Mining Grace

With this post, we conclude our series on how God answers prayer. This will be the fifth method of God in answering prayer as I have drawn these methods from Thomas Manton’s sermon on Psalm 119:26. To review where we’ve been, we’ve carried two main themes throughout this series.

1. A belief in unanswered prayer leads to one of two conclusions; either that you don’t pray well enough for God to answer or that God is not loving enough to answer.
2. All prayer must begin, continue, and end at the Cross. All of our prayers are accepted before God just as our persons are: by the atoning work of Jesus Christ. You cannot pray a prayer good enough to be answered on its own. All of our prayers must pass through our faithful and gracious Mediator.

It is from these two presupposition, especially the second one, that we have built this series under the premise that God hears and answers all the prayers of his people. Following Manton, we then attempted to articulate the five methods by which God answers prayers. The first four were as follows:

1. God may answer a prayer just as we pray it.
2. God may answer a prayer by giving the value of the request in an answer of equal or greater value.
3. God may delay an answer in order to grow our faith, to exercise our patience, to try our love for God, or to enlarge our desire for the thing for which we pray.
4. God may answer the end of the prayer without answering the means for which we pray.

That leads us to our fifth and final method by which God answers prayer.

God may make the excellency of prayer itself to be your answer to prayer.

Up to this point we have not discussed the matter of the means of grace. That term, means of grace, meets with some disagreement amongst the Reformed community as to what should actually be classified by it. Its definition is those normal means which God has ordained for us to grow in Christ-likeness. Disagreements aside, everyone agrees to at least the three means of grace as 1) the word, 2) the sacraments, and 3) prayer. You’ll see this designation especially reflected as the scheme by which the last 19 questions of The Westminster Shorter Catechism are ordered. All this is too simply say, prayer is a means of grace in and of itself.

We often pray because we need something. We are worried for ourselves or someone we love. We have a problem that needs an answer. We lack wisdom and seek God’s counsel. In all of these things we see prayer as a means to an end. But what we often fail to realize is that in prayer the means is often the end. We may come to God with some temporal need and simply be amazed at who he is and that he should invite wretched sinners to bring their requests to him. Often we will turn our eyes upon Jesus and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of his glory and grace. To help round out this view of the excellency of prayer, we now turn to a brief theology prayer.

1. Prayer is a taste of heaven. The most basic definition of prayer, inadequate and cavalier as it may be, is, “talking to God.” Prayer is communion with God. He speaks to us in his word and we speak back to him in prayer. Heaven is the culmination of this divine conversation. Though we will have no lack in heaven, and therefore no need for prayer of supplication or confession, prayer itself, nevertheless, will continue. We will for all eternity have upon our lips prayers of adoration, praise, and thanksgiving to our great and glorious God. It is for this reason that I say, prayer is a taste of heaven. To take a moment in your closet on your knees in prayer is to taste heaven. It is to commune with God in a way that will be magnified into eternal bliss at our homecoming. As dim as the mirror may be, prayer is the hors d’oeuvres of heaven. It is the appetizer to the wedding feast of the lamb. For in prayer, we talk to the living God.
2. Prayer points us to the glories of our Creator. Two things astound me most as I consider creation. First, that before creation, God existed in trinitarian bliss. Our God has been relational and personal for all eternity. There has never been a time in which divine love has not been perfectly expressed between the members of the Trinity. Secondly, that when God created all things he spoke them into creation. He could have molded them with his anthropomorphic hands. He could have created by any number of means, but he chose specifically speaking. We might say, that God communicated something out of nothing. We pause here to note these two amazing attributes of God that He is personal and He is speaking. Then we draw our gaze to prayer and should be dumbfounded that we can even get a word out when speak to a God like this. Prayer should be a lightning rod of the character of God. Praying on our knees should not be a ritual but a necessity. That I could pray to such a Creator, a personal speaking God, is amazement upon amazement. I often wonder if I could even get my requests out of my mouth if I truly apprehended the Creator God to whom I addressed my prayers.
3. Prayer points us to the glorious of our Redeemer. Two things astound me most as I consider redemption. First, that man fell as low as he did. I know I do not have the capacity to rightly estimate the sinfulness of sin. That capacity is not in me. I excuse it, deny it, and push its blame elsewhere. Yet I cannot escape its cold clutches in every area of my life. The sinfulness of my sin astounds me. But secondly, the grace of God in Christ astounds me more. Where the sinfulness of sin abounds, the gracefulness of grace abounds all the more. I do not have the capacity to rightly estimate the cost of what it took God Almighty to redeem a people to be his precious possession. I cannot place enough worth on the Cross and what happened there. It is standing between this two underestimations that the Christian is astounded at redemption. It is in these two underestimations that we pray. We pray as horrendously sinful people to an incredibly holy God through a gloriously beautiful Mediator in Jesus Christ. That we should be taught to call God, “Our Father”, or that we should be invited to “come boldly before his throne,” are wonders that are almost too wonderful to grasp. Prayer is the experiential manifestation of the realities of the gospel in our daily life. Prayer is the privilege of driving the stake of the gospel deeper and deeper into our hearts.

From these truths this fifth method flows. If we understood what it was exactly we were doing in prayer we would find it difficult to even make a request because we would be so enraptured with the beauty of God offered therein. This is not to say that it is wrong to make requests. It is however to say that it is wrong to waltz into prayer as if you were making an order at the local fast food restaurant. Prayer is not just a means to an end, it is often the means and the end.
Now, in conclusion, consider some implications of this method.

1. Prayer is more than a duty it is a privilege. Too many books on prayer are sold under the premise of relieving the guilt you have for not praying by providing techniques to pray. Learning the rudiments of prayer is a necessity but reducing prayer to a duty is a crime. It is the imminent privilege of the Christian to pray. Your motivation to pray should not be guilt but the bountiful promises that you are offered in prayer and the tremendous gift of intimately communing with you Creator and Redeemer. To not pray is not to understand what is being offered in prayer.
2. Don’t just pray to get stuff, pray to get God. I’m not asking you to not pray for your needs. I’m asking to realize that one of your needs is to pray. We all too often neglect prayers of adoration, confession, and thanksgiving because we are so eager to tell God what we need. In reality this is being so preoccupied with ourselves that we cease to be preoccupied with God. It is idolatry of the self. The amazing grace of God in prayer is that he often gives us a view of himself and his works that simply cause us to forget ourselves altogether. We should long and strive for this experience in prayer by focusing more often on the one to whom we pray rather than that for which we pray.
3. Begin, continue, and end with Christ. I began and end this series with the only one who is worthy to begin and end with, namely Jesus Christ. Prayer that is Christ-centered will not fail to produce a greater love for Christ. Prayer that is not Christ-centered is vanity of vanities. Christ is the one from whom, through whom, and to whom are all things. The surest way to pray powerful and satisfying prayers is to pray to a Jesus who is imminently and solely powerful and satisfying.

Let us look full in his wonderful face, and see the things of this world grow dim in the the light of his glory and grace.

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How God Answers Prayer Series:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7