31 Days of Prayer: Day 16 – A bestselling guide on how not to pray

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Prayer of JabezIt may seem a bit mean-spirited and curmudgeonly to talk about prayer by being negative. After all, there are so many positive things to say. But sometimes, talking about the negative – refuting popular but unbiblical (mis)understandings of prayer – can help us to understand more of the truth about prayer.

In the last 15 years, one book on prayer has been more influential in mainstream Christian circles than any other: The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson.

The book was released in 2000, so its moment has passed. But its influence remains, and it continues to sell around the world (it’s now passed 10 million copies). Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day 15 – Stop telling people not to pray

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Praying Family“When you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” (Matt 6:7)

Over the years, whenever I’ve heard a prayer meeting of any kind being advertised, it’s usually introduced with this kind of caveat: “By the way, you don’t have to pray out loud or anything – just saying ‘Amen’ at the end of other people’s prayers is fine.”

‘You don’t have to pray out loud.’ Why do we say this? Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day 14 – Why doesn’t God answer my prayers?

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Child Father's Hand“Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray: our Father in heaven…” (Matt 6:8-9)

One of the most confusing – and sometimes the most painful – aspects of prayer can be the reality of our ‘unanswered prayers’.

Put together some of the pieces that we’ve seen already in this series of brief reflections:

  • God is all-powerful – he can do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine. Nothing is too hard for him.
  • God is perfectly loving, and he welcomes the prayers of his children. Through Jesus’ death for us, we have access to God and a relationship with him as Father, so we can approach with boldness and confidence.
  • God is not just like a good earthly father. He is the perfect Father, and he delights to give good things to his children when they ask.

Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day 13 – Approaching with confidence

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Child Waking Parents“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven…’ (Matthew 6:9)

Yesterday, thanks to Tim Chester’s new book on prayer, we began looking at what it means for us to pray to God as Father. We focused on the simplicity that comes from knowing we can approach God in this way: “Prayer is a child asking her father for help – nothing more, nothing less” (You Can Pray, p. 16).

Today, I want us to think about the sense of intimacy and boldness that calling on God as Father allows us to have.

I’m the father of three small children. And like most parents of little ones, it’s not uncommon for our night’s sleep to be interrupted with a tap on the shoulder, a few tears, or a persistent whisper in the ear of ‘Dad, Dad!’ Maybe they’ve had a bad dream, or they’ve been woken up by a bump in the night and can’t get back to sleep. Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day 12 – Approaching God as Father

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You Can Pray“This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven…’ (Matthew 6:9)

If you’ve been a Christian for a while, starting your prayers with the words ‘heavenly Father’ (or some similar variation) may have become so customary that you don’t think about it much. If you’re not a Christian, the idea of referring to the Creator as ‘Father’ may seem bizarre, even wrong. And if you’re a new Christian, maybe you haven’t got your head around this name for God and you’re still defaulting to safer options like ‘Lord’ or just ‘God’.

I guess that covers just about everyone. Calling God ‘Father’ when we pray has the potential to be a strange, confusing, or empty Christian habit. But it should never be any of those things. Instead, we should pause daily and reflect on the mind-blowing idea that we can call the God of the Universe ‘Father’. Continue reading →

Praying with the Nazarenes

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Iraqi Christian Child
Photo Courtesy: Barnabas Fund

What a privilege – and what a responsibility – to pray for persecuted Christians around the world! Today, day 11 of ‘31 Days of Prayer‘, we’re taking a break from the series. Instead of reflecting on prayer, here’s a prayer you can use to pray for persecuted Christians in northern Iraq. (I’ve used ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ throughout most of this prayer to give some sense of the way we can stand together in prayer for those in desperate need.)

Gracious heavenly Father, thank you for the privilege of prayer, and for the way in which it allows us to uphold and care for our brothers and sisters around the world. Thank you that we can pray for persecuted Christians around the world in their time of need. Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day Ten – Delighting in the Lord

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Psalm 73“Take delight in the Lord, and he will give you your heart’s desires. (Psalm 37:4)”

Yesterday, we looked at how pursuing the pleasures of this world as our driving desire can be fatal to our prayer lives. ‘You do not have, because you do not ask,’ is James’ blunt way of putting it. (Sorry for making you think of James Blunt just then.)

Isaiah puts it equally bluntly: Surely the arm of the Lord is not too short to save, nor his ear too dull to hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear. (Isa 59:1-2) The Psalmist raises a similar idea in Psalm 66: “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened. But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.” Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day Nine – Our passions or our prayers?

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Pray - James 4“You do not have, because you do not ask.” (James 4:2)

“I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for Joy.” So said C.S. Lewis in Surprised by Joy 1955. Over the last six decades, surely our world has become more filled with trinkets and tools that offer us more instant gratification (pleasure, as Lewis put it), but dissuade us from the pursuit of real, lasting joy – the kind of joy that God offers us in the gospel.

The book of James has a particular concern for showing that a driving desire for the pleasures of this world can be fatal for our prayer lives. Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day Eight – The simplest reason to pray

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Romans 12“Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer.” (Romans 12:12)

Through the first week of ’31 Days of Prayer’, I’ve managed to avoid maybe the most basic reason why Christians ought to pray: God tells us to.

It might seem the most natural, obvious thing in the world – habitually asking our all-powerful heavenly Father to act in our lives and in the world should be a no-brainer. But just because something is good for us doesn’t mean we naturally want to do it. Do children (and not a few adults) need to be told to eat their vegetables? Do sinful human beings need to be told to pray?

We’ll come back to some of these verses in later reflections throughout the month, but take a look at these biblical commands to pray: Continue reading →

31 Days of Prayer: Day Seven – Pray Like Jesus

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Bethsaida“Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.” (Mark 6:45-46)

Down through the ages, Christians have (unsurprisingly) looked to Jesus’ practice of prayer for guidance on how we ought to pray. Just a couple of months ago, Mark Dever (one of my favourite Christian authors and preachers) published a brief, insightful essay over at The Briefing, looking at prayer in the life of Jesus. Continue reading →