Alone With God: Rediscovering the Power and Passion of Prayer

by John F. MacArthur Jr.

For Christians, prayer is like breathing. You don’t have to think to breathe because the atmosphere exerts pressure on your lungs and forces you to breathe. That’s why it is more difficult to hold your breath than it is to breathe. Similarly, when you’re born into the family of God, you enter into a spiritual atmosphere wherein God’s presence and grace exert pressure, or influence, on your life. Prayer is the normal response to that pressure.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones wrote: We tend to think of sin as we see it in rags and in the gutters of life. We look at a drunkard, poor fellow, and we say, there is sin. But that is not the essence of sin. To have a real picture and understanding of sin, you must look at some great saint, some unusually devout and devoted man, look at him there on his knees in the very presence of God. Even there self is intruding itself, and the temptation is for him to think about himself, to think pleasantly and pleasurably about himself and to really be worshipping himself rather than God. That, not the other, is the true picture of sin. The other is sin, of course, but there you do not see it at its acme, you do not see it in its essence. Or to put it in another form, if you really want to understand something about the nature of Satan and his activities, the thing is not to go to the dregs or the gutters of life. If you really want to know something about Satan, go away to that wilderness where our Lord spent forty days and forty nights. That’s the true picture of Satan, where you see him tempting the very Son of God.2

Sin leads us to take shortcuts in all the Christian disciplines, and when we succumb to its temptation often enough, hypocrisy becomes the pattern of our lives without our realizing it. Because hypocrisy is such a subtle and destructive danger to vital Christian living, our Lord was quick to condemn its many adherents. During His earthly life, the group guiltiest of it was the Jewish religious leaders—those whom you would normally expect to be His greatest supporters were actually His greatest enemies. That’s because His righteous words and deeds condemned their own unrighteous practices. To protect His followers from their evil influence, Jesus said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy” (Luke 12:1).

Old Testament Jews desired to pray because they believed God wanted them to approach Him. They didn’t fear God the way pagans did their gods. In fact, the rabbis said that the Holy One yearns for the prayers of the righteous. They undoubtedly got that truth from Psalm 145:18, which says, “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him” (cf. Ps. 91:15). No true Jew with a right spirit ever doubted God’s priority for prayer. The rabbis rightly believed prayer was not only communication with God but also a mighty weapon that released His power.

The Jews had a sense of solidarity that we don’t understand. They were national—a theocracy ruled by God. That Israel still exists as a nation shows how vitally they have clung to the preservation of that national identity. As a result, their prayers encompassed the good of the community and were not isolated to the individual. For example, the rabbis asked God not to listen to the prayer of a traveler. That’s because he might pray for an easy journey with good weather and accommodating skies when the people in that vicinity actually needed rain for their crops.

Prayer that focuses on self is always hypocritical because every true prayer focuses on God.

If you ever want to experience power and passion in your communication with the Lord, you must begin by making sure your motives are like those of the publican in Luke 18:13–14, who approached God with a humble and penitent attitude.

Nineteenth-century pastor and author E. M. Bounds, who is well-known for his writings on the subject of prayer, said it best, “Prayer honors God; it dishonors self.”

A. W. Tozer said it well: “No religion has been greater than its idea of God.” That gem has a corollary: No church is greater than its reverent awe of holy God. He is holy and demands recognition as such. Although most believers know that intellectually, I’m afraid very few realize what that means practically. Clearly the fear of God is not optional: “Live in the fear of the LORD always” (Prov. 23:17); “fear Him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell” (Matt. 10:28); “in all things obey … fearing the Lord” (Col. 3:22). Central to the book of Proverbs is the Hebrew word yare, which refers to fear and honor. Solomon used it eighteen times.

To the honest and open mind, God is self-evident.

The Jewish Talmud is right in saying that the prayer in which there is no mention of the kingdom of God is not a prayer at all (Berakoth 21a).

There is an unusual epitaph on a large headstone in a cemetery outside of New York City. The name of the person in the grave is not on the headstone. There is no mention of when the person was born or when the person died. Nor does it indicate anything about the person being a beloved mother, father, husband, wife, brother, sister, son, or daughter. Just one word stretches across the headstone: Forgiven. Clearly the most significant fact of this individual’s life was the peace he or she knew as a result of God’s forgiveness.

Henry Ward Beecher, a popular nineteenth-century American preacher, said: Let me saw off a branch from one of the trees that is now budding in my garden, and all summer long there will be an ugly scar where the gash has been made; but by next autumn it will be perfectly covered over by the growing; and by the following autumn it will be hidden out of sight; and in four or five years there will be but a slight scar to show where it has been; and in ten or twenty years you would never suspect that there had been an amputation. Trees know how to overgrow their injuries, and hide them: and love does not wait so long as trees do.

One talent was equal to six thousand denarii, and laborers earned one denarius each working day. This slave would have had to work six days a week for one thousand weeks (slightly more than nineteen years) to earn just one talent.

This debt, while a significant sum (three months’ wages), could have been repaid, but it was a trifling amount compared to what the other slave owed.

The Pony Express was a private express company that carried mail by an organized relay of horseback riders. The eastern end was St. Joseph, Missouri, and the western terminal was in Sacramento, California. The cost of sending a letter by Pony Express was $2.50 an ounce. If the weather and horses held out and the Indians held off, that letter would complete the entire two-thousand-mile journey in a speedy ten days, as did the report of Lincoln’s inaugural address. It may surprise you that the Pony Express was only in operation from April 3, 1860 to November 18, 1861—just seventeen months. When the telegraph line was completed between the two cities, the service was no longer needed. Being a rider for the Pony Express was a tough job. You were expected to ride seventy-five to one hundred miles a day, changing horses every fifteen to twenty-five miles. Other than the mail, the only baggage you carried contained a few provisions, including a kit of flour, cornmeal, and bacon. In case of danger, you also had a medical pack of turpentine, borax, and cream of tartar. In order to travel light and to increase speed of mobility during Indian attacks, the men always rode in shirtsleeves, even during the fierce winter weather. How would you recruit volunteers for this hazardous job? An 1860 San Francisco newspaper printed this ad for the Pony Express: “WANTED: Young, skinny, wiry fellows not over 18. Must be expert riders willing to risk daily. Orphans preferred.”1

Do you pray for the lost like that? Do you have the passion that inspired John Knox to cry out, “Give me Scotland or I die”? Is your attitude that of George Whitefield, who prayed, “O Lord, give me souls or take my soul”? Can you, like Henry Martyn, say, “I cannot endure existence if Jesus is to be so dishonored”?