Why should I pray? – Witkowski Blog

The ability to love those who insult us, to remain pure when our phones offer us a million pathways to pornography, and to refrain from being hyper-critical of that man’s vegan diet does not naturally reside within the Christian soul. To achieve the lifestyle that Jesus prescribes in his famous Sermon on the Mount, Christians must regularly ask God for help. They need it, and God promises to give it. In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus begins the conclusion of his sermon with a reflection upon prayer, saying,

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

No soul naturally loves its enemies or places its hope in God as opposed to riches and bank accounts. Were faith our natural condition, Jesus would not have had to recast the vision for the kingdom for us. Even those souls that have entered the narrow gate still cannot achieve the kingdom ethic in their own power. To overcome temptation and to develop a love for God and neighbor, the Christian must regularly and faithfully pray to Jesus who promises to give them what they ask for.

Why We Don’t Pray

I suspect many Christians succumb to temptation and make peace with sin because they fail to grasp their persistent need to pray. Just as some people nominally concerned about their health diet for a day or two and then quit after seeing no meaningful results, many Christians pray for a day or two and then quit. They pray that God would give them a love for their coworker. But then Monday rolls around, their coworker makes another off-colored remark, and the hate of last week boils back up. They assume prayer failed and that God is at peace with their irritable nature. It is just who they are. They will call again if someone gets cancer or if a hurricane is headed their way. Otherwise, they are good.

Keep Praying

Essentially, they stop asking, they stop knocking, they stop seeking. Understandably the change they desire never comes. Yet, the fault lies not with little tried tool of prayer but with the practitioner of the prayer. Godly prayer requires perseverance. As the German Reformer Martin Luther noted,

“Since your need goes on knocking, therefore, you go right on knocking, too, and do not relent.”

Jesus clarifies the connection between perseverance and prayer in Luke 11: 5-8. In this passage that heavily resembles Matthew 7, Jesus tells the parable of a man who bangs on his friend’s door at midnight because another friend just popped in to spend the night. At first, the friend in bed tells the man to go away. But the man keeps on knocking. Fearing the man will wake up the entire house (kids and all) the friend gets up and gives the man some food. Jesus says, “Because of his impudence, he will rise and him whatever he needs (8).”

The point of the parable is obvious. The soul that keeps on knocking will never leave empty handed. As Jesus says, “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened (Mt 7:8). The teenager who longs for sexual purity will get it through fervent prayer. The tired wife that bangs on God’s door asking God to give her a love for her in-laws will receive it. The angry child that looks for freedom from her anger through prayer will find peace. Those who pray without ceasing will receive the gifts that they need.

Trust God’s Character

To drive the point home, Jesus compares his care for us to how our earthly father’s care for us. Just as children can trust earthly parents to give them bread and not rocks for dinner, Christians can ask God for their spiritual needs, trusting that he will neither manipulate them nor harm them. Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Mt 7:11)!” Jesus does not toss out the analogy to validate human goodness. Rather, he uses it to reveal that if we can trust our earthly fathers who are capable of great evil to do some basic good things, then we should trust God even more. God will not play games with us. Even if we ask God for a stone, he will still give us bread.

Why Didn’t God Heal Susie?

That very promise from God to answer our prayer can also cause us to doubt whether or not God truly is good. Many Christians have prayed for years for a new job, for Johnny’s salvation, and for Susie to recover from cancer. Yet no one calls you for interviews, Johnny still refuses to come to church, and you just learned that Susie died. In light of God’s promise that those who seek will find, many souls cannot help but openly question: “What happened?”

But such questions arise from a profound misunderstanding of the context in which Jesus promises to honor our prayers. As John Stott noted many years earlier, the promises made in Matthew 7 relate to God’s character as Father and not as creator. As creator, God bestows the earthly gifts of family, health, and financial success upon billions of people who never pray. In Matthew 5:45, Jesus credits God with sending rain, “on the just and the unjust.” While Christians should ask God for their daily bread as their heavenly Father is the author of all good gifts, the specify delivery of good gifts cannot be guaranteed through prayer. Moreover, our repeated and earnest asking of God for something does not obligate God to give us the earthly thing asked for. For example, I longed for a red convertible as a teenager and college student. I frequently prayer for such a good gift. To date, I have never owned a red convertible. We should ask him for health and a host of other earthly but should do so with the tagline from James, “if the Lord wills (Jm 4:15).”

But as Father, God answers all the spiritual things we ask of him. Salvation comes not by osmosis nor by splashing water on people’s foreheads. It comes through asking. Paul confirms the foundational role of prayer in the saving process, writing, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Rom 10:13).” Sanctification occurs in the same manner. Through asking, seeking, and knocking we grow in our ability to love others, to fulfill our marriage vows, and to promote peace. Spiritual gifts always come through prayer. If we will but ask, seek, and knock, God will give us the desires of our heart.

The old hymn correctly states: What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!

Are you praying?

Few Christians consider prayerless to be a mortal sin that can ruin their life. Yet, the Scriptures say just that. Those who deem God’s command to “pray without ceasing” to be a nice, nonbinding suggestion reveal an abundance of self-confidence, an abundance of pride (1 Thess. 5:16-18). They ultimately rest in their own abilities, believing they have made their bank accounts, careers, and families what they are by their own power. Like King Nebuchadnezzar in Daniel 4:38, they declare, “Is this not great Babylon, which I have built by my might power, as a royal residence and for the glory of my majesty.” The flip side of the pridefulness has always been prayerlessness. Leham Status notes,

No one can both sin and pray. True prayer will prevent us from sinning or sin will prevent us from praying.

And like Nebuchadnezzar their lives descend into chaos when God removes his blessing. The king of Babylon was not alone nor especially pagan. King David, God’s king, almost died because of his prayerlessness. He recounted his story in Psalm 30:6-7, writing:

As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” By your favor, O Lord, you made my mountain stand strong; you hid your face; I was dismayed.

As David sailed down into the gulf of success, he lost sight of God’s merciful saving hand. He forgot that God had delivered him from, Goliath, Saul, and numerous other well armed enemies. David attributed his success to his wisdom, skill, and insights. Essentially, David prayed for God blessings and then congratulated himself for that fulfilling that prayer. He thought himself to be an immovable castle that could repel any attack. Like the disciples in the Garden of Gethsemane, David had no reason to pray for he had everything under his control. He had done it all and done it all well.

Then, God removed his blessing. David’s castle of stone was exposed as being nothing more than a house of nicely decorated index cards. The storm hit and the paper beams collapsed into a mushy mess. Separated from God, David was powerless to stop armies or even tiny germs. Like the apostle Peter who denied Christ three times while standing in his own power, David’s life spun into ruin because of his pride. His body become deathly ill. He had had neglected prayer.

Thankfully Psalm 30 does not conclude with a funeral oration. Though the heavy hand of God descended upon David, God’s mercy remained ever close. Psalm 94:12 notes, “blessed is the man You discipline, O Lord, and teach Your Law.”

The great theologian John Calvin wrote,

Though our lives may be daily full of grief and fears, and though God may humble us with various signs of his displeasure, he always sprinkles them with the sweetness of his favor to assuage our grief.

God heard David’s cry and saved him. David noted, “For his anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” Joy came to the apostle Peter who found restoration at the hands of Jesus. God awoke Nebuchadnezzar from his insanity and restored the king to power.

Indeed, God heals physical disease as evidence of his power to heal the sin that ruins our hearts. Jesus, the great physician, came to seek and to save the lost, the broken, the sinful. The gospel spins upon the axis of God’s mercy. Jesus saved us because he loves us irrespective of our earthly accomplishments. For this reason, those who walk away from God can always call out to him when the find themselves careening head first into the depths of doom. God hears their cries because he mercy last forever.

If we found ourselves in the bucket descending into the dark waters of poor health, bankruptcy, or failing relationships, we should call out to the Lord. As Martin Luther’s best friend, Philip Melanchthon noted,

Prayer is always necessary for deliverance.

Salvation comes through prayer and not apart from it. Many Christians do not know joy because they do not know prayer. They are still attempting to solve their problems through self-help books, blog tips, and the occasional social media poll. They have nothing to praise God for because they have asked for nothing. Do not make this mistake. Pray.

So does the message of Psalm 30 mean all suffering is birthed from our sin?

No, suffering descends upon the human soul for a variety of reasons. But the believer’s response to suffering should always be the same: prayerful dependence upon God. The moment God feels distant is the moment when Christians should pray. Salvation, repentance, restoration, deliverance, and hope all begin with prayer. The faithful Christian prays. By contrast, prayerlessness is sin and faithlessness.

Martin Luther once remarked,