As Christians, we are given the privilege and responsibility of communicating with the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Yet many Christians neglect prayer. In this series, Dr. R.C. Sproul demonstrates that intimate communication with God is at the heart of our relationship to Him. Through Christ, we are accepted by God and enabled to call upon Him as our Lord and Father.

Prayer “is an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies” (Westminster Shorter Catechism 98). It is one of the most important spiritual disciplines, and we can offer up prayers to God individually as well as corporately with other believers. Prayer may be spontaneous, offered at a moment’s notice and without following any specific model, or it may be more formal and liturgical, offered according to a specific pattern given in Scripture

When a Christian prays, does it make any difference? Does it change anything? Though our prayers do not change God's mind, He ordains prayer as a means to accomplish His will. We can be confident that prayer does change things-including our own hearts.In this booklet, Dr. R.C. Sproul argues that prayer has a vital place in the life of the Christian and calls us to come before God's presence with joy and hope. Dr. Sproul shares practical wisdom and helps us understand the purpose, pattern, practice, prohibitions, and power of prayer.The Crucial Questions booklet series by Dr. R.C. Sproul offers succinct answers to important questions often asked by Christians and thoughtful inquirers.

As Christians, we are given the privilege and responsibility of communicating with the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Yet many Christians neglect prayer. In this series, Dr. R.C. Sproul demonstrates that intimate communication with God is at the heart of our relationship to Him. Through Christ, we are accepted by God and enabled to call upon Him as our Lord and Father.

We have many reasons to be excited about prayer—and to pray with urgency! Guy Richard shows us that as we pour out our hearts to the Lord, we and the world around us will be changed. Informative, encouraging, and practical, this brief book will serve as a helpful primer for pastors, elders, study groups, and Christians who seek encouragement and instruction on prayer and its blessings. Written for the church, the Blessings of the Faith series introduces and celebrates Reformed doctrine and practice—each book features a brief and practical overview of its topic with discussion questions and an extensive Q&A section.

We live in a world that needs awakening, and this booklet exists to help guide you in prayer for awakening. What is awakening? It is a powerful movement of the Spirit of God to convert many people to Christ and to renew in His church a zeal for His truth, for spiritual growth, and for missions. This guide is designed to be used during any calendar year, so each month has four weeks rather than specific dates. Each week of the month focuses on a different group to pray for, starting with you and your family and expanding to larger communities. There is also space for journaling.Product Features• 48 prayers (4 per month)• Different prayer focuses during the month• Accompanying Scripture verses with each prayer• 4” x 6” (W x H)• Material: Soft touch cover

Sadly, most of us struggle to set aside time to pray. But, fear not, this is not another book that will pile on the guilt, simply saying pray better and more often. Instead, Michael Reeves shows us not only why prayer is so essential, but also how we can enjoy it too.Taking his cue from Calvin’s definition that prayer is ‘the chief exercise of faith,’ Reeves helps us understand that prayer should be a natural expression of our faith. Just as faith is awakened as we grasp the wonders of the gospel, so prayer follows as our hearts respond to these glorious truths.

Life's inevitable difficulties and disappointments can discourage us from praying, but our response should be to pray anyway and keep praying. Whatever we seek, God invites us to come to Him with confidence, believing that He is able to answer—and He will answer.We can pray for: Forgiveness like David Wisdom like Solomon Healing like Hezekiah A child like Hannah Deliverance like Jonah Mercy like the 10 lepers Salvation like the thief on the cross But are you convinced that prayer works, even when you don't get the answers you want? In It Happens After Prayer, Pastor HB Charles, Jr. motivates and encourages us to respond to the challenges of life with prayer, to pray without ceasing, and to pray with great expectations.Are you ready for a new level of earnest, passionate, God-size prayers? Don't let another day go by without praying and seeking the face of God, because it happens after prayer.

When the American evangelist D.L. Moody spoke in the Metropolitan Tabernacle in October 1892, he recalled an earlier visit twenty-five years previously. He had come four thousand miles, he said, to hear C.H. Spurgeon, but what impressed him most was not the sermon, nor the singing of the great congregation, but Spurgeon’s prayer. Such was his access to God that he seemed to be able to bring down power from heaven. This was the great secret, Moody believed, of Spurgeon’s influence and success.This collection of prayers drawn primarily from Sunday morning services at the Tabernacle will make a similar impression on readers today. In this book we see Spurgeon come into the presence of God with deep reverence, yet with unquestioning child-like confidence, to plead God’s promises in Scripture and to revel in the nearness to God into which Christ has brought all who believe.The Pastor in Prayer will inspire those who lead public worship and all Christians with a fresh sense of the privilege of prayer, and a renewed desire to ‘come boldly to the throne of grace’, there to ‘obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need’.

Is your prayer life characterized by such things as sincerity, urgency, and delight? Engagement in prayer is a vital part of our communion with God, making a profound impact on our growth in grace. In this book, you will find thoughtful meditations on prayer in the life of the believer, as well as ample encouragement to cultivate this spiritual discipline in your own life. If you want to be more devoted to prayer, or simply want to assess the health of your prayer life, read this book. It provides both a helpful examination and a needed tonic for those concerned about growing in godliness.

As Christians, we are given the privilege and responsibility of communicating with the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. Yet many Christians neglect prayer. In this series, Dr. R.C. Sproul demonstrates that intimate communication with God is at the heart of our relationship to Him. Through Christ, we are accepted by God and enabled to call upon Him as our Lord and Father.

of our dependence on him to his glory. As he hath made all things for his own glory, so he will be glorified and acknowledged by his creatures; and it is fit that he should require this of those who would be subjects of his mercy . . . [it] is a suitable acknowledgement of our dependence on the power and mercy of God for that which we need, and but a suitable honor paid to the great Author and Fountain of all good. With respect to ourselves, God requires prayer of us . . . Fervent prayer many ways tends to prepare the heart. Hereby is excited a sense of our need . . . whereby the mind is more prepared to prize [his mercy] . . . Our prayer to God may excite in us a suitable sense and consideration of our dependence on God for the mercy we ask, and a suitable exercise of faith in God’s sufficiency, so that we may be prepared to glorify his name when the mercy is received.

All that God does is for His glory first and for our benefit second. We pray because God commands us to pray, because it glorifies Him, and because it benefits us.

:The Works of Jonathan Edwards [Carlisle, Pa.: Banner of Truth Trust, 1974], 2:116.

SPROUL: To ask that question is to answer it. What could I possibly say to God that would change His mind? Would I give Him information that He didn’t have before I talked to Him? Could I give Him counsel or wisdom that He lacked before I talked to Him? You and I both know that we are not God’s guidance counselors. We don’t change His mind. If we don’t change His mind, why pray?

First of all, we pray because He commands us to pray. Second of all, through the instrument of prayer, we enter into communion and dialogue with our heavenly Father. It is an unspeakable privilege to be able to pray and to let Him know our burdens and what’s on our mind. He knows what we’re going to ask before we ask it, and yet He encourages us to ask Him, not for His benefit, but for ours.

WEBB: Related to that, there is evidence in Scripture where it says that God relented, or where He seems to have changed His mind. How do we deal with those passages?

SPROUL: You have the language of God’s repenting, or of God’s relenting, in the Old Testament. We hear that language in narrative passages; that is, in passages that are telling us what happened historically in the affairs of the people.

WEBB: For example, when Moses petitioned Pharaoh.

SPROUL: That’s exactly right. Then you have other parts of the Scripture that are didactic. They are not historical narrative, but rather they’re teaching passages. In those didactic passages, we are told God is not a man that He should repent (Num. 23:19). How do you square that with these narrative passages where it describes God as relenting or repenting?

The way we handle that is to recognize that the Bible uses—and here’s a five-dollar word—phenomenological language. That is, it uses descriptive language from the perspective that we have as people. For example, it talks about the sun moving across the sky. We know that the sun doesn’t move across the sky, but the Bible describes it according to the phenomenon, or how it appears to us. For these saints of the Old Testament, it seemed to them that God relented or repented.

So, there is a condescension whereby God uses our own language and our own perception to describe what is happening. Yet, at the same time, He tells us in the didactic passages, “Be careful, because I’m speaking over here in a certain metaphorical, human sense.” In reality, we’re told He doesn’t repent and He doesn’t relent. Obviously, God can’t repent of anything.

but if this is what You want, this is what I’ll do. Not My will, but Your will, be done, because My will is to do Your will.

I also want you to notice what happened after Jesus prayed. Luke tells us that an angel came to Him and strengthened Him. The angel was the messenger of God. He came from heaven with the Father’s answer to Jesus’ prayer. That answer was this: “You must drink the cup.

This is what it means to pray that the will of God would be done. It is the highest expression of faith to submit to the sovereignty of God. The real prayer of faith is the prayer that trusts God no matter whether the answer is yes or no. It takes no faith to “claim,” like a robber, something that is not ours to claim. We are to come to God and tell Him what we want, but we must trust Him to give the answer that is best for us. That is what Jesus did.

Because Luke tells us that the Father sent an angel to strengthen His Son, I would expect Jesus’ agony of soul to have been alleviated. It appears, however, that with the coming of the strength from the angel came an increase in the agony of Christ, an increase so profound that He began to sweat so profusely that it was “like great drops of blood.” In a sermon on Luke 22:44, Jonathan Edwards said that this increase in Jesus’ agony was due to a full realization of the will of God for Him in His passion. He had come to the garden with the fear that He would have to drink the cup. Once He knew it was indeed God’s will that He drink it, He had a new fear—that He would not be able to do it. In other words, Jesus now was in agony that He not come short of complete and perfect obedience to the will of God.

But He did it. He drank the cup to the last drop. And in that moment, Jesus didn’t give us words to show us how to pray; He gave us His life as an example of praying that the will of God would be done on earth as it is in heaven.

Christians often use a simple acrostic as a guide to prayer: A.C.T.S. Each of the letters in this acrostic stands for one of the key elements of prayer. Not only does this acrostic remind us of the elements of prayer, it shows us the priority we ought to give to each.

The first element of prayer should be adoration, or praise. The Psalms, which are inspired samples of godly prayer, are heavily weighted on the side of adoration. I’ve noticed over many years that as we grow in the discipline and in the delight of prayer, it seems that we naturally spend more and more of our time on this first element.

Second, prayer should include confession of our sin; as we remember who we are when we come into God's presence, we see that we have come short of His holiness and have need of His forgiveness.

Third, when we pray, we should always give thanks, remembering the grace and mercy God has shown toward us.

Fourth, prayer rightly includes supplication or petition, bringing our requests for the needs of others and ourselves to God.

I think this is a helpful acrostic for remembering both the elements and the priorities of prayer. Unfortunately, we often spell our prayer life something like S.C.A.T., because we start with supplication and spend very little time, if any, on adoration, confession, and thanksgiving.

The Lord’s Prayer

When we look at the Lord’s Prayer, we see adoration at least implied in the petition “Hallowed be Your name.” Jesus acknowledged that God’s name is holy. We certainly see confession in the petition “Forgive us our debts.” And there are supplications. However, it seems that the T is conspicuously absent. Where in the Lord’s Prayer do we find any overt expression of gratitude to God? It‘s not there. That's strange, for as the Apostle Paul taught, thanksgiving should always be included in our prayers: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God” (Phil. 4:6, emphasis added).

Even though thanksgiving is not explicitly mentioned in the Lord’s Prayer, I think it is implied in the petition: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). My reason for making this assertion is simple: we are to be alert not only to the need that we have daily for food, but to the reality of God’s daily provision for our needs. That realization, of course, should induce us to an attitude of thanksgiving.

standing there. God answered the prayers of His people, delivering Peter from prison by the help of an angel, but when he appeared at the house where the believers were gathered, these people who had prayed so earnestly for his release were frightened and shocked that God had actually answered their prayer. That's the way we are so often; when God answers our prayers, we can hardly believe it.

Moving to a didactic passage, James strongly encourages the people of God to pray: Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms. Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.... Pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. (James 5:13-18)

After these stirring words, which strongly emphasize the effectiveness of prayer, James goes on to speak of the prophet Elijah. He stresses that Elijah was a man just like we are—he wasn't a super-saint or a magician. However, his prayers were extremely powerful. He prayed that God would stop the rain, and no rain at all fell for three and a half years. Then he prayed that God would send rain, and torrents fell.

Given these scriptural passages, and the many, many more that clearly show that prayer does achieve things, we are not free to say: "Well, God is in control. He's sovereign, immutable, and omniscient, so whatever will be will be. There's no point in praying." Scripture universally and absolutely denies that conclusion. Instead, it affirms that prayer does effect change. God, in His sovereignty, responds to our prayers.

This excerpt is taken from The Prayer of the Lord by R.C. Sproul

means that we are to be in a continual state of communion with our Father.

(James 5:16), Elijah sought to align his life with God’s covenant promises and threats (which is, essentially, what “righteousness” means in the Old Testament—to be rightly covenantally related to the Lord). He lived his life in the light of the covenant God had made, and so he held on to its threats of judgment in prayer, as well as to its promises of blessing.

This, then, is the prayer of faith: to ask God to accomplish what He has promised in His Word. That promise is the only ground for our confidence in asking. Such confidence is not “worked up” from within our emotional life; rather, it is given and supported by what God has said in Scripture.

Truly “righteous” men and women of faith know the value of their heavenly Father’s promises. They go to Him, as children do to a loving human father. They know that if they can say to an earthly father, “But, father, you promised . . . ,” they can both persist in asking and be confident that he will keep his word. How much more our heavenly Father, who has given His Son for our salvation! We have no other grounds of confidence that He hears our prayers. We need none.

Legitimate Prayer

Such appeal to God’s promises constitutes what John Calvin, following Tertullian, calls “legitimate prayer.”

Some Christians find this disappointing. It seems to remove the mystique from the prayer of faith. Are we not tying down our faith to ask only for what God already has promised? But such disappointment reveals a spiritual malaise: would we rather devise our own spirituality (preferably spectacular) than God’s (frequently modest)?

The struggles we sometimes experience in prayer, then, are often part of the process by which God gradually brings us to ask for only what He has promised to give. The struggle is not our wrestling to bring Him to give us what we desire, but our wrestling with His Word until we are illuminated and subdued by it, saying, “Not my will, but Your will be done.” Then, as Calvin again says, we learn “not to ask for more than God allows.”

This is why true prayer can never be divorced from real holiness. The prayer of faith can be made only by the “righteous” man whose life is being more and more aligned with the covenant grace and purposes of God. In the realm of prayer, too (since it is a microcosm of the whole of the Christian life), faith (prayer to the covenant Lord) without works (obedience to the covenant Lord) is dead.

He knew by heart, and other prayers that Jews were instructed in. There are many ways to jumpstart your prayer.

Let me give you one practical idea that’s been helpful for me: walk. It’s harder to fall asleep when you’re walking. Go out and walk ten minutes, and then you have ten minutes to come back, which means you can have a long, wandering prayer.

Read through Psalm 55 sometime. The psalmist is praying, and sometimes he’s talking to God in the second person, sometimes he’s talking about himself, and sometimes he’s talking about God in the third person. It’s a freewheeling conversation in the presence of God.

The most important thing about prayer, perhaps, is where it ends up. Sometimes on the way to end up in a good place, the Psalms take some circuitous routes, and we may too in our long, wandering prayers. So, get up, walk around, have a hymnal, and try something different.

THOMAS: Intercessory prayer is a key part of the nations’ salvation because God has made a promise, and He keeps it through means. Scripture is clear, from the first book to the last, that part of the means is our prayer and intercession. Intercessory prayer is key on both a personal and a corporate level.

If we hold to the maxim that the healthiness of a church is in its prayer meetings, we will be disappointed because we have very unhealthy churches today. If we measured the volume and depth of prayer in a typical twenty-first-century Reformed church compared to a church in the last few hundred years, there would be a qualitative and quantitative difference.

Psalm 2 is a fulfillment of what God told Abraham in Genesis 12. If we want to see that in all its fullness, as the closing chapters of Revelation express it, we need to be prayer warriors. As a church, both individually and corporately, we need to stand in the gap and pray. If we want to see Jesus coming again soon, or sooner than we think, we need to be praying for the nations to be gathered.

NICHOLS: There is the example of Jesus Himself weeping over Jerusalem. The context is that He was with the disciples, helping them see that the fields are white for harvest and giving them the vision of the need for the gospel. Then, we have Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer of intercession, which is a model for us in many ways. So, we have the necessity of this intercession in Jesus Himself, by command and example.

REEVES: Matthew 9, the classic mission text, says, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest that He might send out workers into the harvest field” (Matt. 9:38). The context of the verse is that Jesus saw the crowds, that they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, and He had compassion on them, and so He said to the disciples, “Pray to the Lord of the harvest.” That is a very odd thing to say, and we think: “You are the One feeling compassion for them. Surely, one prayer of Christ’s would be worth far more than all of theirs, so why was He asking them to pray?”

Matthew 9:38 helps us see that salvation is about being drawn in to share the life of the Son before the Father. Sharing the life of the Son means sharing His passion, concern, and desire for their one plan for the church, to see the glory of God fill the earth. Our prayers for missions are an important part of our Christ-likeness. It is part of being united to the Son, enjoying life in Him, and praying like Him: “Our Father . . . ”

We thank God for particular gifts given to us and others personally, and for general gifts bestowed on all. Praise, on the other hand, focuses directly on God. We praise him for who and what he is. It is the difference between a spouse saying to the other, “You are the most understanding person I know; that’s one reason I love you so much” and “Thanks for the sandwich; I needed it” (Praying: Finding Our Way Through Duty to Delight, p. 31).

Presence

Praising God does not come naturally to us. We must be resolute about it. That’s why Jesus warned His disciples in the preface to the Lord’s Prayer about a religious performance more concerned about outward spectacle and ceremony than inward authenticity and true worship. “Hypocrite” is the term Jesus uses (Matt. 6:5), a term just about as offensive now as it was then. Playacting, pretending to pray, praying without the reality of knowing we are in God’s presence, is a harsh judgment but a true one nevertheless. When we do such things, we are praying to exalt ourselves, not God. It is the self-centeredness that plagues us, that needs to be rooted out and destroyed. 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: O Lord, I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells. (Ps. 26:8) Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts! We shall be satisfied with the goodness of your house, the holiness of your temple (Ps. 65:4)

Do you know anything of this? If not, pursue Him until you find Him. “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call upon him while he is near.” (Isa. 55:6)

Practice

How can we ensure that our prayers are God-centered? Consider the following five-step strategy:

1. Remind yourself that there is only one God in the universe, and that you are not Him.

2. Adoration comes first, before confession, thanksgiving, or supplication. Worship the Lord in your praying.

3. Read a psalm before you pray, and attempt to emulate what you find: a preoccupation with God in all His multifaceted nature. Find psalms of joy or grief, praise or lament, and note how the psalmist spends time with God, making Him the center of his thoughts and desires.

4. Learn to love God’s names so that saying and repeating them fills you with an inexpressible joy, a reminder of who He is and His covenant faithfulness to you in the gospel of His grace.

5. Learn to “wait” upon the Lord. Watch how the psalmist, “fainting” as he thinks of his own troubles, finds relief by deliberately focusing on the great things God has done: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonders of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds” (Ps. 77:11-12).

There are layers of answers to that.

One purpose is obedience to God, because in so many different places we are urged to pray, and we are urged to pray without ceasing. So even if we were not able to explain why we should pray, we should pray because God has commanded us. That’s a sufficient answer.

The second part of the answer is that God has decreed that much of what will take place will take place through the secondary causation of the intercession of the saints. That’s part of His purpose.

With questions like this I often say to people, “Ask that question of Jesus.” Because it was not in His deity but in His humanity that He engaged in intercessory prayer, John 17 being the great illustration of it. Why does He do this? Because it is the Father’s good pleasure that through His human intercession on our behalf the Father will work out His decreed purposes.

And that’s true not only of intercessory prayer, but it’s also true of witnessing, evangelism, breathing, persevering, and obeying any exhortation of Scripture. Why do we do this if God is sovereign? A) Because he’s sovereign and B) because He works out His sovereign will frequently through secondary causation.

The other thing I would say is to take some time to read carefully the chapter on the providence of God in the Westminster Confession of Faith, or in the parallel London and Philadelphia Confession.

I have a good friend who is about twice my age. Over the past few years we have hunted together, fished together, and prayed together. He refers to himself as a recovering Pharisee who is learning how to quit praying for his own personal kingdom and how to pray for the kingdom of God. I have learned more about prayer from him than anyone. I have learned that faithfulness in the kingdom of God is more important than successfulness in the kingdom of man. I have learned that the power of God is not made perfect in our strength but in our weakness, and I have learned that kingdom prayer is not merely asking God for what we want in the temporal but what He wants in the eternal.

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When the Lord taught His disciples to pray, he didn’t simply tell them what to do, He showed them what to do. Even as the Son of God, He demonstrated His humility and prayed to the Father that His kingdom would come and that His will would be done, and He knew exactly what He was asking for. For even when He prayed in the garden, He humbled Himself before the Father and fell down on His face and prayed, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). On every occasion, our Lord prayed with an uninterrupted focus on the will of the Father. It would seem appropriate that if the Lord Jesus Christ prayed in such a manner, then so should we. When we come to God in prayer, we must empty ourselves of all arrogance and self-reliance; we must come to the end of ourselves so that our hearts can be lifted up to heaven, and we must focus our minds not on the goods and kindred of this earth but on the precious treasures that await us in our heavenly home.

In his booklet on prayer, titled Of Prayer: A Perpetual Exercise of Faith, the Daily Benefits Derived from It, John Calvin provides several rules for prayer. He writes, The third rule to be added is: that he who comes into the presence of God to pray must divest himself of all vainglorious thoughts, lay aside all idea of worth; in short, discard all self-confidence, humbly giving God the whole glory, lest by arrogating anything, however little, to himself, vain pride cause him to turn away his face.

In so doing, we shall conquer the kingdoms of men, tear down the strongholds of this world, and manifest what it means to live a humble existence coram Deo, before the face of God.

James 5:16 describes the “great power” of a righteous person’s prayer. What is this power, and where does it come from? Today, Burk Parsons clears up several misconceptions about the power and efficacy of prayer.