Enjoy Your Prayer Life

by Michael Reeves

Prayerlessness always goes hand in hand with a lack of Christian integrity. This is even more so for Christian leaders – to put it bluntly, if they are not enjoying communion with God, then they are selling a product they don’t really believe in.

I specifically mention those things because I think advice like that is genuinely helpful … in its place.

prayer in the Institutes calls prayer ‘the chief exercise of faith’. In other words, prayer is the primary way true faith expresses itself. This also means that prayerlessness is practical atheism, demonstrating a lack of belief in God.

In one sense your prayer life is disgustingly revealing: it does reveal who you really are. For all your talk and theory of faith – you can affirm the truth of prayer and know that God is good – your prayer life reveals how much you really want communion with God and how much you really depend on him.

But if prayer is ‘the chief exercise of faith’, then of course you’re naturally rubbish at prayer, because you’re naturally lacking in faith. If prayer is ‘the chief exercise of faith’, then of course everything – the world, the flesh and the devil – conspires against prayer. This means that you’re not the odd one out in your struggles with prayer, and it’s not your secret shame – which can be the crippling fear. You’re just a sinner, naturally inclined away from faith and prayer. We’re all sinners.

prayer. This means that you’re not the odd one out in your struggles with prayer, and it’s not your secret shame – which can be the crippling fear. You’re just a sinner, naturally inclined away from faith and prayer. We’re all sinners. And you know who the friend of sinners is! Jesus.

Remember, prayer is about faith. So where does faith come from? It comes from hearing the word of God.

Faith – and so prayer – is birthed by the gospel. That’s why scripture and prayer are so often put together.

To summarise what we have discovered so far, prayer is the chief exercise of faith. Naturally we’re rubbish at prayer because we’re sinners. Yet the solution – what will give us the true life of real communion with God – is the gospel of Christ that awakens faith.

The Son always depends on his Father; that is who he eternally is. For him, everything flows from his communion with his Father. And so for eternity he has enjoyed communion with him and he has prayed to him. The Son, then, is the first pray-er. And the salvation he brings is a sharing of his own communion with his Father. Prayer is learning to enjoy what Jesus has always enjoyed.

Prayer is learning to enjoy what Jesus has always enjoyed.

When you pray, say: Father …”’ (Lk. 11:1, my emphasis). The first thing Jesus would have pray-ers know is the name Father. That’s the first and basic lesson in prayer. The relationship he has always had with his Father he now shares with us – and it transforms prayer.

But the God of fellowship wants fellowship with us. He wants us to argue his promises and his character with him, for then who he is becomes an ever more conscious reality for us.

Jim Packer once wrote, ‘If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means he does not understand Christianity very well at all.’

how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father.

If prayer is communion with God, then it can take many forms. We have different sorts of conversations with our friends and families – from texts and emails to rambling chats late into the evening. Similarly, we don’t need to try to ‘fit’ God into each day, that is to see our prayer life as something different from the rest of life. In fact the danger arises precisely when you do think your prayer life is something separate.

We have communion with God at all times. However, having said that, relationships only grow when you give each other quality time.

When you default to thinking of prayer as an abstract activity, a ‘thing to do’, the tendency is to focus on the prayer as an activity – which makes it boring. Instead, focus on the one to whom you’re praying. Reminding yourself who you are coming before is a great help against distraction, and changes the prayer.

If God was a single, independent person, independence would be the godly thing. That would be how to be like him. But as the Son always depends on the Father, that is the nature of Christian godliness. Being a Christian is first and foremost all about receiving, asking and depending. It’s when you don’t feel needy (and so when you don’t pray much) that you lose your grip on reality and think or act in an unchristian manner.

Prayer, then, is enjoying the care of a powerful Father, instead of being left to a frightening loneliness where everything is all down to you. Prayer is the antithesis of self-dependence.

The Spirit drives the Scripture-taught truth of our adoption by God into our hearts so we know that we are his children, and thus we cry, ‘Abba!’

Prayer, then, is not actually a one-way conversation, us to God. No, in prayer God speaks through us to God. We’re brought into the divine fellowship. The Spirit of the Son cries to the Father through us.