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Take inventory of your prayer life

James 5:17 says that the prophet Elijah “prayed earnestly.” Literally, the text says that Elijah “prayed in his prayer” (KJV marginal note 1). James is using a Hebrew idiom intended to intensify the force of the verb. In other words, Elijah’s prayers were more than a formal exercise; he was...

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Learning to Pray

Once there was an old man who often said that he never went to bed without saying the prayer his mother had taught him as a little boy. He was pleased with himself, because he thought his prayer pleased God. One Sunday, he went to Sunday School. The teacher asked...

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Prayer is amazing, glorious, delightful work.

Prayer is amazing, glorious, delightful work. Yet apart from faith in Christ, prayer is also difficult, demanding, and in many ways impossible. There is not a believer on earth that cannot sympathize with that. So, though I may have bordered on the idealistic in this closing chapter, my aim is...

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Taking Hold of God in Prayer

Deep within us, we know that it is impossible to solve prayerlessness by our own strength. The sacredness, gift, and efficacy of prayer are far above human means. God’s grace is necessary for prayerful praying. Yet grace does not passively wait for God to strike us with revival. We must...

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What is Prayer

Prayer is the act of forging a connection between two specific points: our human needs and the resources of God offered to us in Christ. You can start at either point, and reach to the other in prayer. True Christians have discovered that God, in Christ, offers them grace, mercy,...

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The Need for Prayer Meetings

“We shall never see much change for the better in our churches in general till the prayer meeting occupies a higher place in the esteem of Christians.” So wrote Charles Spurgeon in his famous address, “Only a Prayer Meeting.”[Only a Prayer-meeting (Ross-shire: Christian Focus, 2000), 9.] By “the prayer meeting”...

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Prepare Faithfully For Worship

The Puritans held that all preparation is ultimately ineffectual apart from the Holy Spirit’s work. Stephen Charnock writes, “To render our worship spiritual, we should, before every engagement in it, implore the actual presence of the Spirit, without which we are not able to send forth one spiritual breath or...

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Reformed Systematic Theology, Volume 1

Theology is conceived by hearing God’s Word, and it comes to birth by prayer. “Show me thy ways, O Lord; teach me thy paths” (Ps. 25:4). Our systematic theology was certainly born of prayer, beginning when God taught us by grace to “call upon the name of the Lord” (Rom....

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