One of the main reasons I wrote my new minibook, Why Should I Pray? was to help believers experience prayer as fellowshipping with our loving Father, more so than getting stuff from our Father. This shift makes all the difference in the world. My memories of prayer as a young believer aren’t the happiest ones. Prayer felt more like a duty than a delight—a spiritual discipline I wasn’t good at but feared not doing—a burden to carry rather than a God to enjoy.
I was taught formulas for getting quicker answers to my prayers, and a yes from our Father was deemed the only proper definition of “answered prayer.” That made me reluctant to pray, out of fear of getting more nos than yeses. As I listened to experienced “prayer warriors” talk to God, I stayed silent for the most part, fearing sounding like a spiritual-doofus in the presence of more mature believers. Then there was my introduction into prayer as claiming the promises of God. The implied message was that the best promise-claimers experienced God as best promise-fulfiller. Sadly, my understanding of prayer was riddled with performance and pragmatism.
It was only as I began to understand more fully what the Bible actually says about the person and work of Jesus that prayer became an exercise in joy, a practice of freedom, and the environment of my personal change. I have learned that God’s promises claim us more than we claim them (Hallelujah!). I now find prayer to be the sweetest (not always sweet!) and most powerful way to preach the gospel to our own hearts—to get the truth, goodness, and beauty deeper into the core of our being. Through prayer I continue to come alive to the only love that is better than life, the only love that will never let go of us—God’s lavish, never-ending, unwavering love for us in Jesus.
Since this blog is being shared so close to Thanksgiving, I’ll finish by sharing an example of how I am learning to fellowship with God through prayer—which is most often just praying back his Word to him through the riches of his grace and our union with Christ. May this be a season in which you find great freedom in responding to our Father’s longing for richer, grace-fueled fellowship with you. He who has us wants us, desires us, and delights in us.
“Giving thanks always and for everything to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Ephesians 5:20
Here’s my prayer for us today:
Heavenly Father, gratitude is one of the most powerful antidotes to chafing, carping, and gloom-creep. So in this November 2024, here’s to jumpstarting our Thanksgiving Day. While certain things remain uncertain, unsettling, and unnerving in this cultural moment, these things are beautifully and bodaciously true.
Thank you for granting us 100 percent forgiveness, declaring us righteous in Christ, and hiding our lives in Jesus. We can’t increase, nor diminish, your love for us. That’s the best news ever, and rocket fuel for our gratitude. Father, keep freeing us from our unbelief. May your love become the most compelling power in our lives.
Thank you for sovereignly ruling over all things everywhere all the time. That doesn’t negate legitimate feelings of lament, concern, and vulnerability; but it gives us a peace that can’t be, won’t be found anywhere else. Thank you for helping us navigate another election cycle, and for reminding us that Jesus is already King of kings and Lord of lords. Help us love our neighbors well, and our friends who may have voted differently than us. Where there are remaining tensions, may your peace center us. May your mercy humble us. May your kindness lead us to repentance and repair.
Father, thank you for putting an expiration date on each illness, every evil, and all brokenness. Hallelujah, and thank you. We long for the Day when all things will be made new and beautiful, and we know you will send back Jesus at just the right moment. Until then, may our living hope translate into tangible care for one another, and sacrificial love for the “least of these.”
Thank you for grace-loving friends with whom to share this next season of life. May our “to love list” be much more important than our “to do list,” as we enter this Thanksgiving season, and soon after, our celebration of Christmas. Free us from the barrenness of busyness by the beauty of the gospel and the calling you have given us to live at the pace of grace. By your Spirit, help us know who most needs to hear from us, your sufficient grace for relationships that need mending, and what friends we might need to run after in their season of darkness and loss.
Also, Father, thank you for giving us all things to enjoy, and to share with others. Thank you for old movies, new adventures, and yet-to-be revealed joys. Thank you for zero condemnation hanging over us, and an abundance of angels deployed all around us. Thank you for the coming Day of wiped-away tears and redeemed pain, all things new and nothing sad. We pray with gratitude and we pray with love, in Jesus’s name.
Why Should I Pray?
Have you ever felt discouraged about praying? Sometimes it feels like there are more reasons not to pray than to pray. Discouraging circumstances that haven’t changed, long-standing requests that haven’t been given a yes, boring prayer meetings the list of reasons to give up can make prayer seem more like a duty instead of a delight. Pastor and author Scotty Smith has struggled with prayer too, but he shares how his prayer life was transformed when he learned that prayer was about talking with his heavenly Father as a dearly loved son.
