Enjoy Your Prayer Life

by Michael Reeves

it seems even church leaders are not communing with God much. How healthy can their churches or fellowship groups be if this is the case?

John Calvin, who in his excellent little chapter on 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.

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. And you know who the friend of sinners is! Jesus.

what is going to help us sinners pray? Remember, prayer is about faith. So where does faith come from? It comes from hearing the word of God. As Paul wrote, ‘Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ’ (Rom. 10:17). Faith – and so prayer – is birthed by the gospel.

We should long that our eyes might be opened to see the beauty of the Lord and that we might be drawn afresh to want him – and then prayer is simply the articulation of our heart’s response.

Yet Jesus’ prayers are not just significant because he’s praying on earth as the model human. No, he’s also showing who, eternally, he is. John tells us, ‘Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself’ (Jn. 5:19). 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.

Our instinct is to think of the Almighty in holy transcendence – God without Christ. But Christ has brought this holy God to be our open-armed Father.

Praying is enjoying – and pleading for – the friendship and friendly assistance of God.

the friend doesn’t immediately answer and give the bread, for we are to understand that our heavenly Father and Friend wants us to persevere in our prayers. Of course, God could give to us and bless us without our asking – and how he regularly does that in his grace! 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.

This is a tremendous insight. While we are concerned that God is not listening when we don't get what we ask for, God is actually shaking our shoulder, saying: 'It's not about what you can receive, it's about community with me!'

Jesus is stressing that the willing and attentive kindness of our God is essential to know for prayer. We instinctively think of God without Christ – merely as Lord and Judge. And then we feel he’ll not want to hear from us sinners – and we won’t want in our guilt to be in his presence. But when we remember his friendliness, his open-armed fatherliness – that he has adopted us – it makes us want to go to him.

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. No, for the Son everything flows from his communion with his Father, and so it should become for us.

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.

Helpful!

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.

He was the one feeling the compassion, and wouldn’t one prayer of his be more effective than all of theirs? But he wants them to join in with him, to be co-workers and participants in the divine, compassionate, outgoing, missional life he shares with his Father in the Spirit.