Prayer is only possible because Jesus has given you access to the Father through His shed blood. Prayer is a gift purchased for you by Christ.
At the risk of committing some sort of reformational sin, I am going to start my thoughts on prayer taking issue with Martin Luther. Every few months, I’ll see a quote attributed to Luther (though I’ve not yet found the source) where he allegedly said, “I am so busy now that if I did not spend three hours each day in prayer, I could not get through the day.”[1] I don’t know about you, but quotes like that raise my anxiety for all kinds of reasons. What is wrong with me that I’m not able to find three hours in the day to pray? Are my prayers inferior because I don’t come anywhere near that kind of time in prayer? Am I not as faithful of a Christian because of the time I allot to prayer? What is wrong with my faith? Such quotes like this turn prayer into a law I cannot keep!
On the other hand, our tech age has made it such that we don’t have to worry about such long, arduous hours in the prayer closet. You can now do your praying on the go! In her insightful article When Faith Is Just an App, Freya India warns of the current commodification of Christianity and how the faith is being sold in very convenient packaging. Apps like the Hallow app present a convenient devotional life that fits my lifestyle. She writes,
“But lately I’m beginning to feel as if Christianity has become another thing to do on my phone. Now I need my faith fast and convenient. I can pray as I go. I can stay prayed up. I’ve got a streak going… How on earth am I going to get through the Book of Psalms when I’m used to iBible? Now I need the New Testament to be YouTube Shorts. Sure I can take a minute to connect with God, but then it better be just a minute; anything more is agonizing. Don’t worry, my apps reassure me, it’s just a few minutes a day, alright just one minute, actually “just give Jesus like 30 seconds.”[2]
It is one thing to be overly pietistic and heap guilt on those who don’t pray long or sincerely “enough.” But is it any better to have a devotional life that, instead of pursuing faithful habits, conveniently squeezes God into my overly busy schedule? I’ve read the Gospels a few times and, let me tell you, convenience is never a word that we find on the lips of our Lord.
How, then, should we think about prayer in a world where convenience has replaced discipline and apps have replaced catechisms but also, in my world, where I don’t have the leisure to sit in my prayer closet for hours on end? What does it actually look like to have a faithful prayer life? Here are a few initial thoughts:
Start with Jesus. Jesus, after all, is the one who starts us in prayer. Though prayer is most certainly a command God makes and a work we perform, it is first and foremost a gift we receive. It is a gift grounded in the atoning work of Jesus Christ for us and for our salvation. In the Old Testament, priests were not to enter into the presence of God without the shedding of blood. On the Day of Atonement, for example, the high priest would sacrifice a bull for himself and his family before entering into God’s holy place (Leviticus 16). The blood of the bull would purify the one entering God’s holy presence.
You who are baptized have been cleansed with the blood of Jesus Christ have been made priests in the kingdom of God. As with the blood of bulls for Israel’s priests, the shed blood of Jesus Christ grants you access to God’s holy presence. He gladly turns His fatherly ear towards your blood-soaked prayers. Prayer is only possible because Jesus has given you access to the Father through His shed blood. Prayer is a gift purchased for you by Christ.
It is a gift Jesus has won for you, and it is one he wants you to use. After all, we relate to God only by faith. Faith is full dependance upon God and His Word, and prayer is the voice of faith. Every time you read of someone coming to Jesus in the Gospels in their emptiness and need, you are witnessing faith working itself out in prayer. It is those with full hands and impressive works which Jesus sends away. We pray, as Luther teaches us in his wonderful Large Catechism, because we are in constant need of God’s provision. “[Prayer] has been prescribed for this reason also, that we should reflect on our need, which ought to drive and compel us to pray without ceasing… This need, however, that ought to concern us—ours and everyone else’s—is something you will find richly enough in the Lord’s Prayer.”[3]
So, we find, that not only is the fact that we can pray a gift, but Jesus himself gifts us the words to pray! He exposes our needs in the Lord’s Prayer and then tells and commands us to pray it. He then adds wonderful promises to the command: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:9-10). Luther says, “For whenever a good Christian prays, “Dear Father, your will be done,” God replies from above, “Yes, dear child, it shall be done indeed, in spite of the devil and all the world.” [4]
We have our need, God’s command, God’s promise, and even the words given to us to pray! What more is there? Time, of course! And God’s given you that as well. Now, I am not going to harp on you with some pietistic schedule that tells you exactly what you must do to meet a particular standard of holiness. But I’m also not going to let you off the hook for the sake of convenience. Rather, I will tell you that there are certain patterns you can add to your day that will enable you to be consistent in your prayers.
Keep in mind, your prayers need not be long or elaborate or overly emotional. But it is good if you work with them as a routine. Luther says, “For this purpose it also helps to form the habit of commending ourselves each day to God—our soul and body, spouse, children, servants, and all that we have—for his protection against every conceivable need.”[5] Start off with your weekly routine of going to church. Prayer, before it is individual, is corporate. The divine service sets the standard for our personal devotions. Next, think of your daily routine. Luther guides us in the Small Catechism to wake up in the morning, make the sign of the cross in the triune name, say the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer, include his morning prayer or some personal prayers and then “go joyfully to your work, singing a hymn, like that of the Ten Commandments, or whatever your devotion may suggest.”[6] Then, pray around your meals. When the day is over, follow a similar pattern to your morning routine and “go to sleep at once in good cheer.”[7]
In this way, you are setting a routine that saturates your day in prayer without burning yourself out in a marathon of piety before 7:00 am. In other words, this routine enables you to enjoy the gift of prayer Christ has won for you on the cross and allows you to rest in the promises.
Prayer is no chore to be despised. Neither is it a spiritual convenience to be taken lightly. It is a gift given to those who have been purchased with the blood of Christ and made holy through the waters of baptism. With it, you are given access to the Father in heaven who delights to hear your prayers and answers you always in His good and gracious will.
[1] https://www.azquotes.com/quote/875556 There are far too many quotes misattributed to Martin Luther on the internet. I hope this is one of them!
[2] https://www.thefp.com/p/when-faith-is-just-an-app
[3] Large Catechism, in The Book of Concord: The Confessions of the Evangelical Lutheran Church, ed. Robert Kolb and Timothy Wengert (Minneapolis, Fortress Press, 2000), 444
[4] Large Catechism, 444
[5] Large Catechism, 395
[6] Luther’s Small Catechism with Explanation (St. Louis, Concordia Publishing House, 2017), 30
[7] Small Catechism, 31
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