Five Things that Can (and Should) Affect Your Prayer Life

This year, I attended T4G for the first time. After hearing some of the most renowned preachers of this era, one sermon resonated with me the most: David Platt's 'Relenting Wrath: The Role of Desperate Prayer in the Mystery of Divine Providence'.

To quote Platt, "Prayer is a huge hole in the canvas of the Reformed resurgence."

I could not agree more, Pastor (or should I say President) Platt. But I don't only see the hole in the canvas of this movement; I see this hole in my own life. In the life of the church. Prayer isn't just lacking in Reformed circles. Prayer is missing. And we are missing it everywhere.

So many times, we start to "heap up empty phrases" as Jesus warns us not to do in Matthew 6:7.

But as I begin to examine how our Savior prays in the (ever-so-aptly-named) Lord's Prayer—the model we all seem to turn to for prayer—there are five places where the Church typically misses the mark:

We lack reverence in our prayers.
Since we are already there, look at the Lord's Prayer. "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name."

Jesus isn't asking for some kind of cosmic permission to make God holy. How many times do you approach God realizing who you are talking to? Read some of the characteristics about our God:

• 1 Chronicles 16:25 and Psalm 96:4 tells us of God's greatness and how He is to be "feared above all gods."
• In Ezekiel 36:23 God tells us of His own greatness.
• Psalm 136:4 tells us that He alone performs great wonders. 

The completely holy God of all creation is taking the time to listen to our human prayers. He loves us. On second thought, maybe I got the emphasis wrong on that. He loves us. It is absolutely incredible.

We lack reactivity to our prayers.

There is a tendency within the Church to forget to read Matthew 7:7 in its entirety. The verse says, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you."

What this verse is not saying is that we can pray and the Lord will certainly fulfill any of our requests, as if God is some kind of wish-granting genie. This is no prosperity gospel. Instead, we are to ask, seek, and knock. We have to press our actions into our prayers and faithfully seek out to find God's answer to them.

We lack authority in our prayers.

Christ placed authority in His prayer. Matthew 6:11 has this phrase, "Give us this day our daily bread," which is better translated, "Give us our bread that is intended for tomorrow, today."

There's an underlying sense of promise and certainty that God will hold to that promise in those words. 

Gideon learned this lesson the hard way. In Judges 6:36-40, we see doubtful Gideon asking God for some kind of sign that he can believe in. God ends up showing Gideon twice that He is certainly at work and answering the prayer of Gideon. Shortly after, Gideon leads his army of men over the Midianites and over Zebah and Zalmunna.

We lack honesty in our prayers.

Still speaking in respect to prayer, Christ then moves from the Lord's Prayer to talking about fasting. In Matthew 6:17-18, Jesus tells the crowds that they should anoint their heads, so that the Father will "see" it.

Clearly, Christians will uphold the idea that God is omniscient, so why would He need to "see" this honesty in our prayer and fasting in order to honor it?

Perhaps I can't give you an answer, but Scripture seems to point to this idea: God does not  respond to a hardened heart. Be honest and soft-hearted in your prayers, for you have been commanded to do so.

We lack dependency in our prayers.

Coinciding with our lack of honesty is our lack of dependency.

I know that I routinely find myself trying to justify the state of my prayer life (perhaps to myself or to God) by saying that I have it together, and that I pray more than I realize. The words that are so sacred to the Jewish people, the "Shema" (Deut. 6:4-8), remind us that we need this dependency. We need to depend on Him as we go in and out of our homes. We need to depend on Him as we wake and as we sleep.

We have to depend on Him.