Do you pray?
These are the words that open the little, but powerful book by J.C. Ryle “A Call to Pray. [i]
Here is the irony of it all. Before we came to know the Lord, we did not pray. There was nothing odd about that; in fact, it was the way it was because of who we were. No one would have quibbled or quarreled with you because you did nor pray, any more than we would do this to an infant who could not walk. Capacity (ability) was the issue. But here is the question: now that we are changed by the gracious will of God on our life in our union with Christ, why is it that we still do not pray? Why do we, as believers, still have the same posture to prayer that we had before we believed?
Why Ryle asked the question, “Do you pray? he was asking the same question. He says,
“I ASK WHETHER YOU PRAY, BECAUSE PRAYER IS ABSOLUTELY NEEDFUL TO A PERSON'S SALVATION. I say, absolutely needful, and I say so advisedly. I am not speaking now of infants or idiots. I am not setting the state of the heathen. I know where little is given, there little will be required. I speak especially of those who call themselves Christians…. And of such I say, no man or woman can expect to be saved who does not pray”
Ryle makes the point that salvation, while totally by grace, is the souls cry for mercy; it is the soul praying. That is to make the statement that as prayer is the life of the soul that is saved, it is the life of the saved soul. Men, converted by the supernatural work of Christ, will be people who communicate with Him as their source of continued empowerment to live out our salvation.
Speaking of the central aspect of prayer in the Christian’s life in the Spirit, Gordon Fee, in his magisterial work God’s Empowering Presence says,
“A prayer-less life is one of practical atheism. As one who lived in and by the Spirit, Paul understood prayer in particular to be the special prompting of the Spirit…. Whatever else ‘life in the Spirit’ meant for Paul, it meant a life devoted to prayer, accompanied by joy and thanksgiving” [ii]
To not pray is disobedience to the clear commands within the scripture to pray. Therefore, failure to pray is to demonstrate a posture before the Lord that is no different than that of the “atheist” whose life is lived as if there were no God. It is a life that is lived as if its soul had not been acted upon by the sovereign will of God. It is a life that is lived as if salvation were merely a decision of the human will rather than the in-breaking will of the Spirit upon the soul.
If Fee is right when he says that prayer is the “the special prompting of the Spirit”, to not pray is show that I am not being prompted by the Spirit. Therefore, a prayerless life is not merely a powerless life but it may very well be that, for the one who does not pray, one of two realities are possible:
The Lord has not broken into the soul and, therefore, the soul – contrary to profession of faith in God, is really void of God.
The Lord has, indeed, broken in but the believer’s choices, actions and attitudes stand as the quenching waters of the fire of the Spirit of God within them. The Spirit is present, but the believer is quenching Him such that promptings to pray go unnoticed and, at worst, noticed but unheeded.
If a Christian can be Christian without prayer, then one must wonder how the life of the Vine, Jesus, is flowing in the soul. If I, the branch, am not connected to the Vine by way of prayer how am I absorbing the nutrients of eternal life in this life? The fruit of God is only possible when I am connected, in union, with Christ through the continual process of abiding (John 15:4-5).
So, I ask you, with Ryle, “Do you pray”?