Prayer is an area where nearly every Christian has room for greater consistency and discipline. That is actually the easy part to admit. It is more difficult to acknowledge that our lack of prayer flows from wrong thinking about God and ourselves. Our natural bent is towards unbelief and self-sufficiency. These tendencies often keep us from praying.
As we peer into the Word of God we find help for our prayerlessness in the opening pages of 1 Samuel. The book begins with a woman weeping in Shiloh. Her name is Hannah, and she teaches us much about prayer. A close inspection of Hannah’s story points us ultimately to God’s faithfulness and demonstrates that his character fuels our prayers. If Hannah were our instructor in the school of prayer, I believe she would give us 3 necessary convictions for a consistent prayer life.
1. Recognize Your Dependence
One conviction we must develop is a deep recognition of our dependence on God and his grace. We will never consistently pray without a settled understanding that we, as sinful creatures, need the Lord. I once heard a preacher say that a Christian’s prayerlessness is his/her declaration of independence from God. When we fail to pray regularly, we are demonstrating a reliance on self that is antithetical to the Scriptures. So, instead of pretending like we have it all together, we begin by admitting that we are actually quite needy.
When we fail to pray regularly, we are demonstrating a reliance on self that is antithetical to the Scriptures. [1]Click To Tweet [1]We see this demonstrated in the life of Hannah. Upon first meeting her, we learn that she is absolutely devastated by her inability to conceive a child. On top of that, her husband makes his best case for “the boneheaded move of the year award” when he asks her, “…why is your heart sad? Am I not more to you than ten sons?” (1 Samuel 1:8 ESV). [A word of wisdom to husbands reading this, if you come across your wife crying, the answer is never to remind her how blessed she is to have you in her life]. Worse than the dumb question, Hannah’s husband has taken another wife, Peninnah, who has been able to bear children. Peninnah is relentless in her mocking and bullying of Hannah (see 1 Samuel 1:6-7).
All of this culminates in Hannah being broken. Her circumstances, family, and friends have all failed to provide hope. She is in such anguish that she has stopped eating. In her pain, she understands that there is only one place she can run. And run she does, straight to the throne of grace.
2. Believe God Cares
It is not enough to know we need God, we must believe that he cares. We need to know that our cries are heard by a tender and loving Father. God, by sheer grace, invites us to pour out our fears, our failings, our desires, and our griefs to him. It doesn’t make him nervous or embarrassed. He delights in hearing from his children.
Hannah is found at the Temple “pouring out her soul out before the Lord” because she believes that God is the type of God that cares for his children (1 Samuel 1:15). Dale Ralph Davis makes the connection between her desperate prayer and her belief that God cares, “[Hannah] addresses Yahweh of hosts, cosmic ruler, sovereign of every and all power, and assumes that the broken heart of a relatively obscure woman in the hill country of Ephraim matters to him.”
Hannah is so eccentric in her prayer that the priest on duty assumes that she is drunk (1 Samuel 1:14). While the priest is guessing about Hannah’s state of mind, the Lord of the universe has leaned in to hear her plea.
3. Trust God’s Sovereignty
God not only cares, but he is also sovereign, meaning he can and will bring about that which he wills. He is powerful enough to answer any request. He can save the person you’ve nearly given up praying for. He can deliver your child from the deepest bondage to sin. He can restore broken relationships. He can comfort in the deepest affliction.
We see Hannah’s trust in God’s sovereignty in the way she addresses him. She calls him “Lord (Yahweh) of Hosts,” a title signifying his rule over the entire universe. He is the sovereign Lord who commands all the armies of heaven. There is seemingly no doubt in Hannah’s mind that the one who “closed her womb” (1:5) is the one powerful enough to reverse her fortunes. Hannah’s trust in the sovereignty of God doesn’t lead her to a “ho-hum why should I pray if God is sovereign?” sort of attitude. Instead, it was her understanding of the sovereignty of God that drove her to pray.
Conclusion
No schedule, no app, no amount of alarms can create in us a desire to pray. After all, Hannah didn’t run to the Lord because she realized she hadn’t done her daily quiet time. She came out of a clear understanding that she needed him to act, a firm belief that he cared to listen, and a settled trust that he was powerful enough to deliver her. Likewise, let us rest in these truths and find in ourselves a growing desire to pour our souls out before the Lord.
This blog was originally posted at Gospel Mercies, view the original post here [2].