God Is Faithful

[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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I wrote this series with the presumption that not many, if any, readers of this blog would actually pick up David Crump’s book and read it. I hope I’ve done justice to it in my summary. As I’ve said, I need regular and frequent encouragement to ‘just keep praying’ and this book does that for me. I hope this summary has done so for you. I hope that we remember, through our tears and fears and doubts and questions, that he cares and hears. Just keep praying.

Early this summer I corresponded with David Crump about his book and about this series. (As much as I could – I emailed him through his publisher, and he was kind enough to email me back.) Even in this, I was encouraged, and determined to share a portion of that correspondence with you, as a fitting conclusion to this series.

I am reminded of a conversation I had when I was speaking at a denominational prayer conference in LA.

Before speaking the fellow introducing me asked, “Having written a book on prayer, what is the most important lesson you have learned from your study?”

I told him, “Though I still struggle with it, I have learned to believe that God is always faithful.”

I could tell from his face that he was a bit disappointed. “God is faithful. That’s it?” (I suspect that he was hoping to hear something about the power of prayer. We Americans are obsessed with power.)

Yep. That’s it. When we stop to think about it, what could be more important? Though I struggle to appreciate, much less fully apprehend, how completely all of my life hangs on those three little words, God is faithful.