Prayer - Crabb & Piper

Don’t skip this one. Prayer is the lifeblood of a believer. Read on and be encouraged.

From Larry Crabb’s book The Papa Prayer. . .

Efforts to worship God without first getting to know Him tend to reduce worship to mere appreciation when God cooperates with our agendas. And thanking God without true worship, without first being stunned that the holy God who has every right to abandon us instead draws us closer, leaves us still thinking that at least a few things ought to go our way. But when true worship is the spring from which gratitude flows, we take nothing for granted. . .

As we get to know God, worship Him, and thank Him in all things, our hearts go out to others, including rejecting spouses, irritating teenagers, and betraying friends. The mind of Christ takes over, and we become more concerned for others than for ourselves. We care more about their relationship with God than their impact on us. We want them to know God, worship Him, and live lives of gratitude to Him as we do. So we naturally turn to prayers of intercession. We pray on their behalf with selfless motives.

But if we intercede for others without attending to our own relationship with God, our intercession will have more to do with our well-being than with theirs. “God, change my spouse so I won’t hurt so much.” “Soften my child’s heart so I won’t be so worried.” “Change so-and-so in my small group so I’ll enjoy my involvement more.”

. . . “God, may my surgery go well, may I make more money, may I feel more energy, may I find more friends, but grant these personal comforts only if they will not interfere with but will rather enhance the formation of Christ in me.” (my emphasis)

Missionary and evangelist E. Stanley Jones wrote, “The first thing in prayer is to get God. If you get Him, everything else follows. Allow God to get at you, to invade you, to take possession of you. He then pours His very prayers through you. They are His prayers – God-inspired, and hence, God answered.”

Christian writer Ravi Zacharias put it this way: “Prayer is not the means of bringing our will to pass but the means by which He brings our will into line to gladly receive His will.”

. . . if we keep on believing that prayer is more about getting things than getting God, not only will we eventually get thoroughly confused when prayer doesn’t “work,” but talking to God will at some point feel boring as well. If we’re honest. (37)

The chief purpose of prayer is to get to know God, to deepen our relationship with Him, to nourish the life of God He’s already placed within us, and to do it all to satisfy His desire for relationship with us. (42)

And from John Piper’s book, Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist . . .

God aims to exalt Himself by working for those who wait for Him. Prayer is the essential activity of waiting for God – acknowledging our helplessness and His power, calling upon Him for help, seeking His counsel. . . Prayer is the antidote for the disease of self-confidence, which opposes God’s goal of getting glory by working for those who wait for Him. (170)

. . . God is not looking for people to work for Him, so much as He is looking for people who will let Him work for them. The gospel is not a help-wanted ad. Neither is the call to Christian service. On the contrary, the gospel commands us to give up and hang out a help-wanted sign (this is the basic meaning of prayer). Then the gospel promises that God will work for us if we do. He will not surrender the glory of being the Giver. (171)

The fullness of joy we seek is the joy of overflowing love to other people. No amount of getting can satisfy the soul until it overflows in giving. And no sacrifice will destroy the soul-delights of an obedient people on a mission of love from God, for which prayer is His strategic provision. So the reason we pray is “that our joy may be full.”

Fellowship with Jesus is essential to joy, but there is something about it that impels us outward, to share His life with others. A Christian can’t be happy and stingy: “It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). Therefore, the second reason a life of prayer leads to fullness of joy is that it gives us the power to love. If the pump of love runs dry, it is because the pipe of prayer isn’t deep enough. (178)

In prayer we admit our poverty and God’s prosperity, our bankruptcy and His bounty, our misery and His mercy. Therefore, prayer highly exalts and glorifies God precisely by pursuing everything we long for in Him, and not in ourselves. “Ask, and you will receive . . . that the Father may be glorified in the Son and . . . that your joy may be full.” (182)