“Do I Pray Enough?”
Getting the right proportion and substance to our praying
One of the hallmarks of our church is prayer. It happens after prayer, we often say. We even style our directory as a prayer list first, and only secondly is it a phone directory. One of the basic expectations of membership here is that we pray for each other.
Some might ask then, Do I pray enough? I think that question can cause guilt based on legalistic standards rather than on wisdom and grace, so let’s ask it a different way. Better: is my praying shaped by God and His Word? Does it therefore have the prominence and substance that God would have for me?
We can answer that question by asking a few more questions:
- How much time do I spend in prayer, in relationship to how long I consume social media, news or entertainment each week?
- Do I pray for those that God has specifically and covenantally placed in my life - i.e., my family and my fellow church members?
- Are my prayers informed by the priorities of the prayers of Scriptures, especially the prayers recorded in the New Testament?
Your honest answers to those questions might leave you feeling wanting (they do that to me, sometimes). But they will also leave you pointed in the right direction.
Let us all recommit ourselves to prayer in this season. For example, you might take Philippians 1:9-10 and pray the same requests today, right now, for your family or the next person in your prayer/phone directory.
Paul’s Prayers
For your reference, here are all of Paul’s prayers, listed in the order they’re found in the Bible. The “ff” in a couple places means “and following” - it goes for a few verses. Taken from Carson’s “A Call to Spiritual Reformation”. Links take you to Logos.com. Click on the button for a version with full Bible passages: