Is Prayer a Must?
God's command and promise is our sole motive for prayer. Nothing could be commanded more precisely than what is stated in the Psalm, 'Call upon me in the day of tribulation' (50:15). Those who try to wriggle out of coming directly to God are not only rebellious and stubborn, but are also convicted of unbelief because they distrust the promises.
John Calvin1
Prayer is the sincere, sensible, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God through Christ in the strength and assistance of the Holy Spirit, for such things as God hath promised, or according to the Word for the good of the church, with submission and faith to the will of God.
John Bunyan2 What drives us to prayer? One pastor said, "It's a little bit like loving your wife: you love her for a variety of reasons, and different reasons predominate at different times. Sometimes you pray out of sheer desperation. Sometimes out of unhappiness with yourself. Sometimes because you love the Lord. Sometimes it's a sense of feeling utterly overwhelmed—a feeling of inadequacy. A person will call on the phone and say, 'My wife just kicked me out of the house. Can I come over and talk with you?' So you'll say, 'Sure, come on over and we'll talk.' You hang up the phone, and say to yourself, What in the world do I say to this person? That's when you pray." That kind of pressure can drive the Christian leader in one of two directions: toward spiritual arrogance or toward total dependence on God. When the pressure is handled with simplistic authoritarianism ("I'm the only one who can handle this situation"), the leader is susceptible to arrogance. The road to that extreme leads to burnout or becoming hardened by spiritual callousness. The road to total dependence, however, is a ...
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