Confidence in PrayerSample

The Confidence Is Ours

Have you ever felt that prayer is difficult? If you haven’t, it might be because you don’t know the first thing about it.

Praying is one of the most challenging things you will experience in your Christian life, and I’m not talking about formalities, such as the words that you use or how organized your thoughts are. I’m not talking about the words, the form, the place, or even the body’s position—standing, kneeling, or sitting.

I’m talking about what prayer is. In prayer, we are before God, in His presence, talking to Him, seeking to commune with the Lord in the way that He ordained. Let me say it another way: in prayer, I come face-to-face with my weaknesses, seeing how far I am from the man of God that I wish to be, and how far I am from the intimacy with God I want to enjoy.

The Puritan John Flavel wrote, “Heart-work is hard work indeed. To shuffle over religious duties with a loose careless spirit will cost no great difficulties; but to set yourself before the Lord, and tie up your loose and vain thoughts to a constant and serious attendance upon him: this will cost you something. To attain ease and dexterity of language in prayer and to be able to put your meaning into appropriate and fitting expressions is easy; but to get your heart broken for sin while you’re actually confessing it; melted with free grace even while you’re blessing God for it; to be really ashamed and humbled through the awareness of God’s infinite holiness, and to keep your heart in this state not only in, but after these duties, will surely cost you some groans and travailing pain of soul.”

He’s right, isn’t he? To have your heart broken while you confess sin. Having your heart full of joy when you think about God’s grace. Maintaining that state during prayer and even after is difficult work.

The apostle John recorded these promises made by the Holy Spirit, “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life. And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us”(1 John 5:13–14).

The confidence described in these verses is ours—all who belong to God.