Monotony in Prayer

Take Christ out of our service to God and you find boredom; leave Him out of your prayers and you’re faced with monotony. Prayer, like the Bible, is to be Christological to the core. One reason our prayers, both privately and publically, are so dry and dull is because there is so little of Jesus in them.

What a wilderness we make of our prayer life when, as one old divine puts it, we have “untheological devotions.” Paul was a great intellect, as well as theologian, but we see Paul at his very best in his prayers. I read recently somewhere that Paul was our master teacher in divinity, but especially in devotion. He fell asleep at night full of praise and prayer to Christ Jesus, and in the morning he began again where he had left off the previous night.

I encourage each of you to take note, when reading Paul’s epistles, how he fills his prayers with the person of Jesus Christ. Nowhere will you see this man’s magnificent mind and great heart revealed more than in his prayers. It was, Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus, Jesus, my Lord, Christ Jesus, Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ, in every prayer of his. He knew how to get God’s ear; he incessantly bragged on His Son. Nothing will endear God to a man or woman like constantly speaking to Him of His only begotten Son.

God never tires in hearing such prayers. And you can always be assured of an immediate audience when such prayers are offered up!

R.D. Sandlin