Is your prayer life sometimes boring? Hard to pay attention? Often get distracted? Feel just like you are going through the motions? I know that I’ve had seasons just like that. I’ve already confessed that if I’m not careful I’ll drift into rote and meaningless prayers before meal time.
I’m convinced that our theology and worldview is on full display in the way that we pray (or don’t pray). I agree with J.I. Packer who said, “I believe that prayer is the measure of the man, spiritually, in a way that nothing else is, so that how we pray is as important a question as we can ever face”. My prayer life lays bare not only the things which are important to me but also how important and self-sufficient I think I am. Prayerlessness reveals a self-sufficient heart.
Do you remember that old television show Rescue 911? We would get to listen to actual 911 calls and then watch relatively cheesy reenactments of the paramedics coming to the rescue. As a child I watched that show pretty regularly. Never once did I hear a caller suddenly stop and say, “Oh, sorry, I got distracted by the squirrels outside on the power line…what were we talking about?”
That never happened because when you called in to 911 you knew that this phone call was vital to saving the life of a loved one. The call was vital. Compare this, though, to the way we often pray. It isn’t desperate. I think we so often forget that we are in war. I love John Piper’s metaphor of this:
The number one reason why prayer malfunctions in the hands of a believers is that they try to turn a wartime walkie-talkie into a domestic intercom.
Until you believe that life is war, you cannot know what prayer is for. Prayer is for the accomplishment of a wartime mission. It is as though the field commander (Jesus) called in the troops, gave them a crucial mission (“Go and bear fruit”), handed each of them a personal transmitter coded to the frequency of the general’s headquarters, and said, “Comrades, the general has a mission for you. He aims to see it accomplished. And to that end he has authorized me to give each of you personal access to him through these transmitters. If you stay true to his mission and seek his victory first, he will always be as close as your transmitter, to give tactical advice and to send in air cover when you or your comrades need it.”
But what have millions of Christians done? They have stopped believing that we are in a war. No urgency, no watching, no vigilance, no strategic planning. Just easy peacetime and prosperity. And what did they do with the walkie-talkie? They tried to rig it up as an intercom in their cushy houses and cabins and boats and cars – not to call in fire power for conflict with a mortal enemy, but to ask the maid to bring another pillow to the den. (Piper, Prayer the Work of Missions)
If your prayer life is dull it’s likely because your theology is dull.
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