Great post Tim! John Piper is leading the Desiring God pastor’s conference on the power of praying pastors next week. In preparation, he read and recommended two books: ‘The Secret Key To Heaven’ by Thomas Brooks and ‘The Hidden Life of Prayer’ by David McIntyre. I’ve been reading them both this last week and consider them two of the best books on the subject.

Mostly great comments, and I don’t want to be a downer, but… let me nitpick on a few points.

Disclaimer: I am completely open to correction. If I am missing something here, please let me know - and be kind doing so. :)

“This pastor said that you need to labor in prayer until you feel that you have gotten through to God.”

I’m not sure what this means. Faith in prayer means knowing God hears all our prayers. Even if I *feel* like my prayers are bouncing off the roof, I know and trust and have faith in the fact that God does hear my prayers. Laboring in prayer has other merit, but we don’t have to labor in prayer in order to get through to God. He who hears even our hidden groans does not need us to repeatedly shout.

From the same section“He particularly warned against stepping into the pulpit and preaching before first gaining a sense of the Spirit’s presence and power.”

I understand what he is saying but I have a similar issue to what I said above. I am not aware of Bible passages that tell us we need to feel a sense of the Spirit’s presence and power. Pray, yes - absolutely! Pray for God’s guidance. Pray for the Spirit’s leading. But a sense of the Spirit or no, trust that God will in fact lead and guide. It is certainly fair to say, “do not step into the pulpit unless you have first spent time in prayer, asking God to lead you by his Spirit” but it is another thing to say, “do not step into the pulpit unless you have a certain feeling or sense”.

“The purpose of prayer is not to change God, but to change us…”Yes and no… Personal transformation can and does happen through prayer, and prayer is not a means of bending the will of God in a new direction, but prayer is nonetheless a means God has established for us to seek the execution of his will. I believe salvation is every bit God’s work, but I also believe God has chosen to work through human agents in spreading the gospel. As relates to prayer, I believe every one of God’s actions are according to his will and plan - he does not change his mind based on our prayers - but I believe prayer is a means God has established to work through us to call for the doing of his will.

To use an example given elsewhere on this page, if someone prays for his lost parents, he is hoping and trusting by faith that God will actually do something as a result of the prayer. God will not save anyone just because I prayed for them, he will save them if it is his sovereign plan to do so. Nonetheless, he has given prayer as a means for us to participate in the work of salvation, just as evangelism is a means for us to participate in the work of salvation (I do not mean that in a synergistic way). So our prayers may actually move God to do something but not just because we prayed but because it was in the plan of God to use that prayer to bring about the execution of his will.

All that to say, yes, God uses prayer to change things about me, but God also uses prayer as a means of accomplishing his greater will in the world.

I appreciate the post and the comments. But Tim, I think you meant “conscious” and not “conscience” under the first point.

In “Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?” Philip Yancey confessed that, “most of his struggles with the Christian life come down to two themes: Why God doesn’t act the way I want Him to, and Why I don’t act the way God wants me to.”

On unanswered prayer (why God doesn’t act the way I want Him to): “I readily confess” wrote Yancey, “that I tend to view prayer through a skeptic’s lens, obsessing more about unanswered prayers than rejoicing over answered ones.”

Lloyd-Jones acknowledged that, “Of all the activities in which the Christian engages, and which are part of the Christian life, there is surely none which causes so much perplexity, and raises so many problems, as the activity which we call prayer.”

I like Yancey’s conclusion, “Prayer has become for me much more than a shopping list of requests to present to God. It has become a realignment of everything. I pray to restore the truth of the universe, to gain a glimpse of the world, and of me, through the eyes of God.”

“In prayer, I shift my point of view away from my own selfishness. I climb above timberline and look down at the speck that is myself. I gaze at the stars and recall what role I, or any of us, play in a universe beyond comprehension. Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view.”