Most mornings, it seems, I forget how to pray. Or I at least seem to forget what prayer really is — what’s really happening in these quiet moments before an open Bible and a hearing God. I may stumble through my thanksgivings and petitions, but apart from some daily remembering, my prayers, like hapless pilgrims in a Bunyan allegory, tend to fall into the slough of distraction, or get locked in the castle of discouragement, or fall asleep on the enchanted ground.

In his book on prayer, Tim Keller writes of the need to “take ourselves in hand and wake ourselves up to the magnitude of what is going to happen” as we pray (Prayer, 127). Before unthinkingly mumbling “Heavenly Father” or “Lord,” pause, take your soul in hand, and remember the wonder of prayer.

And one of the best ways we can remember is by listening to what Jesus himself says about prayer. So much of our Lord’s teaching on prayer is designed to help us “always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1). In the Gospels, Jesus comes to pray-ers like us — discouraged, distracted, willing in spirit but weak in flesh — and he gives us a heart to pray. Of the many reminders we could mention, consider four representative lessons.

1. We come to a Father.

Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven . . .” (Matthew 6:9)

Michael Reeves notes how prone we can be to treat prayer “as an abstract activity, a ‘thing to do,’” rather than remembering “the one to whom [we’re] praying” (Enjoy Your Prayer Life, 30). Prayer easily becomes impersonal: “to pray” is to run down a list of names, sit or kneel in such and such place for so long, drive in the old familiar ruts of phrases said ten thousand times. But most fundamentally, prayer is not an abstract activity or a habit or even a spiritual discipline; prayer is a personal response to a personal God — a God whom Jesus told us to call Father.

The wonder of this word often escapes us; it would not have escaped the disciples. They had never called God Father before, except in the broadest sense (Exodus 4:22–23; Hosea 11:1). To address God as “our Father in heaven,” to mimic Jesus’s own affectionate “Abba” — this was astoundingly, wonderfully new. When those who trust in Jesus come to pray, we come to a Father.

“Our Father knows our inmost thought and need, yet still he loves to hear us unburden our souls before him.”

And what a Father he is. He knows our inmost thought and need, yet still he loves to hear us unburden our souls before him (Matthew 6:8, 32). His ear always open, his eye always upon us, he turns our ordinary rooms and closets into sanctuaries of communion (Matthew 6:6). He’s the archetype and fountain of all fatherly generosity, distributing good gifts with both hands (Matthew 7:9–11).

But perhaps the most heart-awakening words Jesus spoke about the Father are those in John 16:27: “The Father himself loves you.” “Here is something to say to ourselves every day,” Sinclair Ferguson writes of these five words. “They are simple words, but life-changing, peace-giving, poise-creating” — and, we might add, prayer-inspiring (Lessons from the Upper Room, 174).

2. Jesus perfects our prayers.

Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. (John 16:23)

Throughout his ministry, Jesus showed supreme patience with requests that others would have silenced. When the crowds hushed the blind and shouting Bartimaeus, Jesus called him over (Mark 10:47–49). When the disciples sought to send the Canaanite mother away, Jesus drew out her heart and healed her daughter (Matthew 15:21–28). When the desperate father cried, “If you can do anything . . .” Jesus rebuked his unbelief but still restored his boy (Mark 9:22–27). He took uncouth requests, he took imperfect, even halfway unbelieving prayers, and he passed them through the refining fires of his own loving heart.

And so he still does. Three times in the upper room, he told his disciples to pray “in my name” (John 14:13–14; 15:16; 16:23–24, 26). In my name: here is Jacob’s ladder, lifting our words to heaven; the key that opens wide our Father’s home; the robe that adorns our naked requests; the name of the King’s own Son, sealed with his blood and signed with his own resurrected hand.

So, as Charles Spurgeon writes,

The Lord Jesus Christ is always ready to take the most imperfect prayer and perfect it for us. If our prayers had to go up to heaven as they are, they would never succeed; but they find a friend on the way, and therefore they prosper.

“In Christ, our imperfect prayers gain a heavenly hearing.”

Because the Father loves his Son, and because he loves to honor the worth of his Son’s work (John 14:13), he also loves to hear and answer prayers shaped by the words of his Son (John 15:7) and sent in the name of his Son. In Christ, our imperfect prayers gain a heavenly hearing.

3. Struggle and resistance are normal.

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. (Luke 11:9)

Just because our prayers begin with “Our Father” and end with “in Jesus’s name” doesn’t mean all the words in the middle flow easily. Sometimes, even those awake to the wonder of prayer face discouraging difficulties: internal struggle, outward resistance, perhaps even a sense of divine silence. And while such difficulties can reflect something wrong within — a heart overgrown with worldly cares (Luke 8:14) or hiding unconfessed sin (Psalm 66:18) — Jesus’s teaching on prayer is striking for its realism.

“Ask, and it will be given to you” may sound straightforward enough on the surface: a simple cause followed by a sure effect. But in fact, these words follow Jesus’s story of a man who receives bread from his friend only “because of his impudence” — because the stubborn fellow wouldn’t go away (Luke 11:8). Sometimes, Jesus would have us know, prayer feels like asking and receiving no answer, like seeking and finding nothing, like knocking on the door of a friend who won’t open — until holy “impudence” prevails (Luke 11:9).

George Müller, the caretaker of orphans who told of far more answered prayers than most, learned from Jesus’s teaching,

Whilst I firmly believe that He will give me, in His own time, every shilling which I need [for the orphan houses]; yet I also know, that He delights in being earnestly entreated, and that He takes pleasure in the continuance in prayer, and in the importuning Him. (Answers to Prayer, 29)

God delights to be earnestly entreated (see also Matthew 9:37–38), even for gifts he loves to give. Often, then, struggle and resistance and unanswered prayers are no signs of something wrong, but invitations to press on, and every morning to take fresh heart to ask and seek again.

4. Persistence will bring an answer.

Everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. (Luke 11:10)

If you survey Jesus’s teaching on prayer, you will nowhere find him counseling us to expect little in prayer; you will frequently find him challenging us to expect much. No one who persists in asking the Father goes unanswered; no one who keeps seeking fails to find; no one who knocks and knocks at mercy’s door will be left outside forever (Luke 11:10). In God’s time, persistence will bring an answer.

Sometimes, of course, we do not receive the answer we hope for — our Father knows when the “fish” we want would really bite like a serpent (Luke 11:11). Other times, “in God’s time” feels far longer than “in my time,” as the persistent widow discovered in “her continual coming” (Luke 18:5). And sometimes, the answer arrives even after we’ve given up asking, as the old Zechariah apparently had lost hope for a son (Luke 1:13, 18). Either way, if an answer to some longed-for request has not yet come, and if we do not yet discern that God’s answer is no (as, for example, Paul did with his thorn, 2 Corinthians 12:8–9), then Jesus invites us to keep asking.

Müller, telling the story of how he once prayed for years for a particular piece of land, writes, “Hundreds of times I had with a prayerful eye looked on this land, yea, as it were, bedewed it with my prayers” (33). His prayers covered that field like so many dew drops, falling hundreds of times across the years. I wonder if we can likewise claim that we bedew the matters we long for most — not giving up, not growing disillusioned, but humbly and faithfully asking God again.

Jesus would have us do so. For we come to a Father. Our Savior perfects our prayers. Struggle and resistance are normal. And persistence will bring an answer.

Audio Transcript

We open the week with a pretty raw email from a hurting man — a hurting dad. He’s sad over the brokenness of the world. And that brokenness hits home for him. Here’s his story, sent in as an anonymous email.

“Dear Pastor John, to be totally truthful and honest with you, I struggle to believe the Lord is completely ruling his world today. It’s impossible to believe simply because of the state of the world today — or, I should say, his world today. Not only has our nation gone down a slippery road of immoral self-destruction, but our economy is faltering. National debt is skyrocketing. The unborn are massacred daily. Murder rates in America are swelling. In Chicago the crime rate has escalated to such a high degree that I’m beginning to believe it is safer in Iraq or Afghanistan than it is in the South Side. Most children sleep under their beds in fear they may become victims of gun violence.

“The struggles hit home for us, too, a family of four. We have a son born with ADHD, and this has created a life of pure frustration, pain, sorrow, and sometimes even despair. One night while attempting to do his school homework across the kitchen table, he told me, ‘Dad, I hate going to school. Even the teachers make fun of me. I hate ADHD and this medication that makes me sick to my stomach.’ Pastor John, if God is in charge, why is there so much suffering all around?”

Well, the most grievous thing this dear man says is “It is impossible to believe.” And so I’ve been praying — I pray now — that God might perhaps use something I say to make it possible again. We’ve tried to address this question many times at Desiring God and in Ask Pastor John. But when I saw the question, I thought, I really do want to address this again.

World of Pain

I feel the gut-wrenching pressure of the problem, not just because of the way this man so effectively articulated it, but also because a while back, Noël and I watched a three-part documentary called Pain, Pus, and Poison. And in the second episode, about the history leading up to the discovery of penicillin and the emergence of antibiotics in the twentieth century, I was almost overwhelmed with the thought of how many thousands of years the world languished horribly under the most horrific diseases with no medical defense whatsoever — and in fact, with medical procedures that often made matters worse.

For example, the night before George Washington died, they bled four pints of blood from his body. Four pints. That’s almost 40 percent of his blood. That second episode showed pictures of people dying of horrible open infections and little children covered with smallpox sores as I watched their mothers fanning the flies off of them just waiting for their children to die. When I saw them, my wife looked away. She couldn’t look. And I just felt myself gasping, saying, “No! What if I were there? What if I were the parent fanning this horribly deformed child, hideously covered with smallpox sores, and just waiting for a miserable death?” And that happened millions of times in the history of the world.

Most of us in the West have been spared any immediate contact with the most gruesome, ghastly, repugnant forms of infection and disfigurement and writhing pain. And I felt the force of the question, “God, what does this mean about you? What are you doing? What are you saying?”

And I’m aware from this man’s question, and from thousands of others, that such experiences of unimaginable suffering and hideous disfigurement have confirmed countless people in unbelief. They would say, as he does, “It’s impossible, Piper. It’s just impossible to believe anymore, simply because of the state of the world today.” That’s his quote — only I’m saying the problem is worse. It’s horribly worse, because between 1900 and 1977, 300 million people died of smallpox. Then, with a massive global vaccination effort in 1977, it was gone — and today, nobody. Think of it: from 300 million to nobody. Nobody gets smallpox. Nobody gets polio.

The problem with suffering is not that the world has gotten worse. Oh yes, it’s plenty bad, and he documented its badness. It’s plenty bad. But the worst problem is that for thousands of years, the world had it so much worse than it is today in terms of horrific suffering. So how do I, John Piper, stay a believer when the little suffering that I have been exposed to, directly and indirectly, takes my breath away? Here’s my witness. I think I’ve got three thoughts here.

Scripture Is Not Naive

One, the first thing that grips me is the absolute realism of the Bible. I spent several years writing a book on providence, and month after month I was stunned at how candid and open and blunt and even gory the Bible is in presenting God’s judgments upon the world, especially his own people. Just a taste from Deuteronomy 28:

The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. . . . And you shall be a horror to all the kingdoms of the earth. And your dead body shall be food for all birds of the air and for the beasts of the earth. . . . The Lord will strike you with the boils of Egypt, and with tumors and scabs and itch, of which you cannot be healed. The Lord will strike you with madness and blindness and confusion of mind . . . because you did not obey the voice of the Lord your God . . . because you did not serve the Lord your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things. (Deuteronomy 28:22, 25–28, 45, 47)

“The Bible doesn’t shrink back from any horror or injustice in this world.”

Now, my point here is simply that our objections to God’s ways are not because we have seen things more clearly or honestly than the Bible sees them. The Bible doesn’t shrink back from any horror or injustice in this world. That’s my first step. I can’t throw away the Bible because it’s naive or deceptive or a whitewash of the miseries that God himself ordains.

Suffering Witnesses to Sin

Here’s my second step: I would say that the physical horrors in the world can make sense to us and have meaning and eventual righteous resolution only if we come to embrace the biblical reality that sin against an infinitely wise and just and good God is a moral outrage greater than the physical outrage of centuries of global suffering. Let me say that again, because it is the heart of the matter, and it is very difficult for people without the Holy Spirit’s massive work to embrace: the physical horrors of suffering in this world can make sense to us and have meaning and eventual righteous resolution only if we come to embrace the biblical reality that sin against an infinitely wise and just and good God is a moral outrage greater than the physical outrage of centuries of global suffering.

I’m not saying that each experience of suffering corresponds to each person’s particular sins. If that were true, we’d all be in hell. As far as I can tell, and as far as the Bible reveals, there is no clear correlation between the extent of an individual’s suffering in this world and the extent of their guilt. What I’m referring to is what Paul means in Romans 8:20–23, when he says,

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. [It’s like the earth is pregnant and screaming with birth pains.] And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

The universal groaning of creation, the agonizing of all creation in suffering, is owing to what verse 20 calls “subjection,” the creation’s subjection, and what verse 21 calls “bondage to corruption.” And this subjection and corruption is owing to the one who is subjected it “in hope” — namely, God.

This is what I’m referring to when I say that the sin that came into the world through Adam and spread to all people is a moral outrage greater than the physical outrage of suffering, which means that seeing and believing the goodness and justice of God assumes a Copernican revolution of our mind and heart. If we’re going to see God as good and just and wise, we have to undergo such a profound mental and spiritual Copernican revolution of mind and heart so that God ceases to be a planet circling the sun of humanity and becomes the massive, blazing, glorious sun at the center of the solar system of all things. God becomes supreme reality. His being becomes the supreme worth and treasure of the universe.

“All human suffering is a screaming witness to the greater horror of human sin.”

Only in this way will the moral outrage of sin be seen as worse than the physical outrage of suffering, which means very practically that when I gasp at the hideous pictures in the documentary and find myself inevitably saying, “Oh God, oh God, what does this mean?” the answer I hear is “All human suffering is a screaming witness to the greater horror of human sin.”

Christ Died for Sinners

Finally, the third thing that keeps me believing is that God sent his Son into this world, sent his very self, to suffer a moral outrage greater than the outrage against his Father by all his people in their sin. For the infinitely pure and good and wise and strong and holy Son of God to descend to the degradation and torture of a Roman crucifixion is enough suffering, enough indignity, to cover all the outrage of all the sins of all who believe.

Therefore, all who believe will have eternal life; all who believe will have eternal joy. “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). So I don’t claim that such faith is simple or easy. It is a gift, and I am simply bearing witness to how it is that I am still a Christian.

Saul stands as a controversial first king in Israel’s history.

At times, he fought valiantly against the Philistines and judged them on behalf of the Lord. At other times, we see a man selective in his obedience. Still at other times, we see him with a King Lear paranoia, hurling spears at David, raging at his daughter, and threatening to kill his own son. He had the Spirit, and he had the Spirit taken away; he had the kingdom, and he had it torn from him; he ascended to the throne and then was violently cast down.

King Saul was worthy of death and worthy of song honoring him at his death. When Saul and Jonathan fall together in battle, David, the victim of Saul’s demon, leads Israel in the dirge: “Your glory, O Israel, is slain on your high places! How the mighty have fallen!” (2 Samuel 1:19).

He is a conflicted character in the storied history — more like Boromir (we hope) than Smeagol. We can sympathize with him. He never asked to be king, after all; he hid from the crown behind the baggage. Though a head taller than everyone else in Israel, he seemed small in his own eyes. Most know the temptation to feel unequal to the task and tiny before others.

I want us to learn from his origin story. How did Saul, an unassuming Benjamite from the humblest clan of the least tribe, ascend to the throne once reserved for God himself? In this article, I want to remind you of the meticulous sovereignty of our gracious God, his care then and his care now, and his ordering of seemingly irrelevant details to further his great name and our great good. Saul stumbled onto the throne at the end of a long search for donkeys.

Scene One: Out with the Old

In 1 Samuel 8, Israel has just asked Samuel to find them a human king so they might be like the nations. Samuel is getting old; his sons are taking bribes; why not catch up to modern times and find a human king? Samuel tries to reason with them, yet Israel will not be moved, no matter the cost.

“Obey the voice of the people in all that they say to you,” the Lord tells Samuel, “for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them” (1 Samuel 8:7). Samuel relents and sends the people home. Where is he to find this new king?

Scene Two: Lost Donkeys

The next verse introduces us to Saul’s father, Kish. A wealthy man of Benjamin, his son is the handsome giant of Israel: “From his shoulders upward [Saul] was taller than any of the people” (1 Samuel 9:1–2). But the first domino falls rather unexpectedly: “Now the donkeys of Kish, Saul’s father, were lost. So Kish said to Saul his son, ‘Take one of the young men with you, and arise, go and look for the donkeys’” (1 Samuel 9:3–4).

Saul and his servant pass through territory after territory but fail to find them. Saul wants to return: “Come, let us go back, lest my father cease to care about the donkeys and become anxious about us” (1 Samuel 9:5). But before they turn, an idea just happens to come to the servant’s mind: “Behold, there is a man of God in this city, and he is a man who is held in honor; all that he says comes true. So now let us go there. Perhaps he can tell us the way we should go” (1 Samuel 9:6). Saul asks what gift they might offer the man for his help. “Here, I have with me a quarter of a shekel of silver, and I will give it to the man of God to tell us our way” (8). Persuaded, Saul goes forth to meet the man who would make him king.

Now, here is what should amaze us. Rewind to the previous day:

Now the day before Saul came, the Lord had revealed to Samuel: “Tomorrow about this time I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin, and you shall anoint him to be prince over my people Israel. He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.” (1 Samuel 9:15–16)

Behold the God of meticulous, donkey-dispersing sovereignty. A God who brings forth a king from a nobody wandering after lost beasts of burden. A God who brings along just the right companion to bring him into his destiny. And a God, not just of meticulous sovereignty, but of meticulous mercy. Did you catch it? “I will send to you a man. . . . He shall save my people from the hand of the Philistines. For I have seen my people, because their cry has come to me.” This God has no equal. When rejected as king over the people, he nonetheless sees and hears their cries and brings his replacement to deliver them.

“Trusting God to govern our lives quiets many anxieties and affords much peace.”

At any point, the plan could have aborted; yet it couldn’t have, because at every point the Lord guided the plan. He told Samuel to expect Israel’s deliverer “tomorrow about this time” — and in stumbles the clueless Saul from stage left. When Samuel sees Saul, the Lord tells him, “Here is the man of whom I spoke to you! He it is who shall restrain my people” (1 Samuel 9:16–17).

Providence, Not Puppetry

Can’t we be reminded of God’s minute orchestration in Saul’s life and learn how to better read our own stories?

First, consider the nature of our God’s “sending” of Saul to his fate. From lost donkeys, to the right servant chosen, to the idea about going to Samuel for help — these were finely tuned secondary causes (or means) used by the First Cause to fulfill his will and achieve his ends. Westminster helps us understand the mysterious interplay: “Although, in relation to the foreknowledge and decree of God, the first cause, all things come to pass immutably and infallibly: yet, by the same providence, He ordereth them to fall out according to the nature of second causes, either necessarily, freely, or contingently” (5.2).

In other words, the Lord sent Saul to Samuel, not by taking over Saul’s mind and puppeteering him against his choices, but by creating the precise circumstances (secondary causes) to guide his will this way and that. As God guides the stream of a king’s heart, so he directs the steps of kings-to-be (Proverbs 21:1). So, over the same event, it can be spoken: Saul chose to obey his father and search for the donkeys and go to the man of God, and God sent him to Samuel. God placed the walking stones that he knew Saul would freely step upon to bring him to Samuel. I will send to you a man from the land of Benjamin.

Lost in the Fields

Saul remains a controversial first king in Israel’s history. I do not know whether those lost donkeys led him down a path that ended in eternal life. God will judge. But we do know that for his children, minute sovereignty is working for them, not against them, for their eternal good.

Apply this lesson to your own life, Christian. If we believe in this God of meticulous providence, we will put more confidence in him than in our meticulous planning. “The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps” (Proverbs 16:9). We do our little planning, but if we know this God, we will mostly pray that he will establish our steps and keep us open to his many surprises along the way.

Trusting God to govern our lives quiets many anxieties and affords much peace. Think of it: isn’t the unfolding of our lives wrapped in mystery? One small step this way and not that, one thoughtless act, one unexpected conversation, one small tilt in the rudder, and all is changed. One insignificant donkey hunt ends in a throne. If left to navigate ourselves, ours are perilous waters below and a sky of shifting stars — we would be lost before morning. How vital for us not to play Captain: Lord, establish my way!

And praise be to God that he hears our cries and will deliver us, even after we once rejected him as King. Lay hold of the promise: “For those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). And he will not merely wave the wand at the end of time and renew our shipwreck, but he is working all things for good now — even that thing you never chose. He surrounds his children with inescapable good — even though his providence can be hard and confusing, and we foolish and sinful. His promise to us shall not break.

You cannot see now how a path of pain or fields of pointlessness lead to eternal good, but he does. “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths” (Proverbs 3:5–6) — even when those straight paths follow wandering donkeys.