Category: Disciplines Page 1 of 3

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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Several weeks ago, a reader asked in a comment for clarification regarding what we called one of prayer’s ‘limiting factors’. Circumstances prevented a rapid response, so it now seems better to reply here as one more post dedicated to prayer.

The questioner asked for clarification regarding the fifth limiting factor. This suggested that prayer might be hindered by ‘broken and unreconciled relationships’. The kind of relational brokenness in view is pictured here:

Likewise, husbands, live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hindered. (1 Peter 3:7)

As a husband, this verse is sobering. Mistreatment of my wife will not be tolerated by a just and compassionate heavenly Father and may even cause him to turn a deaf ear to my prayers. Crump is very careful in how he develops this, however. One might say that in my weakness, I’m rarely treating Barb in an ‘understanding way’. Am I always to despair of my prayers being heard? Crump anticipates such concerns.

Persistent mistreatment of brothers and sisters in Christ inhibits our ability to communicate with the Father, and this Father never turns a blind eye to domestic abuse. Until the perpetrators repent and seek the necessary reconciliation, their petitions will remain ineffective.

The question whether there are relationships unreconciled in our lives and hindering our prayers is one that is worth asking. Nevertheless we should not become desperately self-critical.

It would certainly be disheartening to imagine that none of my petitions have any hope of ever being heard by God until every aspect of all my relationships are put in perfect working order. If that were the case, all petition becomes hopeless again! Fortunately, by revisiting the original contexts we are reminded that the New Testament writers were addressing deliberate, persistent misbehavior. The sinner refuses to change despite (a) the sin having been openly confronted and (b) the necessary correction having been explained and then ignored. Consequently because the culprit willfully ignores God’s word, the Father may choose to ignore his or her prayers.

Self-examination is always appropriate, but perfection is never in view. God welcomes prayers from his most broken and inconsistent and weary disciples. Just keep praying.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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These sentences from the final chapter of Crump’s book capture the struggle many of us have with prayer. It’s not with form or method or discipline or time. It’s with God.

“What kind of God allows such horrific tragedies to screech their unkempt nails across the cosmic blackboard…. Is there any rhyme or reason to the discordant notes and garbled syllables spat out at us by this occasional nightmare called life?…. There is a Grand Canyon-sized difference between theological answers that satisfy intellectually and a living faith that sustains a broken heart long after all sense and sensibility have evaporated from a tear-stained life.” (278, 279)

My prayer life has been forged over the past several years in a world in which those reflections seem very real. And I know that the same is true for some of you. And sometimes the theological answers that seemed so satisfactory to us at age 19 begin to seem a bit tenuous from the standpoint of a broken and tear-stained life. Are there answers? And where, if at all, does petitionary prayer fit into such a world?

These are the questions that Crump addresses in his final chapter. He proposes answers but in the end, I think there are no completely satisfactory answers other than those that lie on the surface of scripture. God is sovereign. He invites us, in fact commands us, to pray. His prophets prayed as if such praying was the ‘sinew that moved the arm of omnipotence’ (an evocative phrase from another fairly good writer, Charles H. Spurgeon). Jesus prayed that way, and Paul prayed that way. All believed in the absolute sovereignty of God and all prayed as if their prayers moved the hand of God. And if there was no conflict in their minds, how can I let such a conflict exist in mine?

And so, I ask. I ask for things that seem impossible now. I plead for God to bring more of his not-yet kingdom into my already experience. I plead for others that their tears may be taken away and that they might taste at least a small amount of happiness. I beg him to do things that I can’t really see him doing. I ask out of faith, foolishness, confidence and unbelief, and sometimes all at the same time. I do so because he says to do so, and I do so because he is my Father. I do so to hasten the kingdom and I do so to find solace in my own heart.

The one thing that causes me to stop praying is not losing confidence in prayer and it is not my inability to get sovereignty and responsibility to lay down arms. I lose confidence in prayer when I forget that I am loved by a heavenly Father who, for all the mystery surrounding him, loves to give. So perhaps the best place to find rejuvenation, in the end, is here:

“Jesus loves me, this I know,
for the Bible tells me so.”

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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The primary reason I have found myself coming back to this book is because it makes me want to pray more. It does so not through anecdotes of great practitioners of prayer (apart from Jesus and Paul) which often leave me overwhelmed and under-equipped, but rather through a careful unfolding of the biblical teaching about prayer.

Crump unfolds this biblical teaching with a detailed attention to what the text means and not to what we might want it to mean. In the process, he elevates the reader’s appreciation for the authority and sufficiency of the Bible. That is a gift.

As well, I appreciate the satisfying blend of scholarly rigor and pastoral sensitivity. I don’t know David Crump – though I think I wish I did – but he has clearly spent time out of his books and in the lives of Christian people stumbling like the rest of us through life ‘with wandering steps and slow’.

Further, Crump weaves into his presentation a knowledge of the fundamentalist/evangelical tradition’s misrepresentation of some aspects of prayer. But he does so with gentleness and respect. He is critical, but not with meanness or mockery. That is a gift. Where possible, he illustrates these aspects and his own wrestling with them with illustrations from his own life, but never to distraction.

But all of this he presents with a style that is accessible and often evocative. In these later chapters, for example, I am captured by some of his phrases.

“[Mark 14’s account of Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane] confronts its reader with [a dense] constellation of Christological conundrums….” (255)

“Even the best of intentions frequently run aground on the shoals of execution. Commitment fades. Resolve melts away, leaving only the frail skeleton of human vacillation.” (260)

“[God] remains unmoved by selfishness, no matter how emphatically it is launched heavenward.” (276)

Never is his writing unnervingly flowery or trite. It is evocative and thoughtful, and a pleasure to read. (And he does it all without once quoting C. S. Lewis. He may the only contemporary evangelical author able to pull that off.)

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Click to go to the next post in this series.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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The unquestionable benefit of Crump’s book in my life is that as he strips some of the evangelical and fundamentalist encrustations that have been attached to the idea of prayer, I have been left with a greater desire to pray. That is no small feat. But the nagging question of whether prayer ‘matters’ never quite goes away. “If God is sovereign….” is the thought that continually flits around the edges of our praying minds and hearts.

But that question is not one that ever seems to trouble the writers of scripture. They write as if in fact prayer does have an impact upon the movement of God. How and when and why are not addressed. All our questions fall off into the abyss of mystery, but we are told to pray, and we are encouraged to believe, with integrity, that prayer does in fact shape the future. Obviously sometimes, and for some of us it may feel more like ‘all the time’, God answers our requests with a ‘no’. But what father does not?

In concluding his study through the New Testament with a look at the references to prayer in the remaining books, Crump summarizes what we might properly understand to be factors that limit the effectiveness of our prayers, if ‘effective’ is defined as receiving an affirmative answer the the plea. These six factors are worth simply noting here, hoping that those interested enough to have come with me this far will either grab the book or ask me for clarification.

Those six factors are as follows:

1. The failure to ask

2. God’s unwillingness to bless selfishness

3. Foolish prayer

4. Prayer encouraging or arising from disobedience

5. Prayer in the context of broken and unreconciled relationships

and ultimately, of course,

6. The sovereign wisdom of God’s timing

Crump wisely and helpfully reminds us, as he has done often in the book, that these are not ‘rules’ or ‘laws’ of prayer. God is a person. God is not a vending machine into whom we pour the proper coinage. He is a person, and prayer is a conversation between two persons. As he says,

“As in any personal relationship, certain attitudes and behaviors are more or less conducive than others to open communication.” (page 275)

It serves us well to remember that prayer is not the manipulation of the forces of the spiritual or natural world. It is not, as we have said, magic. Prayer is the approach of children to their father who loves to give.

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Click to go to the next post in this series.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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We are very skilled at creating superheroes out of ordinary human beings. We do it with the celebrities of contemporary culture and we do it with the celebrities of our religious tradition. Consider, for example, Saul, a Jewish rabbi from the city of Tarsus. Upon his conversion to Christianity he became Paul the Apostle, planting and nurturing the church in significant cities throughout the Roman Empire and writing letters that form a significant portion of the New Testament canon. We are not content that he remain merely human. We make him into a superhero.

Superheroes don’t have weaknesses. Superheroes are not flawed. And ordinary people cannot identify with what it means to be a superhero much less do the things that he does. So, no doubt Paul in his letters says a great deal about prayer and demonstrates even more, but we can’t be expected to pray like a superhero.

And that is the downside of elevating a flawed person like Paul to superhero status. Paul himself does not do that. In Paul’s engagement with prayer, we find a person, like us, who prays, who struggles, and who points us down paths that we can, in fact, pursue.

First, it is worth noting that Paul, like us, struggled to know how and what to pray. Paul is no stranger to the 2nd person pronoun, but he chooses the first when he says,

“For we do not know what to pray for as we ought…,” (Romans 8:26”).

We are not alone in struggling to know what to pray.

Secondly, though Paul confessed weakness in prayer, he still prayed. A lot. And he prayed expecting that it actually compelled God to act, even though there were prayers to which he didn’t get the answers he sought. Paul prayed as if it mattered, and so should we. Can we put this together in a nice, tight theological bundle? No. David Crump reminds us,

“…we need to acknowledge that a text can answer only what it was written to address, and very few texts ever address all the questions we would like to raise.” (page 210)

We need to be Biblical first and foremost. Paul, the great theologian of the absolute sovereignty of God prayed as if prayer impacted God’s actions. So should we.

The third thing I, at least, learn from Paul is that too often I pray for the wrong things. Specifically, Paul encouraged prayer with thanksgiving; I forget how to be grateful, much less to express it.

Further, Paul prayed time and again that his correspondents would grow in love for God and for one another and deepen in their faith. Those priorities too easily get lost in my prayer life. To pray deeply for another means that I come to know what they really need, not just what they want. It’s often simpler to pray for your new job and or your pesky cold and leave it at that. But Paul doesn’t, and neither should I.

These are not superhero things. They rather picture a man who struggling to pray nevertheless believes in prayer. We can’t be superheroes. But we can be this.

And we don’t even need a cape.

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Click to go to the next post in this series.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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If you prayed recently for a non-Christian to be saved, you did something that, as far as we can tell, no one in the church recorded in Acts ever did. That does not make what you did wrong, but it does make it curious.

As the New Testament unfolds, we begin to see the ways in which the newly Spirit-filled church prayed. It is surprising that no where in all of the book of Acts, no where in all of the account of the phenomenal expansion of Christianity, no where (but possibly once, Acts 26:29, which in my mind has more of the feel of a rhetorical device) in the history of the works of the Spirit among this newly anointed people do we see anyone or any group praying for unbelievers to come to faith in Jesus. Rather, time and again they pray for believers to be bold.

Is that something worth noting? I think so. Crump makes an important case suggesting that we ought never to idolize the past, even if that past is divinely recorded. And yet we can learn much from these early saints, particularly what God has chosen to reveal about them.

As I think about this ‘lack’ among the Christians in Acts, I realize that it is easy to pray for unbelievers. When I do that I’m asking God to do something with them, while I sit safely in my study or in my small group or in my pew. To pray rather that God would give me and my Christian friends boldness requires a different frame of mind. It requires that I actually want to be bold and that I believe in something worth being bold about. It requires that God act on ME before he acts on others, and I may not be sure that I want that. But that hesitation did not hinder the Christians in Acts. They prayed for boldness, for God to act on THEM.

Something else these early Christians did not pray for was protection. Their’s was a volatile and hostile setting, but they prayed that they might be engaged in God’s kingdom work, not that God would put up hedges and protect them from the fray. As taught by the Lord’s Prayer, they cared more for God’s glory and kingdom than their own personal peace. Our prayers are more likely to be prayers seeking comfort than seeking his kingdom. We are more likely to pray for proper political leaders than to pray for boldness. And this contrast should unsettle us.

The church in Acts was a flawed bunch, as every manifestation of the church in history has been. And yet, it has left us an exemplary model of prayer. These Christians prayed together (a point we too often overlook!), and they prayed for the kingdom (rather than for comfort). In so doing they opened themselves up to the work the Spirit would do, and the world has never been the same.

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Click to go to the next post in this series.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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The phrase ‘in Jesus’ name’ is experienced by many of us as the (often long awaited) indicator that prayer has finally ended. Since it is so much more than that its true power and significance needs to be rescued. The Gospel of John helps us in that rescue.

Crump helpfully observes that with the way we use the language of prayer, or the way we might insist on setting or posture or other matters of ‘propriety’ we turn prayer into something that looks more like a magical incantation. No longer are we speaking honestly with our heavenly father and king. Rather we are stringing together the right phrases in the right way in an effort to move the spirits to do our bidding. There is nothing but hopelessness down that path.

This is what we do when we insist that for a prayer to ‘work’ we must end it with ‘in Jesus’ name’. In reality, the point is not the words we use but the spirit we bring.

All that Jesus did, he did in the name of his Father. That is, he lived and acted and spoke in complete submission to the Father. To pray ‘in Jesus’ name’ is to pray like Jesus lived, as completely sold out to and longing for his kingdom. The words we use do not matter.

As well, to pray in his name is to invoke his authority. The fact that we have the right in the first place to be standing in the presence of the Father is owed solely to Jesus’ past and present and ongoing intercession on our behalf. We come marked as his and so can expect that our prayers will be heard as his. These are both huge encouragements toward prayer, but do not require the use of particular words.

To pray ‘in Jesus’ name’ also implies that we come with Jesus’ sense of submission to the Father.
A difficulty in the gospel and letters of John is how he repeatedly speaks of praying ‘according to God’s will’. Some conclude that God’s will is fixed and that prayer is not something that shapes the future but is only a part of that will which God has fixed. Our prayer is as ordained as the results. For most of us, Crump included, this does not seem satisfying or biblically right. He hazards some suggestions as to how prayer and the Father’s will reconcile, but they are only satisfying when the mystery is allowed to stand. Scripture does not answer all the complications that life in the presence of an infinite, wise and eternal God will raise. Scripture tells me to pray, to ask for things, and to do so in submission to him and in the authority of his son. I cannot peer into the mystery of what effect such prayers have, but I have to believe that the God who presents them as genuine and effective means us to understand them that way. There is no ‘magic’ in prayer but there is mystery. We speak to a Father who effects our desires as he sees fit, and we trust him to do so. Using the phrase ‘in Jesus’ name’ helps us to remember that.

There was a day not too long ago when I was in great distress and in a fairly public place. I found refuge on a low wall separated from the sidewalk by some bushes and trees. But I was still clearly visible, and clearly crying. A woman with a Bible saw me and kindly asked about my welfare. We spoke briefly and she asked if she could pray for me. It was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life. Hers was not a shy prayer; it was not a quiet prayer; it was not a timid prayer. She sensed every dimension of my need and lifted each up to God in turn, separating each with the urgent and vigorously spoken refrain, “In JESUS name!”

She was appealing to the Father on my behalf in the authority of the Son. I will never forget the power of that refrain, or the comfort it brought.

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Click to go to the next post in this series.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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It’s time to take a break from our journey through David Crump’s book on prayer. His reflections on the Lord’s Prayer leads me to think about the prayers in the Bible that I consider my favorites. Among them, I confess, is this very prayer.

The Lord’s Prayer has been and will always be one of my favorite prayers. I suppose it is meant to be so. Regardless, I have found that it shapes my thinking in more ways than I can imagine. Years ago, I sat down and tried to write in just a few short phrases what I felt my purpose was as a person and as a pastor. I labored over that for some time and emerged with what I thought was an accurate reflection of my heart, when my heart was at its best. As I looked at that statement, I saw that it reflected unmistakably the contours of the prayer Jesus taught us and which I had been taught to recite since childhood.

But there are other biblical prayers which have become favorites over the years. One that a fellow pastor recently shared with me comes from the life of Moses. Moses was at the time so overwhelmed with the responsibilities of caring for God’s people that, at his whits end, he burst out with this honest little request (here shared using Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase):

“I can’t do this by myself—it’s too much, all these people. If this is how you intend to treat me, do me a favor and kill me. I’ve seen enough; I’ve had enough. Let me out of here.” (Numbers 11:14, 15 / The Message)

Most pastors I know resonate with that feeling now and then!

Jehoshophat was a king in Israel who, when informed of an approaching army of enemies, very honestly spoke the words that often reflect my own perspective on the unmanageable:

“O our God…we are powerless against this great horde that is coming against us. We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you.” (2 Chronicles 20:12)

The great horde for me may be a parenting conundrum or some other unsolvable puzzle. I rarely know what to do. I can only look to God in desperation.

And then, not quite a prayer, but a blessing which can be easily converted to prayerful use is this:

“The LORD bless you and keep you;
the LORD make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you;
the LORD lift up his countenance upon you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)

I have often had occasions when I’ve not known anything else to pray for someone who is hurting and broken. In such occasions it has seemed right to pray this for them, to wish every component of God’s favor upon them, to ask that the “Lord, bless them and keep them….”

These, I say, are a few of my favorite prayers. What are yours?

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Click to go to the next post in this series.

[This is a post in our ongoing series looking at the themes raised by David Crump in his book Knocking on Heaven’s Door: A New Testament Theology of Petitionary Prayer. We began this series here.]

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One of the first petitionary prayers I recall praying was for a tractor. I don’t know why I wanted a tractor and I don’t know what I would have done with one had I gotten up the morning after the prayer and had found a brand new red Massey-Ferguson tractor in my front yard. I’m supposing that someone in my life had communicated the powerful possibilities of prayer that in asking we receive and with a child’s faith, I acted. To my dismay, I did not get, nor have I yet gotten, my tractor.

Since then, the things for which I ask are more sophisticated, though I’m not sure that is always a good thing. What I do want is that my prayers be shaped by the things that Jesus in the Lord’s Prayer says that my heart should long for in prayer.

If we are praying according to this guide, we will be praying for the regular provision of our needs (“…our daily bread…”). We will pray for reconciled relationships and peace (“…forgive us our debts…”). And we will pray that we will be sustained through every test of our discipleship that comes our way, even as we ask that we might be spared them (“…lead us not into temptation…”).

But what we long for in the end cannot help but be tempered by the weight of the first petitions of this prayer. It is right to petition God for all that we desire. If that is a tractor, then ask for a tractor. If that is for a husband, then pray for a husband. And if it is for a convenient parking place, then pray for that. And yet the more our hearts are trained to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, the essential direction of the first three petitions, the more content we will be to take what he gives on a daily basis, whether great or small. We will be more happy to remain tractor-less if God is glorified in it.

Crump looks at this prayer as something of a grid by which our own heart priorities are revealed. And I must confess that my heart’s desire to embrace Jesus’ passion for the kingdom and my actual practice of that are at times some distance apart. Prayer along the lines of the Lord’s Prayer cannot help but bring them nearer.

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