Some things are very normal in the Christian life. One would think that praying would easily fit that category. But for some reason, praying has become a difficult Christian exercise. “I will pray about it” has become synonymous with “Thanks for letting me know,” or “so sorry to hear it.” In fact, in some cases to say you are praying for someone is an easy way out of a conversation. You can separate yourself from the person and the person’s story with one easy sentence. “Ok, I will pray for you. Bye.”
If statistics are right, 14% of Evangelicals pray once a week and 4% of us pray once a month. If you are in the 14%, that means that church is the only time in the week you invest in self-conscious prayer.
The Scriptures provide a buffet of prayer options. But for too many Christians, they come to this buffet and out of the 700 options for feasting, they choose none of them. Imagine if we treated prayer like food. Many of us in the Church would be either unhealthily thin or dead by now. And indeed many suffer from a prayerless life which is incompatible with our call to pray at all times in the Spirit (Eph. 6:18).
Definition
Paul tends to combine the gift of prayer with the Spirit. The Spirit is the unifying voice in the Godhead. It’s the Spirit that urges unity, that intercedes for us in our weakness (Rom. 8) and it’s the Spirit who bathes our armor to war well in this world. Thus, it’s clear that to pray is to be invested in spiritual life. To be more precise, prayer is participation in the life of the Spirit. To live a fully Trinitarian life, we need a life of prayer. Perhaps one reason we think so rarely about the role of the Spirit is that we are not continually abiding in the presence of the Spirit in prayer. So, if this is how we participate in the life of the Spirit, it would be wise to be in the Spirit as we walk together to the cross of Jesus these remaining days of Lent.
How Then Do We Pray?
What does it look like to participate in the life of the Spirit? Paul magnifies God for his depth of wisdom and riches and knowledge (Rom. 11:33-36). To pray in the Spirit is to explore his depth. Therefore, the Spirit would lead us to pray meaningfully. Sometimes we fear anything formal or written, but we all agree that when we think about what to pray and ponder what to say, our prayers become more meaningful. In no way does this imply that using more theological words means more depth. Rather, praying in the Spirit means exploring more the depth of our union with the Spirit. And how does this depth manifest? Sinclair Ferguson put it this way:
You do not become a master musician by playing just as you please, by imagining that learning the scales is sheer legalism and bondage! No, true freedom in any area of life is the consequence of regular discipline. It is no less true of the life of prayer.
We don’t want to practice prayer because we think it’s just something we do, and as a result, we find ourselves unequipped to pray more faithfully. But prayer implies practice. Jesus condemns the vain repetition of the Pharisees, but what about the casual vain repetition we use because we refuse to learn how to be meaningful and intentional in our prayer; to explore the depths and riches of the Spirit?
Perhaps practicing requires intentionality. One strikingly fruitful recommendation is that of Psalm-like prayer. The practice is simple. Write prayers based on psalmic language. Let’s take Psalm 23 as an example. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” How can we write or form prayers based on that inspired truth? My own children came with these examples:
“O, Lord, you watch over me. You teach me to desire your ways and to want your truth. Thank you for watching over me even when I don’t desire your care.”
Let’s take another line: “He leadeth me beside still waters.”
“Lord Jesus, you never lead me astray. Your ways keep me at peace in times of uncertainty. When everything is changing around me, you keep me in perfect peace.”
These are just a couple of examples of how this can be fleshed out. It’s a great practice for long-term maturity in our prayer life and it keeps us constantly in word and prayer in the Spirit who inspired the very words of the Psalms.
Prayer is normal in the Christian life. But like most ordinary things in our Christian lives, we need to nurture this practice. The problem of prayer is a lack of practice. We need an urgency to pray, not just as a necessary duty of words, but an essential duty of godly wisdom. We should not just casually say, “I will pray about it,” but actually be about prayer.
