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Sins of Omission: Neglect of Prayer—The Respectable Sin and the Call to Return · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome back to Reform Thinking. It is good to have you with us
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  again. Yes, glad to be here.
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  If you are new here, let me give you the quick rundown of what we
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  do. We take a stack of serious
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  theological sources. Essays, commentaries, the heavy
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  stuff that usually collects dust on a shelf.
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  Why we crack them open. We analyze them to find the
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  Nuggets of truth that actually matter for your daily life.
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  We aren't here to just skim the surface or give you a
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  motivational quote. No, we want to get to the bottom
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  of what these texts are saying and, more crucially, what they
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  demand of us. And the goal is never just data
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  entry for your brain. It is about renovation.
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  We want to understand the theology so that it reshapes how
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  we live before the face of God. I love that renovation.
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  That sounds painful, but necessary.
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  It usually is. So today's topic is one that I
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  think is going to make a lot of us squirm in our seats a little
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  bit. I know it made me squirm while I
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  was prepping for this deep dive. I think it will challenge all of
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  us. We are used to talking about
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  what we might call noisy sins. Noisy sins.
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  You know, the scandals, the stuff that makes the headlines,
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  the big moral failures that get people removed from ministry, or
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  the stuff that the neighbors whisper about.
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  Ah, I see. Embezzlement, adultery, public
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  outbursts of anger, the loud stuff.
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  Sure, the sins of Commission that are obvious to everyone.
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  Right, but the sources we are looking at today are focused on
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  something much quieter. They call it a respectable sin.
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  That is an interesting phrase. It is the kind of transgression
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  that wears a nice suit, sits politely in the Pew every
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  Sunday, smiles at the greeter, and nobody really notices it.
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  It flies completely under the radar.
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  And yet, as we will see, the Bible treats it with terrifying
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  seriousness. We're talking about the sin of
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  OM, and specifically the sin of prayerlessness.
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  A very heavy topic. And I have to say, looking at
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  these sources, one comes from a collection of essays on sins of
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  omission, and the other is a set of homolytical notes titled The
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  Treason of Silence. Those are strong titles.
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  They are, and this isn't about forgetting to say grace before
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  you eat a sandwich. No, it certainly is not.
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  When we talk about prayerlessness in this context,
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  we need to be very clear about our definitions.
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  Let's lay that out. We are not talking about a dry
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  season or just feeling a bit distracted.
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  The sources define this as a moral failure.
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  One source uses the term practical atheism, which is a
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  very heavy label. Whoa.
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  Let's pause on that practical atheism that feels aggressive.
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  I mean, if I miss my quiet time, am I really an atheist?
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  I still believe God exists. I'm not burning my Bible.
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  It is aggressive, isn't it? But think about what the word
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  practical means. There it refers to practice
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  praxis action. OK.
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  So it is about how we operate. Yes, it essentially means that
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  while we might profess that God exists with our lips, we have
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  the right confession. We signed the statement of
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  faith. We are living our daily lives,
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  our Tuesday mornings and Thursday afternoons, as if He is
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  unnecessary. So it is a functional denial.
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  Precisely, it is functional self-sufficiency, and that is
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  why the sources argue this is so dangerous.
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  Because it is hidden. Right.
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  It is distinct from the sins that scandalize the church
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  because it is invisible to other people.
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  You can be a practical atheist and still be a Deacon or an
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  elder. That is a scary thought.
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  But as we unpack this, we are going to see that it is actually
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  an offense against the first commandment.
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  It is a refusal to trust God and a determination to lean on our
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  own understanding. That hits home.
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  It is the idea that I can captain my own ship from Monday
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  to Saturday and then maybe sight God on board for an hour on
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  Sunday. That is the mindset we are
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  dissecting today. So our mission for this deep
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  dive is to move past the typical guilt trip.
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  I think we have all heard the sermons that just make you feel
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  bad for not praying 3 hours a day.
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  Day like Martin Luther. We definitely want to avoid just
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  piling on guilt. We want to understand the
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  theology behind why we do not pray, why Scripture calls it an
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  offense, and this is the best part, how the gospel provides
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  the remedy. The remedy is crucial.
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  We are just going to leave you in the pit of guilt.
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  We are going to look at how Christ's act of obedience solves
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  this. That is the key.
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  If we just stay on the law, we are crushed.
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  But if we move to the gospel, we find the strength to change.
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  OK, let's dive into this. We need to start by defining
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  what we are actually talking about.
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  The first segment of our outline is defining the treason.
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  That word treason is strong, but it seems appropriate given the
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  texts. The sources start with a broad
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  biblical definition of a sin of omission.
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  Now help me out here. I usually think of sin as doing
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  something bad. Right, that is how most people
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  operate. We think of sin as
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  transgression, crossing a line you shouldn't cross.
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  Do not steal. Do not commit adultery.
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  Yes, those are sins of Commission.
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  You committed an act. But there is another category.
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  There is and the classic text for this is James 4.17.
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  Do you have that in front of you?
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  I do it says whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to
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  do it, for him it is sin. This is a paradigm shift for a
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  lot of people. James is telling us that the
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  moral life is not just about avoiding vices.
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  It is about pursuing commanded duties, yes.
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  It is about doing the good that God requires.
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  It brings to mind the Westminster Shorter Catechism.
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  I know we love our catechisms here.
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  I vaguely remember memorizing this as a kid, but I probably
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  didn't understand it. Doesn't it define sin in two
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  ways? It does.
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  Question 14 asks what is sin? And the answer is, sin is any
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  want of conformity unto or transgression of the law of God.
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  Want of conformity? That sounds like Old English for
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  I want something. It does sound like that, doesn't
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  it? But want there means lack a
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  deficit. OK, a lack of.
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  Conformity. Think of a mold.
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  If you pour bronze into a mold to make a statue, but you do not
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  pour enough metal, the statue has a want of conformity.
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  It does not fill the shape. That is an excellent image.
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  So sin isn't just spilling the metal outside the mold, it is
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  failing to fill the mold up. Spot on.
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  It is failing to meet a standard.
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  So let's apply this. You can be a person who never
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  robs bank, never cheats on your taxes, is faithful to your
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  spouse, and never kicks a puppy. You have avoided all the big
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  transgressions. And yet, if you are not
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  rendering to God the worship and dependency commands, you are
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  living in sin. You are failing to conform to
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  the image of a dependent child of God.
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  So a man can be morally upright in the eyes of his neighbors, a
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  good guy, but living in disobedience because he refuses
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  to ask for God's help. That is what the sources argue.
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  The moral life includes the pursuit of God.
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  If you are ignoring God, you are not neutral, you are in
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  rebellion. This brings us to the anchor
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  text for this entire discussion. Both sources rely heavily on a
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  verse from the Old Testament, First Samuel 12.23.
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  This is such a pivotal moment in redemptive history.
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  Set the scene for us. Why is this verse so
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  significant? To really grasp the weight of
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  this, we have to look at the context.
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  This is the transition from the period of the judges to the
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  monarchy. The people of Israel have
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  demanded a king. Right.
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  They wanted to be like all the other nations, give us a king to
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  fight our battles. They wanted the cool armor and
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  the standing army. Which was in itself a rejection
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  of God as their king. God explicitly tells Samuel,
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  They haven't rejected you, Samuel, they have rejected me.
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  It was a failure of the covenant.
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  They were saying God's direct rule isn't enough, we need a
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  human strongman. So God grants their request in
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  judgement and gives them Saul. So the people are in rebellion.
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  They have insulted God. Yes, and here is Samuel the
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  prophet and Judge, the mediator for the people.
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  He is old, he is tired and he has just been effectively fired
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  by the people. You might think Samuel would
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  have every right to wash his hands of them.
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  You wanted a king. Fine.
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  Go ask Saul for help. I am retiring to the coast.
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  That would be the natural human reaction.
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  But look at what Samuel says in verse 23.
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  Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord by ceasing
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  to pray for you. By ceasing to pray.
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  The linguistic analysis in The Treason of Silent Source is
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  really helpful here. It breaks down the Hebrew.
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  The verb for sin is chatta, which is the standard word for
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  missing the mark or offending God.
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  OK, Chatta. But it is combined with
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  Menschedal. Menschedal.
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  What does that mean? It means by ceasing or from
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  ceasing. It indicates that the sin is
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  found in the stopping of the action.
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  And that phrase, far be it from me, chilly Lily, is an
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  expression of moral abhorrence. It is like saying God forbid
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  yes. Yes, it would be detestable for
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  me to do this. So the text is categorizing the
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  simple act of stopping prayer as a moral abomination.
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  It is not just a probably should keep praying because he was
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  nice. It is.
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  It would be treason against Yahweh for me to stop.
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  Correct. It categorizes the cessation of
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  prayer as treason. Samuel realizes that his role as
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  a mediator, which points us to Christ, by the way, requires
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  intercession. To stop interceding is to
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  abandon his post. It is a soldier walking away
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  from the watchtower. That is a scary thought for
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  those of us who go days without really praying.
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  But I want to clarify something because I can hear the listener
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  thinking and honestly I am thinking it too.
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  What is that? OK, I missed my quiet time this
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  morning because the baby was screaming and the toast burned.
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  Am I committing treason? Am IA traitor to the Crown?
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  That is a vital question. We must not crush the bruised
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  Reed. Right, because if the standard
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  is pray every second or you are a traitor, we are all doomed.
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  The sources make a crucial distinction between neglect and
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  weakness. One of our sources uses the
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  analogy of a soldier and a radio, which I think is
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  brilliant. I loved this analogy.
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  Walk us through it. Imagine a soldier on the
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  battlefield. He knows he is outnumbered.
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  He knows he needs to contact his commander for air support to
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  survive. OK, I can picture that it is
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  chaos. Now imagine he is running to the
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  radio, but the ground is muddy. He trips, he's exhausted.
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  There is mud in his eyes, he is under fire.
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  He stumbles to the radio. He grabs the handset, but he is
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  out of breath and maybe he garbles the message.
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  Commander help here. That is weakness.
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  That is weakness. That is what Jesus meant in
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  Matthew 26 when He said the Spirit is willing but the flesh
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  is weak. It is the child stumbling over
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  their words while trying to talk to their Father.
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  God does not despise that. He sees the intent of the heart.
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  So that is the distracted prayer or the short tired prayer at the
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  end of a long day when you fall asleep mid sentence.
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  Exactly. Or I should say precisely.
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  But now imagine a different soldier.
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  This soldier looks at the radio, decides he doesn't need air
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  support, thinks he can handle the battle on his own, and
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  throws the radio into the bushes.
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  Or he just leaves it in his pack because he can't be bothered to
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  take it out. That is neglect.
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  It is a rebellion. Yes, that is a completely
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  different heart posture. That distinction changes
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  everything. Neglect is a settled posture.
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  It is deciding effectively that you don't need to make the call.
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  Right. It is a coolness of heart.
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  It is when days turn into weeks and there is no real communion.
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  And this is the kicker. There is no real grief over it.
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  The soldier who trips is desperate to get to the radio.
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  The soldier who neglects it is indifferent.
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  So we are talking about a heart posture here.
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  The treason is in the indifference.
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  That leads us right into segment 2, the anatomy of
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  prayerlessness. We touched on practical atheism
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  earlier, but let's go deeper to do that.
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  Why do we actually stop praying? The sources suggest it is
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  because we are functioning as if God is unnecessary.
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  It is the idol of self-sufficiency.
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  You see, prayer is the most basic expression of faith.
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  Faith is dependence. It is looking outside of
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  yourself for what you need. Right when we stop praying, we
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  are declaring that we are self-contained units.
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  We are saying I have enough wisdom for my job.
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  I have enough patience for my kids.
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  I have enough strength for this trial.
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  Which is a lie. I definitely do not have enough
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  patience for my kids most days. It is a massive lie, yeah, but
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  we live it. It violates Proverbs 3.5.
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  Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your
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  own understanding. Prayerlessness is the act of
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  leaning entirely on your own understanding.
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  The sources list some respectable excuses we used to
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  cover this up. I want to run through these
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  because I think we have all used them.
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  The first one is the classic. I am too busy.
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  I am too busy. It sounds so responsible,
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  doesn't it? It sounds like we are important
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  people doing important things. But the author and the source
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  material tears this way, he says.
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  Busyness is not a justification, it is a moral revelation.
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  A. Moral revelation that stinks.
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  It reveals what we prize. We make time for what we love.
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  We make time for what we think is essential.
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  Let me ask you this. If you had a meeting with the
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  president of the United States or whoever you admire most in
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  the world, and they said I have 15 minutes for you at 6:00 AM,
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  would you miss it because you had to do laundry?
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  No way I would be there at 5:30. Precisely.
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  You wouldn't say sorry, Mr. President, I am just too
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  swamped. So if we skip prayer, it is
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  because we do not value the audience with the King of Kings
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  as much as we value the other thing.
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  Or we value the activity of the world more.
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  The source references Martha and Mary from Luke 10.
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  Yes. Martha was busy with
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  preparations. She wasn't out partying.
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  She was doing good work. She's practically running a
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  catering business for Jesus, But Jesus said Mary chose the better
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  portion by sitting at his feet. We often use our activities for
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  God as an excuse to avoid God. That is a massive trap for
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  anyone in ministry or charity work.
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  It really is the second excuses. I do not feel like it.
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  This is where we let our appetites rule our obedience.
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  We live in a culture that worships authenticity, right?
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  And we define authenticity as doing what I feel like doing.
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  So we think if I pray when I don't feel like it, I am being a
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  hypocrite. Right, it feels fake.
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  But apply that logic to anything else.
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  Since when does a soldier only salute when he feels like it?
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  Since when does a faithful husband only come home when he
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  feels like it? He doesn't.
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  The sources argued that we must pray until we pray.
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  The Puritans used to say that we don't wait for the feeling, we
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  pray to get the feeling. It is the discipline that
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  creates the desire. Eventually.
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  It is like the gym, you never want to go, but once you start
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  lifting the endorphins kick in. That is a great comparison.
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  If you wait until you feel incredibly spiritual to pray,
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  you will almost never pray. You have to drag your flesh to
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  the throne of grace. OK, the third excuse.
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  God already knows. I hear this one a lot in
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  theological circles, actually. God is sovereign.
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  He knows everything. So why do I need to tell?
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  This is a theological cover for autonomy.
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  It is using a high doctrine of God, his omniscience, to excuse
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  a low practice of obedience. Because it sounds super
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  spiritual to say. Yes, but it is flawed.
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  Yes, God knows, Matthew 6 says the Father knows what you need
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  before you ask. But God's omniscience is meant
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  to give us confidence that he understands us, not permission
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  to ignore him. So we do not pray to inform God.
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  I am not breaking news to him. Hey God, by the way, I lost my
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  job. He knows.
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  You are not a reporter, you are a child.
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  We do not pray to inform God, we pray to depend on Him.
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  And the source makes a great point here.
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  God commands us to ask. If you say I won't ask because
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  He knows you are actually just disobeying a direct order.
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  It changes the dynamic from transferring information to
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  building relationships. Spot on.
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  Now there is a specific critique in the Treason of Silence source
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  regarding the modern church, and I want to push back on this a
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  little bit, or at least play devil's advocate.
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  The source talks about the Seeker sensitive movement and
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  says that modern evangelicalism often replaces prayer with human
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  ingenuity. This is the spicy part of the
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  source material. It is.
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  It feels a bit like an old man yelling at a cloud.
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  Is it really fair to say that churches that use demographics
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  and lighting are abandoning prayer?
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  Can't you have both? You can't have both in theory,
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  but the source is identifying A tendency adrift.
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  It calls this the corporate version of practical atheism.
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  How does that look corporately? When a church relies primarily
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  on demographic studies, polished programming, lighting, fog
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  machines, and charisma to build the church, rather than
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  agonizing prevailing prayer, it is committing idolatry.
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  The idolatry of pragmatism, yes. We value what works, what fills
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  the seats over what God commands.
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  If you can fill a room with 5000 people using marketing
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  techniques, you might be tempted to think, why do we need a
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  prayer meeting? No one comes to those anyway.
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  So we trade the work of the Holy Spirit for better marketing.
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  Essentially, the source calls it relying on the arm of the flesh,
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  and the result is a church that is a mile wide and an inch deep.
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  We might have crowds, but do we have holiness?
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  Do we have people who can withstand a storm?
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  Those things only come from the prayer closet, not the
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  boardroom. That makes sense.
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  It is not that lights are bad, it is that relying on lights to
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  do what only the Spirit can do is bad.
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  That is the distinction. That brings us to the
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  consequences Segment 3. What is the cost of this
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  silence? Because I think we often feel
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  like, well, I haven't prayed in a month and the sky hasn't
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  fallen. My life is still going OK, but
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  the sources argue the damage is happening underneath the
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  surface. It is like termites in a house.
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  You don't see the damage immediately.
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  The walls look fine, but the structure is being eaten away.
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  The first personal consequence mentioned is temptation.
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  Jesus draws a Direct Line in Gethsemane.
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  Watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation.
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  Notice he doesn't say watch and pray that you don't sin.
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  He says that you don't enter into temptation.
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  So prayer is the fortification. It keeps us out of the danger
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  zone. It is the perimeter fence.
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  Yeah. Prayerlessness leaves the gate
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  open. When we are not praying, we are
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  not spiritually vigilant. We are walking through a
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  minefield with our eyes closed. We are unwatched full.
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  And then when we fall into sin, when the mind goes off, we
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  wonder why? How did this happen?
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  I am a good person. Well, you weren't watching.
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  Precisely. You were asleep on guard duty.
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  Another consequence is anxiety. I feel like we are living in the
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  age of anxiety. We are, and Philippians 4.6 to 7
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  gives us the alternative. Do not be anxious about
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  anything, but in everything by prayer.
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  Let your request be made known to God.
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  The text sets up a binary choice.
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  You can have anxiety or you can have prayer.
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  If you don't cast your cares on God, you have to carry them
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  yourself. And we weren't designed to carry
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  that weight. We are finite creatures.
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  When we try to play God by carrying the weight of the
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  world, or even just the weight of our own family's future, we
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  crumble. We become reactive, irritable,
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  snappy. The reactive spirit that
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  resonates. You know that feeling when you
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  are just on edge all the time? Like a rubber band pull too
• 18:26
  tight. Often that is a symptom of
• 18:28
  prayerlessness. You are carrying burdens that
• 18:31
  should have been offloaded to the Father.
• 18:33
  You are trying to be the outles of your own life.
• 18:35
  And then there is stunted sanctification.
• 18:38
  I thought this is interesting, the idea that without prayer,
• 18:41
  holiness becomes mechanical. Yes, without communion, we start
• 18:46
  to manage sin rather than mortify it.
• 18:49
  We might stop doing the bad behavior because of willpower or
• 18:52
  social pressure. I won't yell at my kids because
• 18:54
  the neighbors will hear, but the heart hasn't changed.
• 18:58
  It is behavior modification, right?
• 19:00
  Prayer brings us into the light of God's holiness.
• 19:03
  It is in that light that sin looks ugly and Christ looks
• 19:07
  beautiful. When you see Christ's beauty,
• 19:09
  you want to be holy. Without that you are just white
• 19:12
  knuckling it. And corporately we touched on
• 19:15
  the church being a business, but the source mentions A fragmented
• 19:18
  church. If we aren't praying for each
• 19:20
  other, we aren't bearing one another's burdens.
• 19:22
  We might share a building, sit in the same pews, drink the same
• 19:25
  coffee, but we are spiritually isolated.
• 19:28
  We are alone together. Prayer is the connective tissue
• 19:31
  of the body of Christ. When Samuel said, far be it for
• 19:34
  me to cease praying for you, he was maintaining the bond of the
• 19:36
  covenant people. A prayerless church is a
• 19:39
  collection of individuals, not a body.
• 19:41
  So the verdict from the sources is that this state is spiritual
• 19:45
  fragility. We think we are free because we
• 19:48
  aren't bound by these religious duties, but we are actually just
• 19:51
  weak. It is the treason of silence.
• 19:54
  We have declared independence from the King and in doing so we
• 19:58
  have cut ourselves off from the supply line.
• 20:00
  OK, this is the part where the listener might be feeling pretty
• 20:03
  heavy. I know I am.
• 20:04
  It is easy to look at this and think I have failed.
• 20:07
  I am that soldier who threw away the radio.
• 20:09
  I am the traitor. We all feel that weight.
• 20:11
  But segment 4 is the gospel remedy, and this is where
• 20:15
  Reformed theology really shines, I think.
• 20:18
  We don't just leave you in the dumpster.
• 20:19
  No, never. The law has done its work.
• 20:22
  The first use of the law is to crush our self-sufficiency.
• 20:25
  It reveals our inability. If you feel the weight of this
• 20:28
  discussion, that is good. It means the law is showing you
• 20:31
  that you cannot do this on your own.
• 20:33
  But we don't stay there. We pivot to Christ.
• 20:35
  So let's talk about the remedy. The sources bring up a
• 20:38
  theological concept called Christ's active obedience.
• 20:41
  Now I admit, sometimes theological terms can feel dry.
• 20:44
  Can you break that down? Why is it active?
• 20:46
  This is the beautiful doctrine we often focus on.
• 20:48
  Christ's passive obedience, his suffering and death on the
• 20:51
  cross, where he paid the penalty for our sins.
• 20:54
  That washes us clean. But Jesus didn't just come to
• 20:57
  die. He lived for 33 years.
• 21:00
  Why? To teach.
• 21:02
  To do miracles. Yes, but theologically he lived
• 21:05
  to fulfill the law. He had to live the perfect life
• 21:08
  that Adam failed to live and that we failed to live.
• 21:11
  That is his act of obedience. He actively obeyed every command
• 21:15
  of God. So when we look at the sin of
• 21:17
  prayerlessness, we have to look at Jesus.
• 21:19
  Did he ever commit the sin of omission regarding prayer?
• 21:21
  Never. Mark 1.35 says he rose early
• 21:25
  while it was still dark, and went to a desolate place to
• 21:28
  pray. He prayed before he chose the
• 21:29
  disciples. He prayed at the
• 21:31
  Transfiguration. He prayed in Gethsemane when
• 21:33
  everyone else was asleep. He was the faithful soldier who
• 21:35
  never dropped the radio. Even when he was sweating blood,
• 21:38
  he kept the line open. Not my will, but yours be done.
• 21:41
  And the beauty of the Gospel is that his perfect prayer life is
• 21:44
  credited to us. That is imputation.
• 21:47
  Think of it like a bank account. You have a massive debt of
• 21:50
  prayerlessness, trillions of dollars in debt.
• 21:53
  Christ pays that debt on the cross.
• 21:56
  But then he transfers the billions of dollars of his
• 22:00
  perfect righteousness into your account.
• 22:02
  So when God looks at me. When God looks at the believer,
• 22:06
  he doesn't see your spotted, sporadic, distracted prayer
• 22:09
  record. He sees the perfect, unceasing
• 22:11
  intercession of Jesus Christ. We are clothed in His
• 22:14
  righteousness. That is mind blowing.
• 22:16
  So I do not start praying to get accepted.
• 22:18
  I am already accepted because of his prayer life.
• 22:20
  That takes the pressure off, it moves it from earning to re
• 22:23
  speeding. You aren't praying to get God to
• 22:25
  like you. He loves you because of Christ.
• 22:27
  But there is was also the comfort of his current work.
• 22:30
  Hebrews 7.25. He always lives to make
• 22:33
  intercession. This is one of those comforting
• 22:35
  verses in the Bible right now, at this very moment, while we
• 22:38
  are recording this and while our listeners are driving or doing
• 22:40
  dishes, Jesus Christ is at the right hand of the Father.
• 22:43
  And what is he doing? He's.
• 22:45
  Praying for us. He is praying for us when we are
• 22:48
  too weak to pray or I am too sinful and ashamed to pray.
• 22:52
  He is doing it for me. So even when I am silent, he is
• 22:56
  speaking. Exactly.
• 22:57
  Or to put it another way, his prayers are holding you when
• 23:01
  your prayers fail. The source puts it this way.
• 23:04
  When we are too weak to speak, Christ is speaking for us.
• 23:08
  We have an advocate. And that changes how we approach
• 23:11
  the throne of grace. Hebrews 4.1 scene.
• 23:14
  We often think of God's throne as a throne of judgement.
• 23:17
  I haven't prayed in three weeks. I can't go there.
• 23:19
  He is going to be angry. He's going to look at me with
• 23:22
  disappointment. But because of the blood of
• 23:24
  Jesus, it is a throne of grace. We are invited to draw near with
• 23:27
  confidence. Not confidence in our
• 23:29
  performance. No confidence in our high
• 23:31
  priest. Confidence that the door is
• 23:33
  unlocked because he has the key. So the remedy for prayerlessness
• 23:37
  isn't try harder, do better. Pull yourself up by your
• 23:40
  bootstraps. It is draw near.
• 23:41
  It is coming back to the one who has already secured.
• 23:43
  You're welcome. You don't clean yourself up to
• 23:45
  take a bath. You take a bath to get clean.
• 23:47
  You don't fix your prayer life to come to God.
• 23:49
  You come to God to fix your prayer life.
• 23:51
  That is striking, and once we have that gospel basis that we
• 23:55
  are accepted that Christ is praying for us, we can finally
• 23:58
  talk about practical steps. We aren't doing this to earn
• 24:01
  salvation, but as a response of gratitude.
• 24:04
  Segment 5 is practical reformation.
• 24:07
  Right, because grace doesn't mean we just stay on the couch.
• 24:10
  Grace energizes us, The sources suggest a rule of life.
• 24:15
  A rule of life sounds very monastic.
• 24:17
  It sounds like I need to buy a robe and move to the desert.
• 24:19
  It does sound intense, but it is just a structure.
• 24:23
  Think of it like a trellis for a vine.
• 24:25
  If a vine doesn't have a trellis, it grows along the
• 24:27
  ground and gets muddy and rotted, the trellis lifted up
• 24:30
  towards the sun. The source argues against the
• 24:33
  idea that discipline kills the Spirit.
• 24:35
  You hear people say I want my prayer to be spontaneous and
• 24:38
  authentic. If I schedule it, it is fake.
• 24:40
  But if you only pray when it is spontaneous, you will rarely
• 24:43
  pray. Structure aids freedom.
• 24:46
  Does a musician play beautifully by being spontaneous?
• 24:49
  No, they practice scales for hours so that they can be
• 24:51
  spontaneous during the concert. That is a great point.
• 24:53
  The sources outline 4 pillars of this rule.
• 24:56
  The 1st is. Fixed set appointments.
• 24:58
  Daniel prayed 3 times a day. David said morning, noon and
• 25:02
  night. I complain and moan.
• 25:04
  This isn't legalism, it is an anchor.
• 25:06
  If you don't schedule it, everything else will crowd it
• 25:09
  out. The tyranny of the urgent is
• 25:11
  real. So put it in the calendar. 6
• 25:14
  point AM or the commute? Yes, treat it like a doctor's
• 25:18
  appointment. You don't miss those.
• 25:19
  The second is fed. This addresses the problem of I
• 25:23
  do not know what to say. I sit down to pray and my mind
• 25:26
  goes blank. Or we just pray in self-centered
• 25:29
  circles. Lord bless me, bless my food to
• 25:31
  help me with this. It gets boring.
• 25:33
  The source suggests praying scripture.
• 25:34
  Use the Psalms. How does that work practically?
• 25:37
  Do I just? Read it, read a line, and then
• 25:39
  turn it into a prayer. If the Psalm says the Lord is my
• 25:42
  shepherd, you pray. Lord, thank you for being my
• 25:43
  shepherd. Shepherd me today in this
• 25:45
  difficult meeting. Use the Lord's Prayer as a
• 25:48
  template. When you pray the Bible, you are
• 25:50
  speaking God's language back to Him.
• 25:52
  It expands your vocabulary. I love that it takes the
• 25:54
  pressure off me to be creative. I can just riff on what God has
• 25:57
  already said. The third pillar is focused.
• 26:00
  Watch and pray. We live in the age of
• 26:03
  distraction. The phone is the enemy of
• 26:05
  prayer. The phone is the enemy of
• 26:06
  everything, honestly. True, but the source suggests
• 26:09
  fighting distraction by turning it into petition.
• 26:13
  This is a great practical tip if you are praying and suddenly you
• 26:17
  think, oh I need to e-mail Bob. Don't just stop and feel guilty.
• 26:20
  Don't try to suppress the thought.
• 26:22
  What? Do I do?
• 26:23
  Pray for Bob. Lord, help me with that e-mail
• 26:26
  to Bob. Give me wisdom.
• 26:28
  Turn the distraction into a conversation with God.
• 26:32
  Then move back to your prayer. That is really helpful.
• 26:34
  It integrates the distraction rather than fighting it, and the
• 26:37
  4th is shared. Corporate and family prayer.
• 26:41
  We're not meant to do this alone, and the source makes a
• 26:43
  specific note here for fathers. Yes, calling out the dads.
• 26:47
  As heads of households, there is a duty to lead family prayer.
• 26:50
  It doesn't have to be a long sermon.
• 26:52
  You don't have to be a theologian, just gathering the
• 26:54
  family, reading a verse and praying.
• 26:57
  It sets a culture of dependence in the home.
• 26:59
  It shows your kids that Dad needs God too.
• 27:02
  Now, before we wrap up the practical section, we need to
• 27:05
  clarify something. One of the sources explicitly
• 27:08
  warns against mysticism or listening prayer.
• 27:11
  Yes, this is vital in our reformed context.
• 27:14
  There is a trend today to sit in silence and wait for a still
• 27:18
  small voice or a new revelation to try to empty the mind.
• 27:22
  Like Eastern meditation? Or just a desire for direct
• 27:25
  revelation. The sources reject this.
• 27:27
  We believe God speaks to us through His Word, the Bible, and
• 27:30
  we speak to Him in prayer. We are not seeking new
• 27:33
  information or prophecies. We have the completed Canon in
• 27:36
  scripture. We are responding to the
• 27:38
  information He has already given.
• 27:40
  Reformed prayer is dialogical. God speaks in Scripture.
• 27:43
  We answer in prayer. It is not a mystical quest for
• 27:46
  impressions. That is a crucial guardrail.
• 27:49
  We aren't emptying our minds. We are filling them with
• 27:51
  Scripture and responding precisely well.
• 27:53
  We have covered a lot of ground in this deep dive.
• 27:55
  We have defined the treason of silence, looked at the ugly
• 27:58
  roots of practical atheism, seen the terrifying consequences.
• 28:02
  But most wonderfully, we've seen the beautiful remedy in Christ.
• 28:05
  It really comes back to First Samuel 12.23.
• 28:08
  Far be it from me that I should sin against the Lord.
• 28:11
  It is a call to realize that prayer is not optional.
• 28:14
  It is the lifeline of the Christian.
• 28:16
  And the final provocative thought from the sources is this
• 28:19
  challenge. And I want to leave the listener
• 28:20
  with this. If you believe you were too busy
• 28:23
  to pray, you are effectively saying you are capable of
• 28:26
  handling your life without God. You are telling the Creator of
• 28:30
  the universe I have got this. And the question is, what
• 28:34
  disaster must happen to prove to you that you are not
• 28:36
  self-sufficient? Do you really want to wait for
• 28:39
  the crash to realize you need the pilot?
• 28:42
  That is a sobering question, so let's not wait for the crash.
• 28:45
  The best way to repent of prayerlessness isn't to wallow
• 28:48
  in guilt for the next hour. It is to use the simplest act of
• 28:52
  repentance available. Pray right now, turn off this
• 28:55
  audio and talk to your Father. He is waiting, and because of
• 28:58
  Christ the door is open. Thanks for joining us on this
• 29:00
  deep dive into reformed thinking.
• 29:02
  We will see you next time. Grace and peace.