Authentic prayer, God-centered prayer, realizes that the promise of prayer is God Himself. Being in the presence of God is the greatest reward of prayer. Godly folk have always relished this.

It is easy to be critical of prayer, particularly the prayers of others. Robert Murray McCheyne’s words are often cited because they remain painfully true: “You wish to humble a man? Ask him about his prayer life.”

Our prayers reveal much about us. Prayers with little or no worship and focusing on our needs (usually health) reveal a distorted, Adamic bent. What they reveal is self-centeredness, what Martin Luther labeled homo in se incurvatus: “man curved in on himself.” Listen to prayers at the church prayer meeting (if one still exists). You will discover that the majority of prayers are “organ recitals”—prayers for someone’s liver, kidney, or heart. Not that we shouldn’t pray for medical issues, but a preoccupation with health is itself a reflection of how little we understand why it is we desire good health. We desire it so that the person we are praying for lives for Jesus Christ.

Prayer is “talking to God” (Graeme Prayer and the Knowledge of God, p. 15.). Sometimes, perhaps too often, the “talk” is all about us. We’ve all had those annoying conversations that have been entirely one-sided, showing little or no interest in us. It’s all about them—their interests, desires, needs, and complaints. Prayer can get like that: we pour out our woes, become totally self-absorbed, and show no interest in dialogue that involves “listening” to what God has to say. God is patient and, in His grace, He responds. But it shouldn’t be like that. When Jesus taught us to pray, He showed us that prayer begins (and continues) with God: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9). Take a look at the structure of the Lord’s Prayer, and it will show you that at least half of our praying should be addressed to the praise and worship of God.

Person

Many factors influenced Tertullian when he coined the term personae to represent the threeness of God, but he employed this term primarily because the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit “talk” to each other. They relate personally—to each other and to us. In other words, God communicates with Himself and with His people. It stands to reason, therefore, that prayer should consist of personal communion—talking to God with inquisitiveness as to His nature and His desires, and eagerness to learn about the things that please and displease Him.

The first petition of the Lord’s Prayer, among other things, reminds us that there must be a clearheaded focus on our part on who God is and what God is like. Theologians have reflected on how we come to know God and what it is that we know about Him. The answer has often come in this form: we know very little in answer to the question “What is God?” What we do know (because God has revealed it to us) is in answer to the question “What is God like?” God shows us what He is like by revealing to us His name.

Our minds, whether consciously or subliminally, are (to use John Calvin’s phrase) “idol factories,” constantly succumbing to “I like to think of God as . . .” formulas, all of which are seriously wrong, conceived by a persistent anti-God bias in our mental, moral, and spiritual systems. To avoid idolatry in prayer, we must begin by reminding ourselves of His name—whether that be God’s covenant name “I AM WHO I AM” or Yahweh (that is, self-existent, self-sustaining, self-determining, everywhere present, and always in control); or, as the Lord’s Prayer wonderfully encapsulates, “Father” (expressive of the newness of the new covenant and the access and status to which the work of our Redeemer has introduced us); or, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit” (as Jesus Himself disclosed in the Great Commission of Matthew 28:19). When Jesus commissioned His disciples to baptize in the “name” (singular) of “the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” He revealed the impenetrable truth that there is more than one in the one God.

Read More