We as Christians have access to so many deep riches in prayer – but we often barely scrape only the surface.
Deeper Blessings
What have you prayed about in the past few days? Have you thanked God for anything? If so, what have you thanked Him for? There are unfathomable depths of blessings that we’re swimming around in every day for which we can be thankful. We can be thankful for deeper blessings than we often think about.
Compare you prayers to Paul’s:
We always thank God, … since we heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. Of this you have heard before … the gospel, which has come to you, as indeed in the whole world it is bearing fruit and increasing. (vv. 3-7)
Paul thanks God for “your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints” as well as “the hope laid up for you in heaven” and the gospel “bearing fruit and increasing” (vv. 4-6). This is a glimpse of a mature Christian’s prayer.
Sometimes we get stuck in our maturity in our praying, and we stay on child-level thankfulness. Children are thankful for the thing right in front of them, but as they grow up, you expect their thankfulness to mature also – the breadth and depth of their gratitude should increase. This is the way our pray life should be also. We have so much to fuel our prayers, and we can thank God for deeper blessings.
Deeper Results
We can also ask God for deeper results than what we usually ask for. Often our prayers are so shallow, asking for help with issues right in front of us. Now it’s not bad to ask for those things, but there is so much more available to us than this. Paul prayed for the Colossians to “be filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will … bearing fruit in every good work” and that they would “be strengthened with all power” and would thank the Lord, who qualified them “to share in the inheritance of the saints in light” (vv. 9-12).
Instead of asking God to change the situations that make our lives a little painful, we can ask Him to harness these situations to bring about eternally significant growth in us and in other people. It’s easy to forget that we have deeper blessings and can ask for deeper results.
Here is a diagnostic test: If God answered every single prayer you prayed over the past year, what would be different in the world? What would change in your life and in others’? Would anyone be saved? Unfortunately, if God answered any and all of our prayers, what would likely result is that we would all be really, really comfortable in this world – no closer to God, having done no further work to expand His kingdom.
Deeper Truths
Finally, we can pray in light of deeper truths than we often do. Shallow praying often comes from a shallow grasp of God’s truth as revealed in Scripture; deep praying comes from a deep grasp of God’s truth as revealed in Scripture. Here is what was on Paul’s mind as he thought about his prayers:
[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. (vv. 13-14)
Do we go this deep in our thinking as we approach prayer, or do we stay with circumstances that we wish were different? How might our prayer lives be transformed if we meditated on truths like “[Jesus] is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation” (v. 15)? What might be different if we let our minds marinate on the rich truths found in Scripture?
We can’t go from a week of grocery list- and Netflix-level thinking into deep, deep prayers. We have no content in our minds to do this. Don’t ever expect a deep prayer life if you’re not deeply in God’s Word. Prayer is a conversation between God and us – He speaks to us through Scripture and we respond to Him in prayer.
Martin Luther had a four-part approach to prayer. The first part was teaching (“What does God have to say to me in His Word?”), the second is thanksgiving (“What is there to be thankful for according to what I have just been taught?”), then repentance (“Based on what I just read, what do I need to bring before God so that He can help me change?”) and lastly petition (“What do I need from God to live in light of the truth I have seen?”).
In light of having received deeper blessings, being able to ask for deeper results and having access to deeper truths, may we seek a deeper life of prayer.
Discussion Starters (based on Colossians 1:3-16)
- Why is a deep prayer life important?
- How deep would you consider your prayer life to be?
- When you pray, do you usually thank God for things?
- If yes, what do you usually thank Him for?
- Have you been maturing in your prayer life over the years?
- If God answered every single prayer you prayed in the past year, what would be different in the world?
- Why must a deep prayer life come out of a deep Scripture-reading life?
- How can we implement Martin Luther’s four-part approach to prayer?
- What is something you can do to enhance and deepen your prayer life?
