(1.) Sincerity. For prayer to be acceptable, there must most obviously be sincerity. God is a Spirit. He searches the heart. He is not satisfied with words or with external homage. He cannot be deceived and He will not be mocked. It is therefore a great sin in His sight when our hearts do not join in the words we utter before Him. We sin against Him when we pray and do not have any corresponding feelings of reverence – although angels would veil their faces in these circumstances. We also sin when we use forms of thanksgiving without gratitude, or those of humility and confession without any due sense of our unworthiness, or make petitions without any desire for the blessings we ask. Even sincere Christians must acknowledge that this evil often affects their prayers, and when, in places of public worship, multitudes repeat solemn forms of devotion – or profess to unite with those who utter them – without the corresponding emotions, the service is little better than mockery.1
1 Taken, with editing, from Hodge’s Systematic Theology, vol 3. Last month’s article was subtitled: “The Object of Prayer”.
(1.) Sincerity.
For prayer to be acceptable, there must most obviously be sincerity. God is a Spirit. He searches the heart. He is not satisfied with words or with external homage. He cannot be deceived and He will not be mocked. It is therefore a great sin in His sight when our hearts do not join in the words we utter before Him. We sin against Him when we pray and do not have any corresponding feelings of reverence – although angels would veil their faces in these circumstances. We also sin when we use forms of thanksgiving without gratitude, or those of humility and confession without any due sense of our unworthiness, or make petitions without any desire for the blessings we ask. Even sincere Christians must acknowledge that this evil often affects their prayers, and when, in places of public worship, multitudes repeat solemn forms of devotion – or profess to unite with those who utter them – without the corresponding emotions, the service is little better than mockery.
(2.) Reverence.
God is infinitely exalted: infinite in His holiness as well as in knowledge and power. He is to be reverenced by all who are round about Him. He declares that this holy fear must be the first element in all true religion. His people are described as those who fear His name. We must serve Him with reverence and godly fear. And when heaven is revealed to us in Scripture, its inhabitants are seen bowing before the throne. So we offend God when we address Him as we would a fellow creature, or with undue familiarity. The prayers recorded in the Bible are pervaded with reverence. Every Psalm is a prayer, whether of worship, of thanksgiving, of confession or of supplication. In many cases all these elements are intermingled. They relate to all circumstances in the inward and outward life of those who wrote them. They recognise God’s control over all events and over the hearts of men. They assume that He is ever near and ever watchful, sustaining the relation of a loving Father to His people. But, with all this, His infinite majesty is never forgotten.
(3.) Humility.
This includes (1) a due sense of our insignificance as creatures and (2) a proper grasp of our ill-deservedness and uncleanness in the sight of God as sinners. It is the opposite of self-righteousness, self-complacency and self-confidence. It is the spirit shown by Job when he placed his hand on his mouth and his mouth in the dust and said, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes”. It is the spirit shown by Isaiah when he said, “Woe is me . . . because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips”. And it was shown by the publican, who “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner”. Such language is often regarded as exaggerated or hypocritical. It is, however, appropriate. It expresses the state of mind which must be produced by a proper sense of our character as sinners in the sight of a just and holy God. Indeed no language can give adequate expression to that rational sense of sin which the people of God often experience.
(4.) Importunity.
This is so important that, on three different occasions, Jesus impressed its necessity on His disciples. This was one evident purpose of the account of the Syrophenician woman, who could not be prevented from crying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou son of David” (Mt 15:22); and also of the parable of the unjust judge, who said, “Because this widow troubleth me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me. And the Lord said, Hear what the unjust judge saith. And shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night unto Him, though He bear long with them? I tell you that He will avenge them speedily” (Lk 18:5-8). Again, in Luke 11:5-8, we read of the man who refused to give his friend bread, of whom Christ said, “Though he will not rise and give him, because he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will rise and give him as many [loaves] as he needeth”.
God deals with us as a wise benefactor. He requires that we should appreciate the value of the blessings for which we ask, and that we should show proper earnestness. If a man begs for his own life or for the life of someone dear to him, his importunity cannot be repressed; he will not take a refusal. If the life of the body is thus earnestly sought, can we expect that the life of the soul will be granted to those who do not seek it with importunate earnestness?
(5.) Submission.
Everyone who duly appreciates his relation to God will, no matter what his request, be disposed to say, “Lord, not my will, but Thine be done”. Even a child feels that it is appropriate to subject his will to his earthly father in all his requests. How much more should believers submit to the will of their Father in heaven. He alone knows what is best; granting their request might, in many cases, be their destruction. The Lord Jesus, in the garden of Gethsemane, set us an example in this matter that should never be forgotten.
6. Faith.
We must believe: (1) that God is; (2) that He is able to hear and answer our prayers; (3) that He is disposed to answer them; (4) that He certainly will answer them, if it is consistent with His own wise purposes and with our best good.
For this faith we have the most express assurances in the Bible. It is not only said, “Ask, and ye shall receive; seek and ye shall find,” but the Lord Jesus says explicitly, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do” (Jn 14:13). And again, “If two of you shall agree on earth, as touching anything that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of My Father which is in heaven” (Mt 18:19). All the promises of God are conditional. The condition, if not expressed, is implied. It cannot be supposed that, in governing the world or dispensing His gifts, God has subjected Himself to the short-sighted wisdom of men by promising, without condition, to do whatever they ask. No rational man could wish this to be the case. He would of his own accord supply the condition which must be understood from the nature of the case and from the Scriptures themselves. In 1 Jn 5:14, the condition elsewhere implied is expressed: “This is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He heareth us”.
The promise, however, gives the assurance that all prayers will be answered that are offered in faith, for things according to the will of God. The answer may indeed be given in a way we do not expect – as in the case of Paul when he prayed to be delivered from the thorn in the flesh. But the answer will be such as we would ourselves desire, if we were duly enlightened. More than this we need not wish. Lack of confidence in these precious promises of God and lack of faith in His readiness to hear are the greatest and commonest defects in the prayers of Christians. Every father desires the confidence of his children and is grieved by any evidence of distrust; and God as Father demands from His children the feelings which children ought to have to their earthly parents.
(7.) Prayers must be offered in the name of Christ.
He said to His disciples: “Hitherto have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive” (Jn 16:24). “I have chosen you . . . that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in My name, He may give it you” (15:16). “Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do” (14:13).
By the name of God is meant God Himself, and God as manifested in His relation to us. Both ideas are usually united. Thus to believe “in the name of the only begotten Son of God” is to believe that Christ is the Son of God and that, as such, He is manifested as the only Saviour of men. To act in the name of anyone often means to act by his authority and in the exercise of his power. Thus our Lord speaks of the works which He did in His “Father’s name”: that is, by the Father’s authority and in the exercise of His power. And it is often said that the Apostles wrought miracles in the name of Christ, meaning that the miracles were wrought by His authority and power.
But when someone asks a favour in the name of another, the simple meaning is for his sake. Regard for the person in whose name the favour is requested is relied on as the ground on which it is to be granted. Therefore when we are told to pray in the name of Christ, we are required to urge what Christ is and what He has done as the reason why we should be heard. We are not to trust to our own merits, or our own character, or even simply to God’s mercy; we are to plead the merits and worth of Christ. It is only in Him, in virtue of His mediation and worth, that, according to the gospel, any blessing is conferred on the apostate children of men.