Devotion to Prayer | Selected Scriptures
Brian Hedges | January 5, 2025
We are going to be in a number of different places in Scripture today as we turn now to the word of God. I want to present kind of a companion sermon to last week’s message. Last week’s message was on devotion to Scripture and really a challenge to read the word of God together in 2025.
Today I want to talk about devotion to prayer, and then next Sunday, Lord willing, we’re going to pick up for the final segment of our exposition through Hebrews. We’ve looked at the first ten chapters in that letter, and so next week we’ll be picking up in Hebrews 11, and that’s going to carry us for a number of weeks here this semester.
But today I want to talk about prayer. Prayer, of course, is a very broad subject. It could be said, as one of the old theologians put it, that it’s like an ocean on the shores of which an infant can splash, but so deep that an elephant can swim within it. Prayer is like that, and prayer is simple enough that every child in this room that’s able to speak can also pray. But prayer is deep enough that there’s not a single one of us who does not have something to learn and some ways in which we need to grow in prayer. I don’t think I ever come to the topic of prayer or present a message on prayer without feeling some of my own inadequacy in the life of prayer.
But my goal this morning is not in any way to put a guilt trip on you, to make you feel like you should feel guilty for not praying enough; I want this to be more of an invitation to really experience the life and the presence of God in prayer in 2025. I’m going to be in a number of different passages, but I want to begin by just reading three short passages which kind of set the tone and the structure for the message, then we’ll look at some other Scriptures along the way.
First of all, this short command, a single verse, 1 Thessalonians 5:17, which says, “Pray without ceasing.” That’s one of Paul’s commands that reminds us that the life of prayer is not simply found in those set-aside seasons for prayer, which are important, but it really has to do with keeping a posture of prayer so that we are in an ongoing state of prayer in our hearts and lives, and that’s really what I want to focus on this morning.
Then in Acts 2:42, we have the early church—this is the church in Jerusalem following the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost—and it says that they “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.” So if last week was devotion to the Scriptures, the apostles’ teaching, today it’s devotion to prayers. So this should set the tone for every church, that the church is characterized by its devotion to prayer.
Then I want us to especially focus on Ephesians 2:18, which is a verse that shows us the structure of prayer. It shows us how prayer works according to the nature of the triune God who has revealed himself to us. So Paul is writing here, and he says, “For through him [that is, for through Christ Jesus] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
Okay. Now the context of that is Paul is here talking about the Jewish and Gentile people who have been reconciled together to God in one body. So when he says “we both have access,” he means both Jews and Gentiles. But notice here the doctrine of the Trinity implicit in this verse. When he says that it is through him, it’s through Christ, that we have access in the Spirit to the Father.
I think that verse and many other passages we’ll see this morning give us something of a Trinitarian shape to prayer. Just as we find in life that it’s always best and always easiest to go with the natural shape and direction of things, so there is a shape, there’s a structure to the spiritual life. Have you ever tried to swim upstream? It’s much more difficult to swim against the current, isn’t it? Have you ever tried to cut a piece of wood against the grain? There are ways in which we violate the very order of nature, and it makes things more difficult. Have you ever tried to, you know, pet your cat from, you know, back to front, tail to head? Right? The fur instead stands up instead of naturally going down.
So, in the same way, there is a grain to the spiritual life. There is a shape to the spiritual life, a structure, and that shape is Trinitarian. I’m drawing these thoughts from a number of theologians, including Fred Sanders, who wrote a wonderful book on the Trinity, and then Graham Cole, a theologian who says that “to pray to the Father in the name of the Son in reliance upon the Spirit is to rehearse the very structure of the gospel.”
So what you could say is we’re looking here at gospel-centered prayer, at prayer as it is most natural in our lives when we are in step with the very nature of the God to whom we pray. So here’s the outline. It’s very simple. I want us to think about:
1. Praying to the Father
2. Praying through the Son
3. Praying in the Spirit
In each one of those points, what I think we will learn is that by giving particular attention to the triune nature of God and how it intersects with prayer, it also helps us with some of the primary obstacles and hindrances to prayer. So let’s look at each one of these in turn.
1. Praying to the Father
You see it there in Ephesians 2 18. “Through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
“Father” was the characteristic name by which Jesus addressed God. You see it over and over again in the Gospels. In fact, every single time in the Gospels that Jesus addresses God, he calls God Father; except for one. That’s when he was on the cross and he prayed in the words of Psalm 22:1, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But every other time that Jesus addresses God, he addresses God as Father.
Father is the Christian name for God, as J. I. Packer once said. And I want us to consider a couple of ways in which this affects us in prayer.
(1) First of all, think about the heart of the Father. For this, I want us to look at the Sermon on the Mount for just a couple of moments, where Jesus taught his disciples to pray.
You may remember the Lord’s Prayer begins with, “Our Father, who is in heaven…” In that passage in Matthew 6, Jesus is telling his disciples to not pray thinking that they will be heard because of their many words. He says, “Don’t heap up empty phrases like the Gentiles. Your Father knows what you need before you ask, so pray like this, ‘Our Father, who is in heaven…’” And then he gives a model prayer.
Then I want you to especially see this passage, Matthew 7:7-11. I think it’s one of the most encouraging little sections on prayer anywhere in our Lord’s teaching. Jesus says,
“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. Or which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? 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?”
That’s a wonderful passage on prayer that highlights the hearts of God as our Father and his willingness and his desire to do good to his children.
Now, it’s a very hard-hearted parent indeed who will not give food to his or her child when the child is hungry or would even give something that’s harmful. So that’s the illustration that Jesus is giving here. He’s saying, “Even though you’re evil, even though you’re fallen, you’re not going to give your son a stone when he asks for bread. You’re not going to give him a snake when he asks for a piece of fish.”
He’s saying that “if you, being evil, would do this for your children, you do good things for your children, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?”
I think this helps us with one of the primary psychological and spiritual hindrances to prayer, and it’s the hindrance of unbelief. There’s something in the fallen heart that believes that God is not good. There’s something in your heart and mine that sometimes hesitates to come to God in prayer, because we think, “God’s not very interested in this,” or, “God’s probably not going to answer,” or, “It’s probably not going to do any good,” or, “I don’t want to bother God,” or, “This is too small to bring to God’s attention.”
Every time we think that way, we are forgetting that God is a Father, and he is a Father who is infinitely good, infinitely wise, who cares about his children. God’s fatherly heart towards us is such that he is always more willing to meet our needs than we are willing to ask. He is always more inclined to show mercy to us than we are to ask for mercy. He is more concerned with alleviating our stresses and our anxieties and giving us peace than we are. God wants to meet our needs, and it’s only unbelief that keeps us from coming to God. One reason, I think, in our lives we struggle so much with prayer is because of this latent unbelief that just keeps us from trusting the heart of the Father.
Henry Leitz, in one of his hymns, says,
“Fatherlike He tends and spares us;
Well our feeble frame He Knows.
In His hands He gently bears us,
Rescues us from all our foes.”
God’s heart is fatherlike. It’s tender. He is gentle. That’s the heart of the Father.
(2) His heart is not only a fatherly heart, but it’s also a very generous heart. So think about the generosity of the Father. Let me read another passage to you, this one from Ephesians 3:14-21. This may be my favorite prayer in all of Scripture, certainly in the writings of Paul. Paul is writing, and he says,
“For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”
Now let’s just stop right there. Notice right here you see the Trinity again. Paul is praying to the Father, he’s asking to be strengthened by the Spirit, and for an experience of the indwelling Christ.
“...so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.
“Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Now that is an amazing prayer. That prayer deserves not just one sermon, that deserves a whole series of sermons! And one of these days we’re going to do it and just take that prayer apart request by request.
But what I want you to see here is that Paul here is praying according to the riches of God’s glory. So the generosity of God, the abundance of God’s wealth, his riches of glory.
I’ve said this before: there’s a big difference between someone giving out of their riches and someone giving according to their riches. Okay? Just think of somebody who’s really, really wealthy, a Bill Gates or someone like that. If Bill Gates were to write a check for one dollar to Redeemer Church, he would be giving out of his riches, but he would not be giving according to his riches. If he were to write a check for a million dollars, that would be according to his riches! That would be generosity that accords with his wealth.
When Paul prays here, he is praying in accord with the riches of God, the generosity of God.
The Methodist spiritual writer, E. M. Bounds, who wrote these little books on prayer that are so good, says (and I’m paraphrasing just a bit) that prayer fills our emptiness with God’s fullness, it fills our poverty with God’s riches, it puts away our weakness with God’s strength. Prayer is God’s plan to supply our great and continual need with God’s great and continual abundance.
There’s an abundance in God, and God as our Father wants to meet our needs according to his abundance.
Now, that doesn’t, of course, give us a license for a “health, wealth, prosperity” way of thinking or a name-it-and-claim-it kind of prayer life. That would be a mercenary use of prayer. That would be approaching God as if He’s a genie in the bottle to just give us whatever we want. I’m not saying that at all, but what I am saying is that God in His fatherly heart genuinely cares for us, he genuinely loves us, he genuinely desires to meet our needs, and he invites us to bring our burdens and our needs to him in order to meet those needs.
Paul here tells us that he is not just able to do everything that we ask, not even that he’s able to do all that we ask or think, but that he is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think. He’s just piling on words in order to stress the generosity of God.
Let me share an illustration. Some of you may have heard me share this before. Years ago—this would have been close to thirty years ago now, when Holly and I were first married—we were dirt poor the first few years of marriage, and we were really struggling financially at one time.
And I remember that we really needed some help. We were starting to fall behind. We were kind of getting in a hole, and we needed some help. So we decided to ask the most generous person I knew, who was my grandfather, who I’ve also talked about many times here. My grandfather, A.W. Hedges, was an incredibly generous man and a very joyful man and very approachable, and so I asked him for some help. You know, I was nervous about doing this. I was kind of embarrassed to have to do it, but I was just so overwhelmed by his generosity. He gave three times what we asked for. Like, I asked for a certain amount; he wrote a check for three times that amount.
God is like that. God’s heart is like that. He gives far more abundantly than we ask or think. This is the God that we serve.
There’s a story told about a philosopher in the court of Alexander the Great. The philosopher had outstanding ability, but he had very little money, and he one day asked Alexander for financial help. And the king said, “Yes. Go to the treasurer, tell him exactly what you need, and we will give it out of the royal treasury.”
So the man went, but when he went to the treasurer, the treasurer was so shocked by the amount that he refused to give it until he verified it with Alexander the Great. So he went to the king. He told him the amounts, and this is what Alexander said. He said, “Pay the money at once. The philosopher has done me a singular honor. By the largeness of his request he shows that he has understood both my wealth and my generosity. He’s honored me by the largeness of his request.”
Again, it’s a great illustration of the generosity of God.
“Thou art coming to a king;
Large petitions with thee bring.
For his grace and power are such
None can ever ask too much.”
John Newton.
Prayer to the Father. It counters our unbelief as we remember the fatherly heart of God.
2. Praying through the Son
We’re not only to pray to the Father, but we are to pray through the Son.
(1) Now, of course, we can also pray directly to the Son, and there are many examples in Scripture of that, but most often the pattern that you see in Scripture is prayer that is addressed to God the Father but then is addressed through the Son or in the name of the Son.
So think of Jesus’ teaching when he told his disciples, “Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” “If you ask anything in my name, I will do it.” And over and again, especially in that upper room discourse, John 14-16, Jesus stresses the importance of praying to the Father, asking the Father in the name of the Son.
Now, that certainly means more than just appending a formula, “This we pray in Jesus’ name,” to the end of our prayers. To pray in Jesus’ name means to pray in accord with Jesus’ will and Jesus’ character. It means to come to God the Father through Jesus, trusting in Jesus as our advocate, as our intercessor, our priest, our mediator, and so on.
But I have to say, it always makes me a little nervous when people habitually neglect to mention Jesus in prayer, because it seems to assume a kind of approach to God that the Bible never assumes. The Bible does not assume that we can pray without Jesus. In fact, the Bible emphasizes over and over and over again that it is through Christ that we have access to the Father.
Again, you see it in Ephesians 2:18, or you see Peter, who says that we offer spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Jesus himself says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Your way to the Father is through the Son, and this means that the Son is the one who gives us access to God. The Son gives us access to God.
Listen to how Spurgeon put it. He said,
“You cannot flourish as a Christian unless you constantly draw near to God in supplication, but your supplications must always be presented through the name of Jesus Christ. His name gives prevalence to prayer. It is not so much your earnestness or sincerity as his precious blood that speaks in the ears of God and intercedes for you. Pray ever then with your eye upon the finished propitiation and the living intercessor; ever plead the merit of Emmanuel, and heaven’s gates shall open to you.”
Now, that also counters a particular obstacle or hindrance to prayer in our lives, and it is the hindrance of a guilty conscience. It’s the hindrance of sin, and maybe also the hindrance of relying too much on our emotions for our prayer lives. Listen, it’s not the degree of emotion that you feel that makes your prayer acceptable to God. It’s the blood of Jesus Christ. It’s the intercession of Christ. It’s what Jesus Christ has done for you—Christ as your priest, Christ as your advocate, Christ as your mediator is the one who opens the way to the Father and gives you access to God. We get access through the Son.
(2) Then secondly, the Son also gives us boldness. It’s not just access. It’s also boldness, so that there is a confidence that we can have when we come to God in prayer.
This hit me a few years ago. I was reading a spiritual formation book. I’m not even going to name the author because I like the author, and overall his works are pretty good. But in this particular book, he was focused on what he called a “God radar,” in how we can kind of tune into God in different kinds of ways, and he was talking about these different pathways that people have for approaching God, and some people are more intellectual, and some people are more contemplative, and so on. And all of that, I think, is basically true. But as I read the book, I just noticed a glaring absence in that particular book, and that was reference to Jesus. He was talking a lot about God, but it was just not very much about Jesus. I just happened that day to also be reading devotionally in the book of Hebrews, the letter to Hebrews, which we’re about to jump right back into, and I read a passage in Hebrews.
The one I read was Hebrews 4, which I’m going to read in a minute, but I want to read two passages to you this morning that just show us that the way to prayer is through Jesus, and this gives us boldness and confidence to come to God. In fact, these two passages kind of bookend each other. Hebrews 10:19-22.
“Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence [boldness] to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.”
Now, that’s all about prayer. It’s all about worship. It’s all about approaching God, drawing near to God. But the author here says we can do this with confidence because of what Christ has done in his priestly ministry for us. We have confidence to enter by the blood of Jesus.
That kind of bookends a passage earlier in the letter, Hebrews 4:14-16, maybe even more familiar to most of us.
“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”
Well, there you see it again. It’s boldness to come to the throne of grace to find what we need, and it’s boldness that we get through Jesus.
So don’t neglect Jesus in your prayer life. Don’t neglect the gospel in your prayer life. The gospel—the good news of what Jesus Christ has done in his death and resurrection for you as your priest and as your Savior—is the key to prayer.
The Puritan William Bridge put it like this, and I’m taking this from a little book by Tim Chester called Enjoying God.
“Be sure that you think of Christ in a right way and manner as He suits your condition and as He is held forth in the gospel. The Scriptures hold forth the person of Christ in ways that make him very amiable to poor sinners.”
Now he’s just going to give a list of all the problems and how Christ answers. “
“Are you accused by Satan, the world, or your own conscience? He is called your advocate.
“Are you ignorant? He is called the prophet.
“Are you guilty of sin? He is called a high priest.
“Are you afflicted with many enemies, inward and outward? He is called a King and the King of kings.
“Are you hungry or thirsty? He is called the bread and water of life.
“Are you afraid you shall fall away, be condemned at last? He is our second Adam, our representative, in whose death we died and who has satisfied all that God requires of us.
“Just as there is no temptation or affliction but some promise or other is especially suited to it, so there is no condition but some name, some title, some attribute of Christ is especially suited to it.”
Now that is good applied theology that is taking these various aspects of who Jesus Christ is—our prophet, our priest, our King, our Savior, the second Adam, our advocate, and so on—and applying it to the specific states of our hearts and minds to remind us that whatever condition you are in, there is a way for you to approach God through Christ, whatever condition you’re in. I don’t care how hard your heart feels in any given moment or how defiled you feel by the guilt of sin; there’s a way to approach God through Jesus. Don’t let sin keep you from prayer.
And don’t think that you’re going to fix the sin problem before you can pray. You’re going to have to pray and go to him for him to deal with your sin. Go through Jesus, the mediator, and you will find access to God’s throne of grace.
3. Praying in the Spirit
So, praying to the Father, praying through the Son; one more, praying in the Spirit.
Again, you see it in Ephesians 2:18. “For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.”
Now, let’s think about who the Holy Spirit is for just a moment. The Spirit is one of the three persons in the eternal Godhead. The Spirit is the promise of the Father, the great gift of the risen and ascended Christ of the church. God gave the Spirit to the church on the Day of Pentecost, and the Spirit comes as the author of new birth or of new life. He is the one who floods our hearts with God’s love (Romans 5). He is the one who witnesses to our own spirits that we are God’s children (Romans 8). The Spirit of Christ indwells our hearts and fills our hearts, so that if you are a Christian, if you are a born-again believer in Christ, there is not only a God above you and there is not only a God beside you—namely Jesus, your brother—there is God within you. Now one God, but God revealed in the three persons.
So the doctrine of the Holy Spirit tells us that the Spirit of God is resident within our hearts and lives, which means that as Christians there’s always something inside us moving us towards prayer. I think there are three ways at least that we could say that the Spirit helps us in prayer.
(1) Number one, we pray in the Spirit’s power. Jude, that little one-chapter epistle, Jude 20-21: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”
What does he mean, praying in the Holy Spirit? I don’t think he’s talking about praying in tongues, speaking in tongues. I think when he says “praying in the Holy Spirit” he means praying in the power of the Holy Spirit. And this is the reality. Again, if you are a born-again Christian, then that means that there is a power resident within you that is greater than the limitations of your temperament or your psychology, that is greater than the limitations of your physical weaknesses or your emotional state of mind at any given moment.
To pray in the Holy Spirit is to tap into that power, so that in those moments when you feel no inclination to pray, the Spirit can give you that inclination. When you feel no energy to pray, the Spirit can infuse you with that energy. You feel no strength to pray; the Spirit can give you that strength.
So we can say this, that just as praying to the Father addresses the obstacle of unbelief and praying through the Son addresses the obstacle of sin and guilt, praying in the Spirit addresses the obstacle of our weakness, the weakness that we feel that so often keeps us from prayers. “I just don’t feel like I have the strength to pray.” It’s in those moments when you feel so beat up by life that you don’t feel like you’ve got anything left to even take it to God, there’s a power greater than you, and you can tap into that power and pray in the Spirit. And he will give you motivation, desire, strength, and grace to pray. So we pray in the Spirit’s power.
(2) Secondly, we pray with the Spirit’s words. What are the Spirit’s words? Go back to last week. “All Scripture is breathed out by God.”
The Scriptures are the Spirit’s words. 1 Corinthians 2:13: “We impart this in words not taught by human wisdom, but taught by the Spirit.” Words taught by the Spirit. Paul is talking about his own words as an apostle that are now preserved for us in Scripture. So the Scriptures, the word of God, are the Spirit’s words.
So the application here is to learn to pray in the Spirit by praying the Bible. Pray the Spirit-breathed words of Scripture. Pray the prayers of the Bible. Let your language for prayer be taken from the Scriptures.
You might say, “I don’t know how to pray. I don’t know what to say.” The Bible is there in part to instruct you in prayer, to teach you how to pray.
So, for example, you could go to the Lord’s Prayer, which we sometimes pray together as a church.
“Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
and forgive us our debts,
as we also have forgiven our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil.”
The prayer that Jesus taught his disciples to pray—those are Spirit-breathed words. You are always on good footing praying that prayer. And it’s a structure. I’m not saying just mime the words, but I’m saying that gives you a structure for prayer. It teaches you how to pray.
Or you can take Paul’s prayers in his letters. We just read one, Ephesians 3:14-21, but in almost every letter of Paul, there’s at least one and sometimes two or more prayers that you can pray and adapt, and it will give you language for prayer. So that’s a practical thing you can do. Take one of those prayers and just start praying that regularly.
Or the entire book of Psalms. You know what the book of Psalms is? It’s a songbook. It’s a prayer book. It’s a book with Spirit-inspired, God-breathed words to help you pray.
I’m trying to give you some practical tools here to help you when you don’t know how to pray, you don’t know what to pray for.
Then think about some of these short prayers from Scripture. I find these helpful. So listen, sometimes the most important prayers you pray are not long prayers. They’re short prayers. And I don’t want you to hear me saying this morning that the main call or the main challenge is to set some impossible goal to pray, you know, four hours a day or something like that. Okay? I’m not doing that, I’m not asking you to do that. I know we read these stories of people who used to do that; maybe they did. Maybe that’s just legendary. I’m after something that’s a bit more ordinary, but far, far more important to your spiritual life.
It’s not the four hours you spend alone in prayer, it is walking with God through the day, so that in a moment—you’re at work, you’re dealing with the kids, you’re in traffic, or you’re on your way somewhere, or you’re dealing with a new problem—there are words on the lips of your soul that you can send up to the Lord in an instant. It takes five seconds to do it, but you’re turning your heart to God, and you’re doing that again and again and again throughout the day.
So let me give you some examples. You feel guilty or you’ve just committed a sin; you pray, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner.” Luke 18:13.
You find yourself in need of some particular kind of mercy from God. You pray, “Lord Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me,” Mark 10:47.
You’re in a crisis, and sometimes you hit these crises where there’s danger, there is a problem, there’s something urgent, you’re in trouble or someone you love is in trouble, and you can pray that simple three-word prayer from Peter when he was about to sink under the waves: “Lord, save me! Lord, save me!” That’s a prayer, and that’s a Spirit-inspired prayer. And you can pray that prayer to the Lord no matter what you’re facing.
Or you can pray the prayer, if you’re faced with doubts, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief,” Mark 9:24. That’s a wonderful prayer to pray. If you are someone here this morning and you’re here at church, maybe you’ve been raised in church, maybe you’re a young person and there’s part of you that you want to believe because your parents believe, you want to believe because you want to belong, because you see that there’s something good here, but you have hang-ups. You have mental hang-ups. You have doubts in your mind. You’re not sure. You’re just not sure you believe. Pray this prayer: “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.” Just take your doubts to the Lord. Your doubt can be a starting place for prayer.
Don’t think you have to have everything figured out before you can pray. Take your doubts to the Lord. “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
And then those words of Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane, Luke 22:42. These are words that every single one of us at times are going to have to pray. It’s a prayer of submission, a prayer of resignation. “Not my will, but yours be done.” Again, that’s a simple prayer. That’s seven words in English, but that’s a prayer that sometimes we need to pray as we release things into the hands of God and we surrender ourselves to him.
So what I’m saying here is that this is an arsenal of Spirit-breathed words that you can pray, and you can always be sure that these are prayers that God wants to hear.
(3) So the Spirit gives us power for prayer, the Spirit gives us words for prayer, and then number three (I’m almost done), the Spirit prays in us with groaning too deep for words.
Sometimes, you need to turn to God and the words don’t come, only the tears come. Sometimes, you turn to God and the thoughts don’t come, just the sighs and the groans of your heart, because you’re so burdened in that moment you can’t even think straight. But listen to what Paul says in Romans 8:26-27.
“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.”
Isn’t that an amazing thought? The Spirit who indwells you intercedes for you with groanings too deep for words. Listen: when we pray in the Spirit, there’s a very real sense in which God, within our hearts, through the indwelling Spirit, is speaking to God from the depth of our hearts on our behalf.
One more passage, Galatians 4:6-7. “And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’ So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
You hear what he’s saying? He’s saying if you’re a child of God, then God has sent his Spirit into your heart, and it’s the Spirit in your heart crying out, “Abba, Father.” Now, you’re saying it, but it’s also the Spirit in you saying it. This is what it means, I think, to pray in the Spirit.
So, pray to the Father, pray through the Son, pray in the Spirit.
Let me close with this wonderful paragraph from C.S. Lewis. This is from Mere Christianity. None of what I’m saying is original. Okay? C.S. Lewis says it right here in this paragraph, but maybe you’ll read this with new eyes if you’ve read that book before. Lewis said,
“An ordinary Christian [that’s you and me] kneels down to say his prayers. He is trying to get in touch with God, but if he is a Christian, he knows that what is prompting him to pray is also God; God, so to speak, inside him. But he also knows that all his real knowledge of God comes through Christ, the man who was God. That Christ is standing beside, helping him to pray, praying for him.
“You see what is happening. God is the thing to which he is praying, the goal he’s trying to reach. God is also the thing inside him, which is pushing him along, the mode of power. God is also the road or bridge along which he is being pushed to that goal, so that the whole threefold life of God, the whole threefold life of the three-personal being is actually going on in that ordinary little bedroom where an ordinary man is saying his prayers. The man is being caught up into the higher kind of life. He is being pulled into God by God.”
So let me end this way. I don’t want you to think of this so much as a challenge. This isn’t something I want you to muster up strength for. I want you to think of this as an invitation for 2025. It’s not a call to spend hours and hours a day in prayer.
Here’s the invitation: Every time there is some stirring in your heart to look to God, follow that prompting. Every time there is some inclination towards prayer, give in to that inclination. Every time you find yourself facing a new problem, a new stress, a new trial, a new need, a twinge of guilt in your conscience—whatever it is—instead of burying it, go with it to the Father, and do so with confidence and with boldness that Jesus has given you a blood-bought right to come to the Father and to expect the Father to help you in your time of need.
I think if you’ll do that, if you will develop that as a habit—and this is something you can do with the schedule that you currently have, you could do this throughout the day as you are constantly following the impulses of your heart to speak to God—as you do that, you will find yourself increasingly devoted to prayer, praying constantly, as Paul tells us to do, and growing in a deeper fellowship and communion with God. Let’s be devoted to prayer in 2025.
Father, thank you today for this wonderful privilege that is ours through your Son, Jesus Christ. Lord, forgive us that we so often live below our privileges. We have this privilege, we have this invitation, we have these opportunities, and so often we neglect to follow up, we neglect to pray. Maybe it’s because of busyness or distractions or whatever the reasons are. But, Lord, I pray that we would hear with fresh ears the invitation of your word to bring our needs to you and to bring them to you with confidence that you’ll hear.
Give us faith to lay hold of and believe in the generosity of your fatherly heart. Help us, Lord, to come with confidence through Christ, our priest, our advocate, our mediator, the one who has made the way open for us to come to your throne of grace. May we lean into the grace and the power of your Holy Spirit, the Spirit inside us who’s prompting us and moving us to prayer. The truth is, Lord, we would not love you if you’d not loved us first. We wouldn’t speak to you if you’d not spoken to us first. We wouldn’t desire you if you had not desired us first. So we recognize the work of your Spirit in our hearts to whatever degree there’s some stirring within us right now. Lord, help us to follow those inclinations, that stirring, that prompting. Help us get in the current of the Trinitarian life of God we’ve talked about this morning and to learn to pray accordingly.
As we come to the Lord’s table now, may the table also be for us a time of prayer and fellowship with you. This is the eucharist. It is the Thanksgiving meal. So may we come with thankful hearts to you, and may we come in and through Jesus Christ. We ask you to draw near to us now, and we pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.