Craig T. Owens

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Last week I shared this thought with you from Pastor Tim Keller: “Your prayer must be firmly connected to and grounded in your reading of the Word. This wedding of Bible and prayer anchors your life down in the real God. … Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality.” 

“Untethered from reality” means that we determine the manner in which we come to God in prayer, the way prayer works, and the way God must respond to our prayer. But what we read in the Bible is the opposite of this (Isaiah 1:11-15). 

(Check out all of the Scriptures in this post by clicking here.)

I think there are two opposite and equal erroneous thoughts about how we approach prayer:

1. I’m not worthy to come into the presence of an all-holy God 
2. I can waltz right into God’s presence whenever and however I please 

Both are wrong and both are strategies the devil has used to keep us prayerless. Either we don’t go to God at all or our prayers are unheard because the Bible says that our arrogance has made our prayer ineffectual. 

Our Prayer Book—the Bible—helps us find the balance. George Whitefield noted, “Reading the Bible is a good preparative for prayer, as prayer is an excellent means to render reading effectual.” So here’s what we read about those two errors. 

1. I’m not worthy. God is unapproachable in His holiness, but Jesus has made it possible for us to enter in through His righteousness (1 Timothy 6:15-16; Isaiah 6:1-5; Hebrews 4:1, 14, 16; John 16:23-24). 
2. I can come anyway I want to. Passages like Psalm 15:1-5 and Isaiah 58:2-4 make it clear that we cannot simply approach God in a way of our choosing. 

Let’s unpack that second error a little more. We have to be clothed in righteousness in order to come into God’s presence, but we cannot be clothed in a righteousness that is apart from Jesus. When we say that we are praying in the name of Jesus, it means we are praying in the nature of Jesus and through the righteousness of Jesus. We must be wearing His righteous robe (Romans 3:22-24; Isaiah 61:10). 

So I think we need to pray before we pray. Let’s try these actions which are tethered to the reality of our Prayer Book. 

1. Worship. This is a deep pondering of who God is; it is humbly assigning Him the highest worth. In face, the Old English spelling of this word (“worthship”) gives us insight into what worship does. It is this kind of humility that God responds to (Isaiah 6:5-7; 57:15; Luke 18:9-14).

2. Confession. As we are worshiping, we will see our inadequacies (much like Isaiah did in Isaiah 6, or the tax collector did in Luke 18). We then need to confession these shortcomings. Dick Brogden wrote, “Confessed sin opens the portals of heaven into our darkness, and light and glory overwhelm shame. Confession is our glory for it lifts our heads and eradicates shame.” We see this so vividly lived out in the prayers of David (Psalm 139:23-24; 51:1-2; 19:12-14). 

3. Repentance. I think we could also call this Repair. After confession where we have fallen short, we resolve now to both take a different path and repair what was damaged (Matthew 5:23-24; Mark 11:25-26; 1 Peter 3:7). 

4. Petition. After worship, confession, and repentance / repair, our heart’s attitude is now in the place for God to heed our cries for His help (1 Peter 3:12). 

Let’s learn to pray before we pray. Don’t just rush in and rush out of God’s presence. Take time to worship, confession any sins the Holy Spirit reveals, make things right, and then present your petitions. 

Our hearts need to be prepared to present our petitions. This is how we know that God will hear our voice. 

If you’ve missed any of the messages in our prayer series, you can find them all here. 

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