The Shorter Catechism begins its answer to the above question, with the words: “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God” (Ans 98). Psalm 62:8 is given as a proof text and, in it, the words, “pour out your heart before Him”, are emphasised. So we might say that prayer is a pouring out of our heart before God – not merely a pouring out of words before Him, though words are what we use to express our desires, when we can put them into words. But Paul states, “We know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Rom 8:26). David Brown, commenting on Romans, explains: “As we struggle to express in articulate language the desires of our hearts, and find that our deepest emotions are the most inexpressible, we ‘groan’ under this felt inability. But not in vain are these groanings. For the ‘Spirit Himself’ is in them, giving to the emotions which Himself has kindled the only language of which they are capable.”
The words that we offer up in prayer are to come from the heart; they ought to be sincere. So if they are to be in any degree acceptable to God, they must come from a renewed heart – a heart where the Holy Spirit has begun to work, the heart of someone who has begun to look by faith to Christ. Especially in private prayer, it does not matter if the desires are well expressed; God understands what is meant. Yet prayer must be reverent; we are seeking to come before a holy God. And it is impossible for others present to join with the petitions offered up in public prayer unless these petitions are expressed sufficiently clearly.
How many expressions of desire we find, for instance, in the Book of Psalms! We see David thus pouring out his heart before God: “Lord, all my desire is before Thee” (Ps 38:9). He has been confessing: “Mine iniquities are gone over mine head: as an heavy burden they are too heavy for me”. His sin, he knows, was great; he needs to be forgiven; he needs to be made holy. And these needs are beyond his power to supply. So he must offer up his desires for these blessings to the only One who can answer his cries. Yet David, at the close of the Psalm, can address God thus: “Make haste to help me, O Lord my salvation”. How good it is for sinners to know their way to the throne of grace and address their petitions to the King of kings! They will receive an answer in peace, in the Lord’s time. David certainly received an answer to his desires for forgiveness and holiness. All his sins were forgiven, even the most serious of them; and as his soul left this world, it was made perfectly holy and completely fit to enter heaven. This will be true of all who look to Christ. They have learnt where to go with their desires for salvation.
When the blind man sitting at the wayside near Jericho knew that Jesus was passing by, he cried out earnestly: “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me” (Lk 18:38). He was recognising Jesus as the Messiah and asking Him for mercy – the undeserved gift of eyesight. Such healings were intended to be a picture of spiritual healing; the gift of bodily eyesight was intended to point sinners to the gift of spiritual eyesight, the power to look to Christ by faith for salvation. How appropriate for the spiritually blind to cry out earnestly: “Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me”. Unsaved sinners are on their way to a lost eternity, and they do not have the power to look to Christ by faith. Should they not seek earnestly and perseveringly to pour out their hearts in desire to the God who can save even the chief of sinners? And they are to do so in the name of the One who has promised, “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out” (Jn 6:37).
The Shorter Catechism points out, of course, that the pouring out of desires in prayer is to be done “in the name of Christ”. He is the “one Mediator between God and men” (1 Tim 2:5). By His sufferings unto death, He has purchased a fullness of blessings for sinners; we cannot begin to deserve any of them. It is He who makes intercession for His people in heaven, presenting their petitions before the Father on the basis of the merits of the work which He accomplished in this world. Accordingly Thomas Boston points out that we must depend “on Christ for access to God” and “for acceptance of our prayers” – for “there is no access for a sinful creature to God without a Mediator. Sin has set us at a distance from God, and has bolted the door of our access to Him, [so] that it is beyond our power, or that of any creature, to open it for us.” But Christ can open it, however secure sin has made the bolt on that door.
Boston stresses that to pray in the name of Christ “is not a bare faithless mentioning of His name in our prayers”, when “the words are said, but the faith is not exercised”. But it is “to pray at His command”. Boston notes that “Christ as God commands all men to pray, to offer that piece of natural duty to God”. Yet more is meant: “Christ as Mediator sends His own to His Father to ask supply of their wants and allows them to tell that He sent them”. So such a soul is to take “its encouragement to pray from Jesus Christ . . . ‘for we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities . . . but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin’” (Heb 4:15).1 Yet everyone must be clear that, as Boston indicated, it is their duty to pray to God for the supply of all their needs, especially those that affect their soul.
The Catechism also insists that what we desire in prayer must be “things agreeable to [God’s] will”. It would be blasphemous to ask in prayer for anything that we know to be forbidden in His Word, where His will for our obedience is revealed. The proof text quoted here includes the words, “If we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us” (1 Jn 5:14). But what if we ask God for what is not sinful and yet is not according to His eternal purpose? Clearly we cannot know that purpose until it is fulfilled in providence, but in such matters we do well to add the words, “if it be Thy will”. Assuming the words are sincere, to use them is to respect God’s sovereignty in all things.
Yet God does not just dismiss such requests; 1 John 5:14 tells us that He hears them. When Paul asked for the removal of the “thorn” in his flesh, God did not grant his request, but He gave the Apostle something better: God blessed him with the assurance, “My grace is sufficient for thee: for My strength is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor 12:9). God’s children pour out their desires before Him, and He gives them what is best for them and what is most for His own glory.
Our prayers, the Catechism teaches, should also include two further elements: “confession of our sins” and “thankful acknowledgement of His mercies”. First, confession of sin. It is as sinners that we come before God in prayer. To confess our sins to Him is to acknowledge that we realise that they deserve nothing from Him except eternal punishment. Yet we are to come to God recognising that He is merciful, that He is ready to show kindness in every conceivable way in spite of our sins, and that He “is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20).
Second, thankfulness for His mercies. How many acts of kindness has God shown each of us? They are beyond counting, and we should express thankfulness for all such acts that we recognise, especially spiritual mercies. We deserve none of them; that is true of the past and it is true of the blessings we desire at present. Let us then be encouraged to pour out our desires before God and act according to the exhortation, “O give thanks unto the Lord; for He is good: for His mercy endureth for ever” (Ps 106:1).
1The quotations in the two preceding paragraphs are from: Thomas Boston, Works, vol 1, Aberdeen, 1848, pp 528-30.