Does Prayer Change Things? (Crucial Questions)

by R.C. Sproul

Prayer prompts and nurtures obedience, putting the heart into the proper “frame of mind” to desire obedience.

One might pray and not be a Christian, but one cannot be a Christian and not pray.

Prayer is to the Christian what breath is to life, yet no duty of the Christian is so neglected.

Prayer, at least private prayer, is difficult to do out of a false motive. One can preach out of a false motive, as do the false prophets. One can be involved in Christian activities out of false motives. Many of the externals of religion can be done from false motives. However, it is highly unlikely that anyone would commune with God out of some improper motive.

We can take comfort from the fact that God knows our hearts and hears our unspoken petitions as well as the words that emanate from our lips. Whenever we are unable to express the deep feelings and emotions of our souls or when we are completely unclear about what we ought to be praying, the Holy Spirit intercedes for us. Romans 8:26–27 says: “The Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”

Luther said that he prayed regularly for an hour every day except when he experienced a particularly busy day. Then he prayed for two hours.

He also tells us that the prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much (James 5:16).

One of the great themes of the Reformation was the idea that all of life is to be lived under the authority of God, to the glory of God, in the presence of God.

the book of Job. The Sabeans and the Chaldeans had taken Job’s donkeys and camels. Why? Because Satan had stirred their hearts to do so. But why? Because Satan had received permission from God to test Job’s faithfulness in any way he so desired, short of taking Job’s life. Why had God agreed to such a thing? For three reasons: (1) to silence the slander of Satan; (2) to vindicate Himself; and (3) to vindicate Job from the slander of Satan. All of these reasons are perfectly righteous justifications for God’s actions.

notice that Satan did not do something supernatural to accomplish his ends. He chose human agents—the Sabeans and Chaldeans, who were evil by nature—to steal Job’s animals. The Sabeans and Chaldeans were known for their thievery and murderous way of life. Their will was involved, but there was no coercion; God’s purpose was accomplished through their wicked actions.

Suppose the Sabeans and Chaldeans had prayed, “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.” I’m absolutely certain that Job’s animals still would have been stolen, but not necessarily by the Sabeans and Chaldeans.

The promise of the Scriptures is that “The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working” (James 5:16).

Notice that Jesus said, “Pray then like this,” not “Pray this prayer” or “Pray these words.” There is some question as to whether Jesus ever meant for us to repeat the prayer. I’m not attacking the use of the Lord’s Prayer; there’s certainly nothing wrong with its use in the personal life of the believer or the devotional life of the church.

if you pray exactly "this", then it is "like this" to the extreme.

Ironically, today we live in a world that assumes God is the Father of everyone, that all men are brothers. We hear this in the cliches “the fatherhood of God” and “the brotherhood of man.” But nowhere does Scripture say that all men are our brothers. It does say, however, that all men are our neighbors.

“If you were Abraham’s children, you would be doing the works Abraham did, but now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth that I heard from God. This is not what Abraham did. . . You are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father’s desires” (John 8:39–40, 44). There is a clear distinction between the children of God and the children of the Devil. God’s children hear His voice and obey Him. The children of the Devil do not listen to God’s voice; they disobey Him by doing the will of their father, Satan. There are only two families, and everyone belongs to one or the other.

“He who sits in the heavens laughs; the LORD holds them in derision” (Ps. 2:4).

On Earth As It Is in Heaven The angels in God’s court do as He says and desires. His people on earth do not. God is the Covenant Maker; we are the covenant breakers, frequently on a collision course with the will of the Father.

Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread God provides for His people. It is noteworthy that the request here is for daily bread, not daily steak or daily prime rib. God provides the necessities, but not always the niceties.

They grumbled about having to eat manna for breakfast, manna for lunch, and manna for dinner. The Israelites ate manna soufflé, manna pie, manna meringue, boiled manna, baked manna, and broiled manna.

Jonathan Edwards, in his famous sermon “The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners,” said that any sin is more or less heinous, depending on the honor and majesty of the one whom we have offended. Since God is of infinite honor, infinite majesty, and infinite holiness, the slightest sin is of infinite consequence. Such seemingly trivial sins are nothing less than “cosmic treason” when viewed in light of the great King against whom we have sinned. We are debtors who cannot pay, yet we have been released from the threat of debtors’ prison. It is an insult to God for us to withhold forgiveness and grace from those who ask us, while claiming to be forgiven and saved by grace ourselves.

Luke 17:10 clearly points out that there is no merit even in the best of our good works: “When you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’”

Having done that duty, the only thing we could claim would be a lack of punishment, but certainly no reward,

First John 1:9 points out that one mark of a Christian is his continual asking for forgiveness. The verb tense in the Greek indicates an ongoing process. The desire for forgiveness sets the Christian apart.

Personally, I find it a bit frightening to ask God to forgive us to the extent we forgive others. It’s almost like asking God for justice. I used to warn my students: “Don’t ask God for justice. You just might get it.” If God, in fact, forgave me in exact proportion to my willingness to forgive others, I would be in deep trouble.

The mandate to forgive others as we have been forgiven applies also to the matter of self-forgiveness. We have God’s promise that when we confess our sins to Him, He will forgive us. Unfortunately, we don’t always believe that promise.

A woman distraught about a guilt problem once came to me and said: “I’ve asked God to forgive me of this sin over and over, but I still feel guilty. What can I do?” The situation did not involve the multiple repetition of the same sin, but the multiple confession of a sin committed once. “You must pray again and ask God to forgive you,” I replied.

“I’m not suggesting that you ask God to forgive you for that sin. I’m asking you to seek forgiveness for your arrogance.”

When God promises us that He will forgive us, we insult His integrity when we refuse to accept it. To forgive ourselves after God has forgiven us is a duty as well as a privilege.

Jesus is not suggesting that God will tempt us to evil if we do not petition Him otherwise. James 1:13 specifically says that God tempts no one. God may test, but He never tempts to evil. A test is for growth; temptation is toward evil.

The plea to avoid temptation and the petition for deliverance from evil are one and the same.

[poneros]”

Poneros Definition full of labours, annoyances, hardships pressed and harassed by labours bringing toils, annoyances, perils; of a time full of peril to Christian faith and steadfastness; causing pain and trouble bad, of a bad nature or condition in a physical sense: diseased or blind in an ethical sense: evil wicked, bad The word is used in the nominative case in Mt. 6:13. This usuallydenotes a title in the Greek. Hence Christ is saying, deliver usfrom "The Evil", and is probably referring to Satan.

In six petitions, Jesus outlined the pattern and the priorities for our prayer lives. The traditional close of the Lord’s Prayer—“for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever. Amen”—is not in the best manuscripts. In all probability, it was not in the original text, but was a common conclusion for prayers in the early church. However, it is a fitting and truthful ending. It hearkens back to the prayer’s opening, raising a doxology to the One who hears our petitions.

The acrostic “A-C-T-S” is useful as a pattern for prayer. Each letter in the acrostic represents a vital element of effective prayer: A — ADORATION C — CONFESSION T — THANKSGIVING S — SUPPLICATION

The Bible tells us that it is the “effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man that availeth much” (James 5:16, KJV, emphasis added). Fervency characterized Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane, where His sweat fell to the ground as droplets of blood. Fervency describes Jacob’s all-night wrestling match with the angel at Peniel. Prayer is an exercise of passion, not of indifference.

The frenzied prayer lapses into the incoherence of the whirling dervish, and God is not honored. Frenzy, the counterfeit of fervency, is a contrived attempt to simulate godly fervor.

mildly surprised by Jesus’ response to the disciples’ request about prayer. When they said, “Teach us to pray,” I would have anticipated a different response from His lips than the one He gave by way of the Lord’s Prayer. I would have anticipated a response something like this: “Do you want to learn how to pray? Read the Psalms.”

The Scriptures tell us that God is too holy even to look at sin.

We do things we ought not to do and leave undone those things God commands us to do. We run up a daily indebtedness before God. Consequently, our daily prayers must include genuine acts of confession.

John Wesley Prayer “I am no longer my own, but thine. Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt. Put me to doing, put me to suffering. Let me be employed by thee or laid aside for thee, exalted for thee or brought low for thee. Let me be full, let me be empty. Let me have all things, let me have nothing. I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal. And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, thou art mine, and I am thine. So be it. And the covenant which I have made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.”

The Roman Catholic Church understands that the power to forgive sins does not reside ultimately in the priest. The priest is merely a spokesman for Christ. In practice, the priestly absolution differs very little from the Protestant minister’s “assurance of pardon,” which is given from pulpits across the land every Sunday.

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9, KJV).

We can distinguish between two kinds of repentance: attrition and contrition. Attrition is counterfeit repentance, which never qualifies us for forgiveness. It is like the repentance of a child who is caught in the act of disobeying his mother and cries out, “Mommy, Mommy, I’m sorry, please don’t spank me.” Attrition is repentance motivated strictly by a fear of punishment. The sinner confesses his sin to God, not out of genuine remorse but out of a desire to secure a ticket out of hell. True repentance reflects contrition, a godly remorse for offending God. Here the sinner mourns his sin, not for the loss of reward or for the threat of judgment, but because he has done injury to the honor of God.

The Roman Catholic Church uses a prayer of confession called “The Act of Contrition” to express this kind of repentance: “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee. I detest all my sins because of thy just punishment, but most of all because I have offended thee, O my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy grace, to sin no more and to avoid the near occasion of sin.”

There are few, if any, who claim they are blameless, that they have lived lives of ethical consistency, keeping the Golden Rule in every situation. The rub is in acknowledging the intensity of our sin, the extreme godlessness of our actions. Because we are all sinners and know that we share a common guilt, our confession tends to be superficial, often not characterized by earnestness or a sense of moral urgency.

David then pleaded for restoration to God’s favor: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit” (vv. 10–12). He understood the most crucial element of confession: total dependence on God’s mercy.

Confession is like a declaration of bankruptcy. God requires perfection. The slightest sin blemishes a perfect record. All the “good deeds” in the world cannot erase the blemish and move us from imperfection to perfection. Once the sin has been committed, we are morally bankrupt. Our only hope is to have that sin forgiven and covered through the atonement of the One who is altogether perfect.

In a certain sense, forgiveness must never be a surprise. We should never be surprised when God keeps His word to forgive those who confess their sins. God keeps His promises; man does not. God is the Covenant Maker; we are covenant breakers. Looking at the issue from another perspective, however, we ought to be surprised every time we experience forgiveness. We ought never to take God’s mercy and forgiveness for granted, even though we live in a culture that does.

“Is God obligated to be loving? Is He bound to show forgiveness and grace?” Again and again their answers are in the affirmative: “Yes, of course, it’s God’s nature to be loving. He’s essentially a God of love. If He didn’t show love, He wouldn’t be God. If God is God, then He must be merciful!” He must be merciful? If God must be merciful, then His mercy is no longer free or voluntary. It has become obligatory. If that is the case, it is no longer mercy but justice. God is never required to be merciful. As soon as we think God is obligated to be merciful, a red light should flash in our brains, indicating that we are no longer thinking about mercy but about justice. We need to do more than sing “Amazing Grace”—we need to be repeatedly amazed by grace.