It’s Never Too Late to Learn How to Pray
On the eve of choosing the twelve apostles from among his disciples, our Lord spent an entire evening on an unnamed mountain praying to God (Luke 6:12). Interestingly, Luke tells us, not that Jesus “prayed to God,” but that he “spent the night in the prayer of God,” indicating the kind of God’s-will-seeking-prayer Jesus would later teach his disciples to pursue. Jesus spent all night in prayer because he desperately wanted to make the right decision in choosing the Twelve—that group of martyrs who would bear witness to his ministry and spread the gospel throughout the world.
One commentator captures the power of the scene when he writes, “We may erroneously assume that Jesus had a link with God that gave him effortless access to the Father’s will. How significant that Jesus, the Son of God, indwelt by the Holy Spirit, must spend all night praying in discernment of God’s will.”
The applicational impact of Jesus’s example is hard to miss. If Jesus needed to pray under these circumstances, how much more do I? And yet, after twenty-three years as a Christian and nearly twelve as a pastor, I must admit that I’m still learning to pray. Judging by my conversations with other Christians, I’m not alone in that sentiment. Prayer is perhaps the most challenging component of the Christian life, and the distractions of our digital age only compound the difficulty.
I recently read Tim Keller’s own story of learning to pray and was greatly encouraged. Keller was 51 years old in 2001, pastoring a growing church in New York City, when terrorists steered two airplanes into the Twin Towers, killing 3000 people. That same year, Keller’s wife had been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease and Keller himself had received a cancer diagnosis. It was under these hard circumstances that Keller, an influential and widely respected pastor, learned how to pray.
The motivation came from his wife, Kathy, who asked him to begin praying with her every night. She said, “Imagine you were diagnosed with such a lethal condition that the doctor told you that you would die within hours unless you took a particular medicine—a pill every night before going to sleep. Imagine that you were told that you could never miss it or you would die. Would you forget? Would you not get around to it some nights? No—it would be so crucial that you wouldn’t forget, you would never miss.” God used Kathy’s powerful thought experiment to lead Tim on a search for understanding prayer that changed the rest of his life. His book, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God, details what he discovered.
Keller adopted four habits from that point forward: he began praying the psalms regularly, meditating on God’s word before prayer, praying morning and evening, and praying with greater expectation. At 51 years old, after decades in ministry, Tim Keller finally began to really pray.
I offer Keller’s story as encouragement to us. We too are on a journey of growth, and our struggles with prayer do not take God by surprise. In his wise providence, he used an intense season of suffering in the Kellers’ life and ministry to wake them up and mature them in prayer. Keller’s half-a-century of learning to pray means it’s never too late for you and me. No matter how much you’ve struggled in the past, prayer is a gift that God wants you to enjoy today. There’s no better time than now to begin. Don’t let past failure lead you to miss the rich blessings God intends you to enjoy.
Misunderstanding is a major reason for our struggle with prayer. Many of us view prayer transactionally. We ask and God gives. When we want or need something, we turn to prayer and ask God. Hopefully, he will respond and grant us what we’re asking for.
But that’s not the main goal of prayer in the Bible. Instead, we see Jesus on the mountain in prayer because he’s seeking communion with his Father. Before prayer is the means to get what we want, it’s the channel that enables us to encounter, know, delight in, and love God. When we pray, we are spending time in uninterrupted communion with the God who saved us. Christ has opened the way for us to enjoy God by bringing us into his very presence. Because of Christ, the mountaintop follows us wherever we go. The door of access is never closed.
When we see prayer as communion instead of transaction, prayer transforms from duty to delight. When we personally encounter the living God in prayer, our affections are warmed, and our convictions are clarified in his presence. When communion is the goal, prayer transforms from guilt-ridden duty to glorious delight. No matter how far along you are in this Christian journey, it’s never too late to learn how to pray.
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