FEATURE

Throughout the history of the Christian Church much of the devotional literature produced by God’s people has been devoted to the subject of prayer. Surely this emphasis properly reflects the emphasis of Scripture, and it fittingly stresses the prominent role prayer should play in the spiritual life of the believer. (It is perhaps unfortunate that prayer has not been treated very much in formal theological works.) No believer can doubt the great importance and value of prayer, and it is to our shame that so many believers — including the writer — must frankly confess that they neither pray enough nor know how to pray.

If our prayer is to conform to the Scriptural pattern and if we are to derive the proper benefit from it, we must appreciate certain truths regarding prayer which need emphasis in the light of certain aspects of modern thinking. Over against the widespread views of unbelieving psychologists we must insist upon the reality of prayer. Much of modern psychology may consider prayer to be of value and may even encourage it, while it nevertheless denies that in prayer there is an actual address of the living God, the creator and ruler of the universe.

It would be utterly naive to think that the cause of our Christian faith receives a shot in the arm when some prominent psychologist stresses the importance and practical value of prayer. Prayer for the believer is not what the unbelieving psychologist may consider it to be. Prayer is far more than merely a religious exercise to be used for catharsis or to give self-confidence. We must insist that in prayer by the believer there is the reality of actually speaking to the true and living God. We must keep prayer, its importance and its character, within the framework of Christian theism.

Even within the Bible-believing community, however, there have been and are certain views of prayer which are neither theologically sound nor spiritually healthy. Our particular concern in this article is with the idea that prayer is something like a two-way conversation, that we speak to God and he speaks to us in prayer.

This idea is not uncommon as a characteristic of the piety of a number of genuinely conservative Christians. It appears, however, that such a representation of prayer is not only without warrant, but is even detrimental to sound Christian faith.

Is Prayer a Two-way Conversation?

At first glance it may seem that the two-way view of prayer has much more to offer and that it would lead to a fuller and higher spiritual life. One might think that he who denies this reciprocity in prayer is actually weakening and emptying it of much of its value. This, however, would be a most superficial judgment; for the truth is that this two-way view of prayer seriously undermines the Protestant doctrine of Scripture, and anything that does despite to Scripture affects genuine Christian faith adversely. If our doctrine of Scripture as the basis of our faith is to be kept intact, we must make it clear that in prayer we speak to God and there is no communication from God to us.

In saying that the direction of prayer is, so to speak, upward only, we are not ignoring or minimizing the importance of God’s speaking to us. Rather we are stressing the fact that God does truly speak to us, but that he speaks only in and through his Word, the Holy Scriptures. It is the Bible which is the only infallible rule of faith and life. God has acted and spoken in human history and that revelation is now in written form in the completed canon of Holy Scripture. There is now (since the closing of the canon at the end of the apostolic age) no new and special revelation (until such as may be given at the second coming of Christ). It is still true that God speaks to us now, but only through the Scriptures as his Holy Spirit makes known to us the revelation contained therein. He speaks nothing new to us; he opens our eyes that we may behold what he has already said in his written Word.

Of course it is true that in the history of special revelation as recorded in Scripture God did speak to his servants in close conjunction with their prayers to him. We must remember, however, that such cases do belong to the category of special revelation and we today do not receive such special revelation from God directly. Moreover it must be pointed out that even in these cases contained in Biblical history, prayer is not a two-way conversation. God merely saw fit to reveal himself and to speak to his people in conjunction with their prayers. His speaking was no part of the prayers of his saints. Indeed these prayers were often the response to the special revelation.

It is also true that frequently there is close conjunction between the prayers of believers today and the reading of Scripture, just as most of our services of worship follow the reading of Scripture with prayer. Thus it is true that God’s speaking to us is closely related to our approach to him in prayer, and our prayer may frequently be the response to the reading of his Word. It is of course most fitting that Christians should often pray in connection with the reading of and their meditation upon the Bible. But the thing we must remember is that God is not speaking to us in prayer, he speaks through his Word by his Spirit. In prayer we cry unto God (Ps. 30:2), we call upon the name of the Lord (Gen. 4:26; 12:8; etc.). When our Savior prayed, the direction of his prayer was upward to the Father in Heaven (Jn. 17:1), and at the conclusion of the prayer the writer John comments, “When Jesus had spoken these words...” (Jn. 18:1). The Father does not speak in prayer; rather it is he whom we address in prayer. We come boldly unto the throne of grace, not to receive some extra-Scriptural revelation, but to obtain mercy and to find grace to help in time of need.

How great is our God, the sovereign God of all the universe, and yet how gracious is he in supplying the way of access unto himself through Christ for sinners such as we are. May he enable us to see that in prayer we speak to him who rules over all, that thus we may honor him and his Word wherein he speaks to us. May he also grant that we may have the grace needed to make more frequent and better use of this opportunity to call upon God our Father through the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Reprinted from the Presbyterian Guardian, Volume 28, No 6, March 25, 1959. The OPC Committee for the Historian has made the archives of the Presbyterian Guardian available online.

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