Piper, audio, 1 hr, 15 min): mainly for your engine, but some rail help too. I’ve listened to this repeatedly.

“The Ministry of Hudson Taylor as Life in Christ” (John Piper, video or audio, 1 hr, 12 min): mainly for your engine. I’ve listened to this repeatedly.

Jon Bloom (@Bloom_Jon) serves as author, board chair, and co-founder of Desiring God. He is author of three books, Not by Sight, Things Not Seen, and Don’t Follow Your Heart. He and his wife have five children and make their home in the Twin Cities.

Posted at: https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/what-to-do-when-were-prayerless

When "Thy Will Be Done" Becomes Self-Protection

Article by Brittany Lee Allen

I was restless. Many thoughts bouncing from one side of my head to the other, colliding and creating more thoughts. Silently, I watched the Black-Capped Chickadees dash across the yard into the white spruce right outside the window, their quickness mimicking the questions and fears racing through my mind.

How do you keep bringing your broken heart before the God who allowed it to be shattered?

That’s what I found myself wondering. It just seems easier to keep our distance and bury our longings in the tomb with all that’s been lost.

The Idol of Self-Protection

Praying for things we desire comes naturally for many people but for me, it’s a struggle. I fear my heart’s quick reaction to such prayers—how it turns my requests into idols. I don’t want to desire the created thing more than the Creator, so I don’t ask. But in not taking my supplications to him, I keep back a part of my heart from him, and therefore, provide fresh soil for the roots of another idol to deepen.

My “good” theology morphs into self-protection. You see, if I don’t ask for a baby, if a single gal doesn’t ask for a husband, or a cancer patient doesn’t ask for healing, maybe it won’t hurt as much if God doesn’t fulfill that desire. Sometimes praying “thy will be done” becomes a cover-up for “I’m too scared to ask” revealing the underlying disbelief in a heart.

The Good God Who Withholds

We struggle to believe God could withhold something good we’ve asked for and still be good himself. But we forget he withholds no good thing from his children (Psalm 84:11). Truly, he knows best. And because he is perfectly wise, good, and sovereign, we can trust he will always choose what’s best for us. Sometimes, that isn’t the “good” thing we hoped for because he has something better.

So often, we have our earthly good in mind, but our Good Father never loses sight of the thing which will cause us to be most blessed, that is, Christlikeness—our eternal good.

An Act of Faith

Many times our prayer for God’s will to be done becomes a way to dodge the discomfort of pouring our heart out before the Lord. For some, it’s an act of faith to pray “your will be done, Lord” while others have to step out in faith to utter the words “please, Lord.”

I’m scared to ask God for what he may not give. I have enough biblical knowledge to know I’m not promised a baby we can raise. Promises like that were given to Abraham and Sarah, Zechariah and Elizabeth, but not to Jim and Brittany Allen. I know that in his goodness, God many times withholds what we long for. Which is why it becomes an act of faith to ask.

Instead of clinging to my heart, trying to protect myself from the possible blow of God’s “no”, I lay it bare and exposed before him and echo Hannah’s prayer in her distress…

“O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life.” (1 Samuel 1:11 ESV)

Hannah had not been promised a child. But that didn’t stop her from pouring out her soul to the Lord (1 Samuel 1:15). She bowed down before her heavenly Father and cried sorrowful tears at his feet and asked. She didn’t add a quick “if it be your will” before her request. She simply asked. Just as a daughter would ask her father.

Because he is our Father, we must trust him to decide what is truly good for us. This is where faith comes into play. This is where surpassing peace can be found. At the feet of our loving Father.

If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him! (Matthew 7:11 ESV)

Let us pour our hearts out before God and ask for what we desire. But let us always do so with a humble heart, knowing he knows best and will do no other.

Posted at: https://brittleeallen.com/2019/01/when-thy-will-be-done-becomes-self-protection/

Exalting God by Humbling Ourselves

Article by Al Mohler

God’s Abundant Physical Provisions 

In his magisterial work The Institutes of the Christian Religion, the sixteenth-century reformer John Calvin remarked that we can never truly know ourselves without first coming to know the character of God. As Calvin famously stated, “It is certain that man never achieves a clear knowledge of himself unless he has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating him to scrutinize himself.” God is our starting point in every theological and spiritual endeavor. God’s character and glory are our first frame of reference.

Up to this point, the Lord’s Prayer has revealed a great deal about the character of God. We have seen that for those who are in Christ, God is a caring Father. Jesus emphasized God’s transcendence and omnipotence by observing that he is “in heaven.” He established the worth of God and the value of his glory by teaching that God’s name should be hallowed. Finally, Jesus emphasizes that God is king–the sovereign Lord who will bring his kingdom to every corner of the earth.

Indeed, the first lines of the Lord’s Prayer paint an awesome portrait of God. In light of these truths, Jesus’ subsequent turn to consider our own needs–“Give us this day our daily bread”–serves as a clear and unmistakable reminder that we are merely creatures; God is the creator. We are needy; God is the provider.

God has designed humans to be dependent. From the moment of birth, we rely on the kindness of others to meet our needs. We need our parents to feed us, dress us, and even train us to sleep. Even as we grow older, we remain tremendously needy. We depend on others for relationships. We need communities in which to live and work. We depend on the government for safety and security. In other words, there is no such thing as the “self-made man.” We have no sufficiency in and of ourselves, and we delude ourselves by believing we can be truly independent of others. Luther once reminisced that our physical needs remind us that we are but creatures composed of dirt. Our lives are frail, fragile, and wholly dependent on the goodness of God.

The petition “give us this day our daily bread” reminds us of our dependence on God for even the most fundamental needs of life. The contrast with the depiction of God given earlier in the prayer is striking. He is glorious, hallowed, in heaven, and omnipotent. We, on the other hand, are incapable of even getting basic sustenance without his help. In these words, then, Jesus teaches us to exalt God while humbling ourselves. The radical God-centeredness of the prayer continues. Man’s pride has no place before the throne of God.

Physical Needs in Biblical Perspective 

We are dependent on God. Even prior to the fall, humans needed God to provide for them. Adam needed God to provide Eve to fulfill his need for a relationship. Adam and Eve could tend the garden, but only God could make it grow. Sin did not create our dependence; we are dependent simply because we are creatures.

Even though Adam and Eve were dependent before the fall, their only experience was one of surplus and abundance. They never knew a day of scarcity. After the fall, however, their experience was quite different, as is ours today. Our default experience is no longer abundance but scarcity. Food must be produced by the sweat of our brow, and its existence is never certain. Thus, after the fall we became even more dependent on God for our daily sustenance. We are no longer merely creatures in need of provision; we are sinners in need of the Creator’s mercy…

Bread of Earth, Bread From Heaven: Echoes of Eternity in Jesus’ Petition for Bread

This request also reminds us of our daily need for the Lord Jesus. Moses reminded the Israelites in Deuteronomy 8:3 that the reason God let the Israelites go hungry for a time before providing them with manna was so that they might learn that “man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.” This passage teaches us that God designed physical needs to point to our deeper spiritual needs. Our need for daily physical sustenance is a faint echo of our daily need of spiritual sustenance and satisfaction from God. This was true for ancient Israel and is true for Christians today. The only way that we will taste the goodness of God’s provision is by living according to what comes from the mouth of God.

This is why Jesus regularly referred to himself as the “bread of life,” the true manna sent from heaven (John 6:35). He is God’s ultimate provision for our spiritual lives. Each day, as we pray for our daily bread, we should be reminded of our daily need for Christ to forgive our sins and empower us for obedience. Each time we pray for daily bread, we should recognize our deeper need for the bread of life–the only one who can truly satisfy.

To read more, purchase your copy of The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or ChristianBook.com.

Posted at: https://albertmohler.com/2018/11/07/give-us-day-exalting-god-humbling/

The Lord's Prayer is a Gospel Prayer

Article by Al Mohler

The Gospel Foundation of the Lord’s Prayer 

We are a nation of debtors. Millions of young people are on the verge of bankruptcy with unpayable credit card debt that compounds yet more interest every month. The problem of school debt, often running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, has now become a national crisis. Even the federal government is in debt–debt that has soared into untold trillions of dollars.

Yet while many Americans view debt as an annoyance, in the ancient world debt was punishable by prison sentence. In the Roman Empire, prisons were not generally filled with criminals; they were populated with debtors. Most convicted criminals were executed or were forced to serve some other form of punishment for their crimes, but those who could not make good on their payments were incarcerated until they could pay what they owed. This system was meant to put pressure on the families of the incarcerated debtor to find the necessary money to pay their debts to free their loved one from prison.

In the Roman Empire, then, debt typically meant severe pain and tragedy for an individual and a family. In our day we experience frustration and anxiety with debt, but in the days of Jesus, debt was a matter of life and death. This is the context in which Jesus teaches us to pray “forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus’ use of the word debts is meant to evoke in our mind both a serious offense and a corresponding serious punishment. To be forgiven a debt was no mere trifle, but an act of extravagant mercy.

If the petition “give us this day our daily bread” emphasizes our most urgent physical needs, the petition “forgive us our debts” emphasizes our most urgent spiritual need. Saying we owe a debt to God means that we have failed to pay up. Thus, as sinners, we stand before God condemned, rightly deserving his just wrath. Only God’s forgiveness can clear our guilt and establish a meaningful relationship between God and us.

This petition reminds us that the Lord’s Prayer is not a casual prayer for the generically religious. This prayer is a gospel prayer. We can only say these words and ask these things of God when we stand on the finished, atoning work of Jesus Christ. Indeed, this petition demonstrates that the theological bedrock of the Lord’s Prayer is nothing less than the gospel. We can only rightly pray the Lord’s Prayer when we recognize that we are deeply sinful and only God’s grace in Christ can remedy our souls.

Getting the Gospel Right 

The logic of this particular petition in the Lord’s Prayer has been misconstrued so often that we would do well to remind ourselves of what Scripture teaches about the gospel. Nothing is more central to the message of Scripture than the gospel. If we err on this point, we err on all others. Many interpreters believe that Jesus is saying that God only forgives us when we earn his forgiveness through forgiving others. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, this petition does not say “forgive us our debts because we forgive our debtors,” but “forgive us our debts aswe have forgiven our debtors.” The difference between those two phrases, as we shall see, is the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ and no gospel at all.

The sum and substance of the gospel is that a holy and righteous God who must claim a full penalty for our sin both demands that penalty and provides it. His self-substitution is Jesus Christ the Son, whose perfect obedience and perfectly accomplished atonement on the cross purchased all that is necessary for our salvation. Jesus Christ met the full demands of the righteousness and justice of God against our sin.

Paul summarized the work of Christ in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” Christ is our substitute and his life is sacrificed for our sin so that God’s wrath against us is removed.

How then do we benefit from the sacrifice of Christ for us? Paul answered that we do not earn the righteousness of God in Christ; instead it is given to us freely when we believe the gospel: “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:23-24). Indeed, nothing in us or achieved by us is the grounds of our acceptance with God. Instead, as Paul made clear, “To the one who does not work but believes in him who justified the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5)…

The apostle was very clear. We are saved by faith alone in the work of Christ. All this comes from the grace of God. But we are not freed just from the penalty of sin; we are also freed from the power of sin. While our salvation is not a “result of works,” Paul noted that it does result in works, ones that God himself prepared for us to do. The portrait of the gospel is indeed astounding. We are saved by grace along through faith alone in Christ alone, which then results in our being transformed into the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18). Indeed the whole of our salvation proclaims the glory of God…

If you have ever been tempted to think that the gospel is nowhere present in the Lord’s Prayer, think again! This petition only makes sense in the context of Christ’s provision for us. By agreeing with God that we are sinners and repenting of that sin by asking for forgiveness, God clears our debts on account of Christ’s work for us.

If this does not shock us, then we have grown fare too familiar with the gospel and the glory of God’s grace. The extravagant mercy of God shown in this petition should be on our lips and in our hearts daily. When we recognize we are debtors, then we see ourselves as we truly are, beggars at the throne of grace. Martin Luther, the great Reformer of the sixteenth century, certainly understood and reveled in this truth. When Luther came to die, his last moments were characterized by delirium and moving in and out of consciousness. Yet in one last moment of clarity Luther said (mixing German with Latin), “Wir sind bettler. Hoc est verum“–We are beggars, this is true.

To read more, purchase your copy of The Prayer that Turns the World Upside Down at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or ChristianBook.com.

Posted at: https://albertmohler.com/2018/11/29/forgive-us-debts-lords-prayer-gospel-prayer/