Prayer | BCL Monthly
June 2025 Edition
Happy June to our BCL readers!
On one hand prayer can seem so easy: All we have to do is humbly share with our heavenly Father all that is on our hearts. On the other hand, prayer can seem so difficult: We want to pray and know we should pray, but we get distracted, discouraged, or too busy to do it. Since God always knows everything we need and everything we want in life, why do we even need to pray? In this month’s newsletter, Dan delves into the goodness of suffering in driving us to prayer, Ayrian shares two quick tips on how to integrate prayer into our daily lives, and Le Ann reflects on what prayer is, why we pray, and how prayer blesses both God and us. To God be the glory!
In Christ,
Le Ann Trees, Managing Editor
Dan Rowlands, Content Editor
Ayrian Yasar, Associate Editor
Suffering and struggles send us to prayer. Even though we desire to be a “prayer warrior,” the distractions of everyday life tend to put prayer too low on our list of priorities. Then comes suffering.
All Christians will suffer, just as our Lord and Savior Christ Jesus suffered:
For it has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake. (Phil. 1:29)
And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he [Jesus] said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” (Mark 8:34)
Prayer is an act of steadfast faith.
Besides suffering as followers of Christ Jesus, who suffered on our behalf so that we, by faith in him, may be saved from our sins to a glorious and everlasting life, suffering in this life strengthens our faith and drives us to prayer. When James instructs us to be joyful in suffering (James 1:2), he explains that suffering tests our faith and produces steadfastness so that we lack nothing (James 1:3-4).
In other words, suffering often turns our faith away from ourselves, away from our own self-sufficiency and pride, to cry out to the Lord for help. This is an act of faith, a confidence of believing that God can help us in our suffering and that he is the one who loves us, who sustains us, who heals us, and who hears us. Prayer is an act of steadfast faith.
For example, when Christ Jesus was nearing his time to suffer on the cross, he turned to God the Father in prayer. The writer of Hebrews records,
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. (Heb. 5:7)
The High Priestly Prayer of Jesus in John 17 is another example of Christ praying to the Father just before he would be betrayed and go to the cross to die. In Matthew 26 Jesus goes alone on the Mount of Olives to pray before he would be betrayed, and with “sweat dropping like blood to the ground” he prayed earnestly with agony to the Father to let the cup of his suffering pass, then saying, "Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:39-44).
Suffering drives us to prayer, even though we desire God’s will to be done.
No doubt there are times when many of us have prayed in agony with many tears that we or our loved ones would be healed. We have prayed for grace in our suffering, so that we would bear our afflictions with a strong faith as an example to others, and that God would remove from us our own cross of suffering and restore us to the joy of good health and pleasant times. We cast our burdens upon God, hoping for a favorable answer to our prayers, even though we desire God’s will to be done (see Matt: 6:10; the Lord’s Prayer).
Job suffered terribly. We know the story of how he was on the top of the world—wealthy, healthy, a wonderful family, obedient, with a reverence for God, and serving him faithfully. But for reasons Job didn’t know, he suffered the loss of everything. Everything. In the end after his three friends tried to explain all the reasons why he suffered, God challenged Job, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 38:2). The Lord turned to Job with reminders of creation and providence. He faithfully remembered that God who created all things and upholds and rules all things by his sovereign providence will not always reveal why a particular person suffers. We may never know the reason, even though our friends speculate and we lay awake at night asking our Lord, “Why?”
So when we suffer, may we pray that the Lord will give us the grace to bear it well.
We turn to prayer. We cry out to God, and he hears us. He knows our frame as the dust we are. He knows our hardships and suffering, He knows the pain we bear, for in God the Son, Christ Jesus, he suffered beyond our imagination to show his love to us. Job responded to his suffering with a prayer:
Then Job answered the Lord and said:
“I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
‘Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?’
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
‘Hear, and I will speak;
I will question you, and you make it known to me.’
I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees you;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.” (Job 42:1-6)
Job knew the sovereignty of God in his suffering and turned to him in prayer, trusting in God that his purposes, though often unknown, are good and true. So, when we suffer, may we pray that the Lord will also strengthen our faith, that he will give us the grace to bear it well as we follow in the footsteps of Christ Jesus until that amazing day when there will be no more suffering, no more death, no more crying, no more mourning, and no more pain (Rev. 21:4).
Considering that prayer is such an important part of the Christian’s life, it’s curious then that it is so difficult to do! This is evidenced by the many books that have been written on how to pray, explaining what prayer is, and encouraging believers to pray. Books about prayer may distinguish different parts or types of prayers—thanksgiving, supplication, repentance, etc.—or maybe they explain the Lord’s Prayer so we can use it as a valuable guide in our prayers. While many of these books have value, there are two simple things you can start doing today that may help you build up steam in making your prayer life integrated into your regular, daily life.
Short prayers are an important part of the believer’s prayer life.
It is important to remember that prayer is speaking to our heavenly Father, and it doesn’t have to fit into a rigid form to be a wonderful prayer. It could be a short prayer like, “Give me strength!” in a time of temptation or need or a short prayer of thanksgiving at the moment of a mercy or blessing, “Thank you, Jesus!” (see Paul Miller’s A Praying Life for more on very brief prayers).
These short prayers come in handy as you go throughout the day, helping you see God’s provision as you progress through ordinary tasks and challenges. Do you have to pick up your child from school and deal with a teacher with a prickly personality? “Help me, Jesus!” Do you need patience when you have done everything to get to a meeting on time and then get stuck behind a traffic accident? “Help, Jesus! Thank you that I’m safe. Help those who are hurt.” Small communications throughout the day bring our hearts closer to our Father, who loves us.
Prayer gives us the opportunity to thank God for our local church family.
Prayer can also help bring our hearts closer to people around us, people who are God’s instruments in our life. Paul writes to the Colossian church,
We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you, since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints. (Col. 1: 3-4)
In a recent sermon I heard, the point was made that we don’t often thank God for the people in our own church. It’s often the case that interpersonal frustrations can pull us apart, and we forget to rejoice in the fact that other believers are special to Jesus. Praying for fellow believers reminds us of the fundamental unity we share with our brothers and sisters. We are all blood-bought siblings and heirs with Christ Jesus:
The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. (Rom. 8:16-17)
So if you need a little help making prayer an integral part of your life, maybe try acknowledging your Father in the little things and thanking him for other believers who are his ordinary instruments in your life.
It’s likely that many Christians evaluate the quality of their prayer life partly on the amount of time they spend in prayer. A person who prays for at least, say, an hour a day must be someone who values the privilege of prayer and makes it a priority. Someone who prays for, say, five minutes a day doesn’t seem to be as devout of a Christian. Is there an appropriate amount of time to pray each day, and why does God want us to pray to him?
What is prayer and why do Christians need to pray?
Godly prayer is humble prayer; as we learn from the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector (Luke 18:9-14), the humble and lowly—those with a penitent heart—are the ones whose prayers are heard by God.
The Heidelberg Catechism (1563) teaches us that “prayer is the most important part of the thankfulness which God requires of us” (Q&A 116). When we pray, we testify that God is sovereign over all, that he hears our prayers, and that he is completely able to fulfill our requests according to his will.
In prayer believers humbly confess their sins to God, admit that they aren’t in control, and acknowledge that it is only by God’s grace that their daily needs are provided for and the debt for their guilt and sin has been paid. As theologian R. Scott Clark notes regarding the nature of prayer,
Prayer is our response. It is the instrument through which we reply from the heart, with thanks, to God for all he has done. Prayer is the first expression of the grateful, believing heart….Prayer is the act of a needy sinner.
Prayer is the exercising of the believer’s trust in God—the outworking of the gift of faith that God has given us in Christ.
Do our prayers change God’s will?
We know for a fact that some of God’s actions are based on our prayers. There are far too many instances of answered prayer in the Bible to list them here (just a few include Hannah’s prayer for a son in 1 Samuel 1:10-20, Elijah’s prayer to raise the widow’s son from the dead in 1 Kings 17:17-24, Daniel’s prayer for his people in Daniel 9:1-23, Jesus’ healing of the leper in Matthew 8:1-4, and the believers’ prayer for boldness in Acts 4:23-31).
Yet, one may ask, “So, does God’s will change based on our prayers?” The Bible is clear that God always does his holy will, and while we cannot fully understand how our prayers and God’s will are connected, we know from Scripture that God hears the prayers of his children and answers our prayers according to his good purpose in all things (Eph. 4:6-7; Rom. 8:28). It is helpful to remember both truths that 1) God is sovereign and 2) people are responsible to love and obey their Creator, including in their duty to pray. The role of our prayers in God’s sovereign reign is mysterious and vital.
Christians should not be surprised by their struggles in prayer.
It should come as no surprise to any Christian that Satan hates humble and penitent prayers to God. The devil despises believers coming before their heavenly Father in prayer with due adoration along with petitions for their needs and the needs of others. When we pray, we are entering a spiritual battleground.
Pastor Stephen Kneale notes that the great Protestant Reformer Martin Luther struggled with praying consistently, one time admitting to his friend Philipp Melanchthon that he had gone eight days without praying due to temptations of the flesh and other burdens.
As Kneale points out, knowing that such a giant in the faith as Luther could allow such a lapse in his prayer life should help us to remember that we are all sinners. Instead of racking ourselves with guilt over our own lack of prayer, we can choose to pray.
“Habit-stacking” can help Christians integrate more prayer time into daily life.
When Paul tells us to pray without ceasing, he wants believers to know that praying to God is an activity that should pervade the Christian life (1 Thess. 5:16–18). God won’t ask us to do things that he doesn’t give us the time to do. While the Bible doesn’t tell Christians how long they should pray each day, prayer is an essential and integral part of daily Christian life. Yet, believers shouldn’t use prayer as a reason to avoid fulfilling the responsibilities God has given them.
While we can be tempted by things and activities that distract us from praying, we can also feel pressured to set prayer time aside due to our responsibilities that must be done each day. In James Cleary’s highly acclaimed and must-read book Atomic Habits, he encourages readers to use “habit stacking,” a method created by BJ Fogg, to develop and keep a new habit. This method of combining at least two habits to be done concurrently has been a significant help to me in praying more and with intention.
For example, I make it a habit not to leave my bedroom in the morning to go enjoy the lovely cup of coffee my husband has made for me until I have prayed first. My husband and I like to spend time together in the morning in our kitchen area, and we have developed the habit of not going off to do our responsibilities and activities until we have had a time of prayer as a couple. We also have developed the habit of including a short prayer to the Lord about the people on our hearts when we thank him for our food before we eat our dinner. Connecting prayer time with other activities has been a game-changer for me in consistently spending time with the Lord throughout the day.
We bless our heavenly Father when we pray to him.
God wants us to cast our cares upon him, and such a privilege it is to know that whatever is plaguing us, whatever is causing us to be downcast and feel tempted to give up hope, is the very thing that God wants us to bring to him in prayer! When we pray to our heavenly Father, we communicate not only our thanks and petitions but also our utter need for his love, his friendship, his help, and his sovereign rule over our life.
Are we not blessed as parents when our own children come to us for love, wisdom, support, and a timely hug? How much more must God be blessed by our heartfelt prayers and never-ceasing dependence on him as we lovingly cry out, “Abba, Father!” (Rom. 8:15).
Our prayer life is a powerful indicator of what we believe about God.
In a recent sermon pastor Eric Chappell made an important observation about prayer that cannot be taken too seriously:
Prayer is an honest indicator—one of the best indicators—of what you believe about God, of where you place your confidence. If you believe that God is the Creator, if you believe he’s sovereign, if you believe he’s present and among you, you will pray. And if you don’t pray, it means that you believe that somebody else, maybe even yourself, is actually in charge.
Our prayers are a testimony to our faith in God—that he is real, he loves us, he is listening to us, and he is able and willing to help us.
No matter how much we pray, there likely will always be the feeling that we could have prayed more, and this is a good thing. Instead of feeling badly about not praying more, may we take to heart our duty to pray and our privilege of being able to talk to our loving heavenly Father anytime and anywhere. And may our prayers be a blessing to God and our neighbor until the glorious day comes when we are in our Lord’s presence forevermore.
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