The Call to Prayer

This Thursday, I had the privilege of speaking to Crossroads Campus Ministry at UCSD on the topic of prayer. This is one of those issues that all believers understand is something they need to apply in their lives, and yet almost all of the Christians I know would say that their prayer lives are not where they would like them to be. I really believe that one of the reasons we fail in prayer the way we do is because Christ does not remain central in our prayer lives. All true believers would hold that salvation comes not as a result of our work or merit but completely by the grace of God (cf. Eph. 2:8-9). There is thus a willingness on our parts to glorify Christ for our salvation and to keep him central in the doctrine of justification.

A shift in centrality tends to take place, however, when it comes to how we pray. It seems as though in prayer we remove Christ as the central focus and place ourselves in that place of centrality instead. We pray for our felt needs, our desires, our will, and we fail not only to acknowledge God's will, but also to desire it at all.

It is no surprise that God desires our prayers. 1 Thessalonians 5:17 teaches us to pray without ceasing. Colossians 4:2 tells us to devote ourselves to prayer. And Jesus assumes prayer in His instruction in Matthew 6 ("When you pray..."). This is more than a call to discipline, though prayer definitely is a discipline we need to maintain and develop. We must remember that we have access to the Creator of the universe and He desires to hear from us! Do we have a desire to speak with Him?

For more on prayer, John Piper offers helpful insight into God's purpose in prayer in his book, Let the Nations Be Glad.