Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God

by Timothy J. Keller

Another reason for the primacy of praise is that it has such power to heal what is wrong with us and create inner spiritual health.

Why would praise and adoration have such an effect on us? It is because, of the three kinds of prayer—adoration, confession, supplication—praise is the one that directly develops love for God, and if St. Augustine is right, what we love is basically what we are.

The ultimate reason for our misery, however, is that we do not love God supremely. As Augustine so famously put it in prayer, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you” (Confessions 1.1.1). That means, quite simply, if you love anything at all in this world more than God, you will crush that object under the weight of your expectations, and it will eventually break your heart.

For example, if your spouse and his or her love of you is more important to you than God’s love, then you will get far too angry and despondent when your spouse is failing to give you the support and affection you need, and you will be too afraid of your spouse’s anger and displeasure to tell the truth. Only if God’s love is the most important thing to you will you have the freedom to love your spouse well.

We are what captures our imagination, what leads us to praise and to compel others to praise it. Our inordinate anger, anxiety, and discouragement result from disordered loves. Our relational problems result from disordered loves, and our social and cultural problems as well. What can re-engineer our very inner being, the structure of our personality? What can create healthy human community? Worship and adoration of God. We must love God supremely, and that can be cultivated only through praise and adoration.

Ultimately, however, thanksgiving is a subcategory of praise. Thanksgiving is praising God for what he has done, while “praise proper” is adoring God for who he is in himself.

Therefore, because the sin in our hearts makes us desperate to keep control of our lives and to live the way we want, we cannot acknowledge the magnitude and scope of what we owe him. We are never as thankful as we should be. When good things come to us, we do everything possible to tell ourselves we accomplished that or at least deserve it. We take the credit. And when our lives simply are going along pretty smoothly, without a lot of difficulties, we don’t live in quiet, amazed, thankful consciousness of it. In the end, we not only rob God of the glory due him, but the assumption that we are keeping our lives going robs us of the joy and relief that constant gratitude to an all-powerful God brings.

He says we “shall not be able to adore God on the highest occasions if we have learned no habit of doing so on the lowest.”

The second way to develop the habit of adoration comes from the great sixteenth-century English Reformer Thomas Cranmer, the author of the original Book of Common Prayer. The “collects” or corporate prayers that Cranmer wrote for the book followed a general structure. The address—a name of God The doctrine—a truth about God’s nature that is the basis for the prayer The petition—what is being asked for The aspiration—what good result will come if the request is granted In Jesus’ name—this remembers the mediatorial role of Jesus We see this structure in Cranmer’s famous collect for the service of Holy Communion. Almighty God, unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known, and from whom no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of thy Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love thee, and worthily magnify thy holy name, through Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

Adoring God God is transcendently and infinitely bright, blessed, and beautiful. He is self-existent—depending on nothing for his being. Instead, all things are dependent on him. He is an infinite and eternal Spirit, the only perfect One, the God of absolute glory and importance. God’s perfections are matchless and without comparison. Those perfections include his eternal and unchanging character; his presence everywhere; his perfect knowledge of all things; his perfect, unsearchable wisdom; his absolute, irresistible power and sovereignty over all that happens; his unspotted moral purity, beauty, and holiness; and his justice—his inexorable judgment that will ultimately put all things right. God is a Creator God, the maker, protector, sustainer, and ruler of all creation. He is a God of truth, a speaking God with whom we may have a personal relationship. He is the covenant God, who is faithful to his promises, who has bound himself to us that we might bind ourselves to him. He is the triune God, one and yet three, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. He is not only our King but our Friend and Spouse. Our hearts were made for him to be our only joy. Thanking God For the ways he gives and sustains our physical life. For making us in his image, capable of knowing, loving, serving, enjoying him and other relationships; for preserving our lives thus far—bringing us through injuries and sicknesses so that we are alive today; for the supports and comforts that make our lives enjoyable,...

Do you ever notice that if you are doing a task, and you hear voices or music or other sounds on audio only, you can tune it out? If, however, you are trying to do a task, and you are trying to watch something on video, it is almost impossible to tune out the video. That is what prayer does—it takes something you believe about God that is ignorable and detached from how you live your life and makes it vivid.

Prayer plunges us into the fullness of who he is, and his love becomes more real than the rejection or disappointment we are experiencing. Then we can handle our problems, and we can hold our heads up again.

These two assertions—one following the other—are startling to contemporary readers. God is forgiving yet also is so holy that he cannot let injustice and wickedness go unpunished.

Martin Luther challenged the authorities of the church to debate his Ninety-Five Theses, which he nailed to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany, in 1517. The first was “our Lord and Master Jesus Christ . . . willed the entire life of believers to be one of repentance.”319 At first glance this appears to be saying that Christians never make any progress, that they are always asking forgiveness for repeated failures. Actually, he was saying the opposite, namely that repentance is the way we make progress in the Christian life. It is the key to growing deeply and steadily into the character of Jesus.

If you forget the costliness of sin, your prayers of confession and repentance will be shallow and trivial. They will neither honor God nor change your life.

there is a false kind of repentance that is really self-pity. You may admit your sin, but you aren’t really sorry for the sin itself. You are sorry about the painful consequences to you. You want that pain to stop, so you end the behavior. It may be, however, that there hasn’t been any real inward alteration of the false beliefs and hopes, the inordinate desires, and the mistaken self-perceptions that caused the sin.

It is only natural to ask, “But isn’t this ‘forsaking’ a kind of wallowing in guilt?” Aren’t we supposed to see ourselves as freely justified and loved children in God’s family? Yes, but to be a child of God is not only to rest secure in his love—it is also to want to please and resemble our Father.

He says efforts to stop sin that come from “convictions from the law” will only temporarily stop “particular sins,” but those who seek to weaken sin “by the spirit of the gospel” will change the whole person—mind, will, and affections.

George Whitefield once wrote, “God give me a deep humility, a well-guided zeal, a burning love and a single eye, and then let men or devils do their worst!”

Deep humility. Examination: Have I looked down on anyone? Have I been too stung by criticism? Have I felt snubbed and ignored?

A well-guided zeal. Examination: Have I avoided people or tasks that I know I should face? Have I been anxious and worried? Have I failed to be circumspect, or have I been rash and impulsive?

burning love. Examination: Have I spoken or thought unkindly of anyone? Am I justifying myself by caricaturing someone else in my mind? Have I been impatient and irritable? Have I been self-absorbed, indifferent, and inattentive to people?

A “single” eye. Examination: Am I doing what I do for God’s glory and the good of others, or am I being driven by fears, need for approval, love of comfort and ease, need for control, hunger for acclaim and power, or the fear of other people? (Luke 12:4–5). Am I looking at anyone with envy? Am I giving in to even the first motions of sexual lust or gluttony? Am I spending my time on urgent things rather than important things because of these inordinate desires?

Perhaps the most life-giving and crucial part of repentance is found in using the joy and benefits of the gospel to both convict and assure you at the same time.

O Lord, I fall into anxiety and fearfulness, but you faced the most astonishing dangers for me. You were torn to pieces, so bravely, for me, so I could be utterly loved and eternally safe in you. If you were courageous for me facing those overwhelming cosmic evils, I know you are with me now. Therefore, I can be steady as I face my problems.

Prayer can avoid obvious arrogance, however, and still be manipulative. Many requests to God are like Friedrich Heiler’s “ritual prayer”—they are ways of procuring blessings from the deity through compliance with elaborate forms and practices. They are meant to put God in the supplicant’s debt. They do not seek God’s face, grace, and glory so much as power to get things from him. It is quite easy in prayer, even natural, to ask wrongly.

Yet it is possible, in the face of all these necessary warnings about asking amiss, to be too timid. Prayer is not merely a way to get inward peace—it is also a way to look outward and participate with God in his work in the world.