Big, Sweeping–But Not Insipid–Prayers
Aug 24th, 2007 by pfadmin
Once again, we find Mr. Piper assisting us with what to pray for:
One of the amazing things about Bible prayers is how big and sweeping they often are. Yet they don’t have the vague ring of “God bless the missionaries” that sounds so weak. We sometimes try to remedy this by saying, “We should pray specific prayers for specific people and specific needs, and not vague general prayers.” There is truth to that. We should pray that way.
But I think there is another reason why our big general prayers seem insipid, while the big Bible prayers don’t. Ours often don’t have much of God in them and don’t articulate what the great spiritual things are that we want God to do for “the missionaries” or “the nations” or “the world” or “the lost.” The words “God bless” would not sound so weak and vague if we said what the blessing would look like that we are praying toward. There is a world of difference between “Lord, help our missionaries,” and “Lord, help our missionaries to drink deep at the river of your delights.” Or, “Lord, help our missionaries rejoice in tribulations and remember that tribulation works endurance and endurance hope.”
Read the rest of the article here.