Prayer

Introduction

The elders asked me to speak on the subject of prayer. Prayer, of course, is how we talk to God. He speaks to us through his word, the Bible; and we speak to him through prayer. It is verbal communication with God. And it’s an important part of our Christian lives. One writer (Bavinck) says it is our duty and the most important good work which we can perform. It’s our duty because throughout the Scriptures God commands his people to pray to him. And it’s a good work, because we demonstrate our love for God and for one another by praying for God’s glory and for one another. But it’s also a promise, because God often accompanies his command to pray with a promise that he will hear and answer us.

However, when we begin to talk about prayer, there are traps we must try to avoid. One trap preachers often fall into when speaking about prayer and when trying to encourage people to pray more is to appeal to godly examples. So, we focus on the example set by the heroes of the faith in the Bible or the heroes of the faith in church history. The preacher tells us about what this great Christian from the past did and they tell us how long this person spent in prayer each day. And the implication is that if that’s what they did, then we should do it too. However, this approach often demoralises us, because for various reasons we’re unable to follow their example. After all, all of us are different and our circumstances are different and what is possible for one person is not possible for another person. Furthermore, our circumstances change over time and what was possible for one person once may not be possible for the same person at another stage in their life. So, when I was a single man and a student, I had far more free time than after I was married and had a family; and a person with very young children who need constant supervision has much less free time that a person with grown-up children or no children at all. Our circumstances change over time. But when we hear what people in the past used to do, and when it’s suggested that we should copy their example, we often feel demoralised: ‘We’ll never be able to do what they did.’

And then preachers can make us feel guilty because of our shortcomings in prayer. And when we feel guilty, we often resolve to change our ways and to do better. We resolve to pray more often and for longer. We resolve to start going to the prayer meeting. And we keep it up for a week or two, but then those guilty feelings go away and so does our motivation to pray. Feeling guilty can be a good thing when it drives us to Christ for forgiveness. But feeling guilty doesn’t motivate us to do good for very long. For that we need a willing spirit, as David puts it in Psalm 51, so that we will pray because we want to pray and not because we feel guilty about not doing it.

And then, we must not think that God is unwilling or reluctant to hear and answer us. You’ve perhaps been asked to sign a petition from time to time. The government is reluctant to do something; and so a petition is created and the organisers want to get as many people as possible to persuade a reluctant government to do something for us. But we mustn’t think God is reluctant to help us so that we need to get as many people as possible to petition him in prayer to persuade a reluctant God to do something for us. God is infinitely and eternally and unchangeably good: his goodness is not limited in any way. He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. And since he did not spare his Son, but gave him up for us all, then there’s no good thing which he will withhold from us. Prayer is not about persuading a reluctant God to do something for us. Prayer is about coming to our heavenly Father who loves us and cares for us.

Having said all that by way of introduction, let me begin properly by talking about God’s aseity.

Aseity

I’ve spoken about God’s aseity before. The word itself comes from the Latin a se which means ‘from self’. And it’s really a fancy word for God’s independence. God is self-sufficient. He doesn’t rely or depend on anyone or anything outside of himself. Being uncreated, he did not rely on anyone or anything for his existence. He’s not like that golden calf which we read about in Exodus 32 which Aaron and the Israelites made for themselves. No one made God.

And he doesn’t need anything from us to sustain him. In Psalm 50 the Lord tells his people that he doesn’t need their sacrifices. ‘If I were hungry,’ he said, ‘I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine.’ He doesn’t need us to give him anything, because he already possesses all things. And he also said: ‘[Every] beast of the forest is mine, the cattle on a thousand hills. I know all the birds of the hills, and all that moves in the field is mine.’ It all belongs to him. So, when his people brought him sacrifices in the past, they weren’t to think that God needed their sacrifices, because whatever they gave to him, he had first given to them. God doesn’t need anything from us. He doesn’t rely on anyone or anything outside of himself for his existence, because he has life in himself. And he doesn’t rely on anyone or anything outside of himself to sustain him. He doesn’t need anything from us. He is totally independent.

On the other hand, we depend on God for everything. We depend on him for our very existence, because he’s the one who made the heavens and the earth and all that they contain, including us. So, if it were not for God, who made all things, we would not exist. And we depend on God to sustain us and to provide us with what we need to live in the world. He sends the rain and the sunshine to make the crops grow to provide us with food to eat. And every good thing we enjoy here on earth has come to us from him, because though we have to go out and work to earn a living, our ability to work comes from him.

We also depend on him for our knowledge of God, because we would know nothing about God if he did not choose to reveal himself to us. And we would not understand his revelation if he did not send his Spirit into our hearts to enable us to understand. And we depend on him for our knowledge of right and wrong, because he’s given us the Ten Commandments and all the rest of his moral laws to show us how to live. And he’s given us our conscience to see the difference between right and wrong and to convict us when we do wrong.

And, of course, we depend on God for salvation, because he’s the one who sent his Son into the world to deliver us from our sin and misery and to give us the hope of everlasting life in his presence. And he’s the one who sends his Spirit into our lives to enable us to repent and believe, so that we receive the salvation which Christ has accomplished for us. And then, to help us grow in obedience and to help us persevere in the faith, he adds us to the church, where he works through the reading and preaching of his word and through the sacraments and through prayer to build us up in holiness and comfort, so that we become more obedient and will stand firm in the faith. And so, we depend on God for everything connected to our salvation.

God is independent. He does not rely on anyone or anything outside of himself for anything. But we rely on him for everything. And once we understand these two things about God and about ourselves, then we’ll see that there are really only two kinds of prayer. Well, there are three kinds of prayer. The first is adoration or praise, when we praise God for who he is and for all his perfections. He alone is God and worthy of our worship. But then, after adoration, the rest of our prayers belong in one of two categories: there’s thanksgiving; and there’s petition. We’re either giving thanks to God for the good things we have received from him; or else we’re asking God for the good things we need from him. Since God alone is independent, and since we depend on him for everything, then we’re either thanking him; or we’re asking him for what we need, which includes asking him for spiritual things like forgiveness or for material things like our daily food.

And it’s when we feel our dependence on God for everything that prayer becomes natural for us. Just as it’s natural for a newborn baby to cry out to its mother for milk, so it’s natural for believers to cry out to our Heavenly Father, because we know that we depend on him for everything.

The Lord’s Prayer

In Luke 11 we read that the Lord Jesus was praying. And when he had finished, his disciples asked him to teach them to pray. And so, the Lord gave them what we call the Lord’s prayer as a pattern for them to follow. And notice how their question underlines how dependent we are on God, because we must even depend on God to teach us how to pray.

And in his prayer the Lord Jesus taught them to ask God for several things: hallowed by your name; your kingdom come; your will be done; give us today our daily bread; forgive us our sins; and lead us not into temptation.

Our church’s Larger and Shorter Catechisms are useful for helping us to understand each of these petitions and what they imply about ourselves. And they teach us that when we pray ‘hallowed be your name’ — that is, ‘may your name be honoured’ — we’re acknowledging our complete inability and our lack of inclination to honour God rightly. And so, we need God’s gracious help for ourselves and for others to honour him as we should. And when we pray ‘your kingdom come’, we’re acknowledging that by nature we are under the dominion of sin and Satan and we are unable to rescue ourselves and others from it. And so, we need God’s gracious help to rescue us and others and to bring us into his kingdom of grace and to keep us in it forever. And when we pray ‘your will be done’, we’re acknowledging that by nature we and everyone else are completely unable and unwilling to know and to do God’s will. And so, we need God’s gracious help to make us able and willing to know God’s will and to do it.

When we pray for our daily bread, we’re acknowledging that because of Adam we and everyone else have forfeited the right to all outward blessings in this life and we cannot sustain ourselves. And so, we need God’s gracious help to provide us with what we need each day. And when we pray for forgiveness, we’re acknowledging that we and everyone else are guilty sinners and we are unable to pay for what we have done wrong. And so, we need God to pardon us freely for the sake of Christ who died for the ungodly. And when we pray for protection from temptation, we’re acknowledging that we and everyone else are too weak by ourselves to stand up to the world and our sinful flesh and the Devil. And so, we need God to protect us, because we cannot protect ourselves.

Each one of the petitions in the Lord’s Prayer reveals our weakness and our inability; and each one makes clear that we depend on God for all things. And once we feel our dependence on God, then we will turn to him again and again and again to ask him for what we need and to give thanks to him for what we have received.

Romans 8

Now I want to turn your attention to Romans 8 where the Apostle Paul tells us that we are weak and we need God’s help when we pray. Paul says to us in verse 26 of Romans 8 that the Spirit helps us in our weakness; and we need the Spirit to help us, because we don’t know what to pray for. While we have the Lord’s Prayer as a pattern to follow to show us how to pray, nevertheless, it’s still the case that we don’t know what to pray for, because we’re unable to know the depths of God’s will; and we’re unable to know everything about his plans for us and for the world. Think of the Apostle Paul who was suffering from some kind of thorn in his flesh. And since it was tormenting him, he prayed to God to take it away. But it turns out that the Apostle Paul did not know what to pray for, because God had something better in mind for him. Instead of taking the thorn away, God gave him the grace he needed to put up with it. So, Paul wanted relief from the thorn, but the Lord wanted to teach him something new about his power and his ability to help Paul. Or think about what we read in Ephesians 3 where Paul says God is able to do immeasurably more that all we ask and all we can imagine. We can’t imagine what God is able to do, let alone ask him for it.

And not knowing what to pray for is part of our present weakness. None of us knows what to pray for. And so, in order to pray to God, we need the help of God himself. We need God the Holy Spirit to help us. And he does help us. Paul says we do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us. Paul says he intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And by means of this groaning, the Holy Spirit prays on our behalf.

So, we want to pray according to God’s will, and we want to pray for the right things, but none of us knows God’s will fully or perfectly. Nevertheless, the Spirit is able to help us, because the Spirit knows the Father’s will. He knows the Father’s will, because he shares it with the Father. And because he knows the Father’s will, he’s able to help us by praying to God the Father on our behalf.

I’ve used this illustration before. Near where we used to live in Naas, there was a garage. And when the children were small, I’d walk with them to the garage to help them buy their sweets. And the till was at the end of the counter; and on the top of the counter were rows and rows and rows of sweets and chocolate bars. And I’d get the children to go up to the sales assistant at the till and to ask for what they wanted. But I’d also stand close by, because sometimes they’d get muddled and they’d ask for the wrong thing; and I’d see the sales assistant reach for the wrong packet of sweets. And whenever that happened, I’d speak up and say: ‘No, that’s not what they wanted to ask for. This is what they wanted to ask for.’

In a similar way, we go to God the Father in prayer. And we want our prayers to be according to his will; we want to ask for the right things. But since we’re like little children, we get it wrong. But not to worry, because we have the Holy Spirit to help us, and to speak up for us and to say to God the Father: ‘No, that’s not really what they wanted to ask for. This is what they wanted to ask for.’

And so, whenever we pray, we’re confronted with our weakness, because we don’t know what we ought to ask for. And so, even when we pray, we must depend on God.

Together

And the final passage I want us to consider is from Acts 4. Peter and John have been preaching about Christ in the temple. The Jewish leaders were greatly disturbed because of what they were teaching, because they were proclaiming Christ’s resurrection from the dead. And they seized Peter and John and put them in jail. The next day, the two apostles were brought before the Sanhedrin, which was the Jewish court of law at that time. This was the court which condemned the Lord Jesus to death not so very long before. And the Sanhedrin questioned Peter and John before commanding them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus. Don’t mention his name again! And after threatening them, they let the apostles go.

And so, what did Peter and John do? They went back to their fellow believers and reported what had happened. And then it says they raised their voices together in prayer to God. And in their prayer to God, they asked him to enable them to preach his word with boldness. And after they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and they spoke the word of God boldly.

The world was against them. And by themselves they were unable to stand up to the world. And so, they gathered together for prayer; and they asked the Lord for the help they needed.

And the world is against us: an unbelieving world is against us and it wants us to conform to its wicked ways. And the Devil is against us: he wants to destroy our faith and he wants to hinder the work of the church to proclaim the good news of the gospel. And our own sinful flesh living inside us is against us: it wants us to do what’s wrong instead of what’s right. These three are against us always. And all of us are weak and we are not able, by ourselves, to stand up to these three enemies. And so, we need to rely on God for his help. And one of the ways God helps us is by giving us prayer so that we’re able to make our needs known to him and to call down his help for ourselves and for one another. And another way that God helps us is by surrounding us with fellow believers so that we’re able to support and encourage one another and pray for each other and to pray for fellow believers around the world. And so, in Acts 4, as soon as Peter and John were released, they did not go back to their own homes, but they went back to the church.

Earlier we were thinking about the Lord’s Prayer. And did you notice how the Lord’s Prayer begins? The disciples asked the Lord to teach them to pray. And he said that when we pray, we should say, ‘Our Father’. Our Father and not my Father. By saying ‘Our Father’, the Lord was implying that we will pray together. So, while we can pray alone at home, the Lord assumed that we will also pray together. That’s why we have the prayer time on Sunday evenings before the service of worship and the prayer meeting for the congregation on Wednesdays. And, of course, we pray during the services of worship on Sundays and the songs of praise we sing are a kind of prayer to the Lord.

Conclusion

And so, God is independent. He does not rely on anything or anyone outside of himself for anything. But we depend on God for everything. And when we feel our dependence on him, then prayer becomes natural for us. And so, we will turn to our Heavenly Father in prayer to ask him for what we need and to thank him for what we have already received. And because we don’t know God’s will, the Spirit is with us to help us to pray. And because we are weak, God has also given us the fellowship of our fellow believers so that we’re able to meet as a church to pray.

And the final thing to say is that the only reason we’re able to come to God in prayer is because of Christ our Saviour who gave up his life on the cross to pay for our sins and who shed his blood to cleanse us. And because of him, we’re able to come before God in prayer.

If it were not for Christ, the way into God’s presence would be closed to us, because all of us are sinners and we sin against the Lord continually. Instead of coming to God, we should be sent away from God and punished forever for what we have done wrong. But because Christ has paid for our sins with his life and because he has made peace for us with God, then we can come before God in prayer; and God is willing to receive us and hear us. That’s why we pray to the Father in the name of the Saviour. If we came in our own name, the door into God’s presence would remain closed, because who are we? Only sinners who deserve to be condemned. And so, we come in the name of Jesus. And because we come in the name of Jesus, relying on him, then the door is opened and we’re able to go into the presence of God.

And so, once again we learn that we are dependent on God, because we can only come in prayer to God the Father because of God the Son who gave up his life to make peace for us with God.