The heart of prayer

   

  My November 20 posting on Crossway’s How to Pray series aroused my curiosity about recent books on the subject.

      I soon realized that I’d never been able to resist a book that begins with a question, and answers that question before the end of the first paragraph. This happens with a slim publication by Dr. William Philip titled Why We Pray (Crossway, 2015).

      I especially like the fact that Philip insists on the opening page of his introduction that the most important question to ask first about prayer is “Why? Why do we pray? Not why should we pray?”

      His answer: “We pray because of who and what God is.” He goes on to  say that when we look at what the whole Bible teaches about prayer, we are reminded, most importantly, that we learn most about prayer simply by learning about God, because the real truth about God is never discouraging—never depressing, as some well-meaning but over-pious Christians often are, or can make you feel.

      Before his ordination, Philip was a doctor specializing in cardiology, and since 2004 has been senior minister of The Tron Church in Glasgow, Scotland.

       He says he hopes that his book will liberate us to find the Bible’s explanation of the nature of prayer, rather than mere exhortation about our need to pray.

      It’s divided into four main sections, compact and easy to follow, which Philip clarifies under each heading:

      1. We pray because God is a speaking God.

(All the way through the opening chapter of the  Bible, creation happens as God speaks the whole of the created order into being. … He didn’t wave a magic wand.)

      2. We pray because we are sons of God.

(And participate, through our prayers, in his purposes of eternal glory.)

       3. We pray because God is a sovereign God.

(Thinking about what God does and who God is, is always far more encouraging than thinking about ourselves, about what we aren’t, about what we don’t do, and what we should do more of. ... Prayer is simply one expression of salvation.)

      4. We pray because we have the Spirit of God.

(Because God has adopted us into his family, we have come to share the privilege of the intimate relationship that Jesus, God’s perfect son, has with his father, and our father. We pray because in Christ we too are sons of God.)

      And I would add a fifth that embraces them all: We pray because we really can trust Jesus’ plain and simple words: “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7).

      But I’d give the last word to the contributor who speaks first in the foreword, Alistair Begg, of Parkside Church, Chagrin Falls, Ohio. He  shares an observation by one of Philip’s mentors who says that prayer for the Christian is a matter of believing that God is, and that he does respond to those who believe in him.

      “Prayer, then, instead of being a matter of times and seasons and special or routine occasions, becomes a life, or it becomes such a vital part of life that it refocuses one’s whole outlook.”