I once heard a preacher comment on the simplicity of Peter’s desperate prayer in Matthew 14:30. Jesus called Peter out onto the water, and after a few slippery steps, Peter’s faith was tossed to and fro by the wind. Terrified, he was able to get three words out before being submerged: Lord, save me!
The preacher noted that Peter didn’t have time for a long flowery petition. He didn’t say, “O LORD of the seas, I remember how thou didst rescue thy servant Jonah from the terrible waters! My body sinks to Sheol! Look thou upon me and lift thou me out of these monstrous waves! Set mine feet upon a rock, that I mightest continue to walk securely with thee!”
Sure, others like David crafted prayers like that throughout the psalter, but circumstances didn’t afford Peter sufficient time on Galilee’s sea. Peter yelped, and Jesus reached out and grabbed him by the hand.
The Bible is full of prayers offered from a place of desperation. I think of Hannah’s cry in 1 Samuel 1:10, “She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly.” Without the strength to vocalize her lament, she spoke in her heart to God, and God was near enough to hear her whispers. It was under the discipline of Jehovah that in distress God’s people “poured out a whispered prayer” (Isaiah 26:16) leading to the promise of God’s coming justice.
There’s the great confession of Daniel, who pleads with the Lord by appealing to God’s mercy instead of Israel’s merits, “For we do not present our pleas before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy” (Daniel 9:18b). Or consider the desperate father in Mark 9:24, who was plagued not only by his child’s deadly condition, but by his own doubts. “I believe, help my unbelief!”
The length and eloquence of our prayers is not what makes them effective, but the true faith with which they are offered. True faith isn’t the same thing as perfect faith. God can hear short and shaky prayers whispered through the noise of life’s wind and waves. This should be an encouragement to those of us who feel like we’re not very good at praying.
Charles Spurgeon once said that the Christian will tell you that “he has to pray to God to forgive his prayers, for there is sin in the midst of his supplications, and that he has to sprinkle even his best offerings with the atoning blood…”1 Spurgeon understood that even feeble prayers were meaningful to God and sanctified in Jesus.
Thus, you should never be ashamed of whispered prayers offered from the place of weakness. God hears those prayers more than he does the ones shouted from streetcorners for pretense (Matthew 6:5). He knows our frame, and remembers we are dust (Psalm 103:14). The problem is that we often forget this. The more highly we esteem ourselves, the less frequent our prayers become. This is why daily prayer can be so grounding. It helps us maintain awareness of the reality of our dependence upon God.
One of the reasons we struggle to cultivate a daily prayer life is because we think we simply don’t need it. We’ll pray when things get desperate, just like we’ll go to the gym after our health goes down, or weight goes up! The real culprit of prayerlessness is self-confidence. It’s not that we don’t know how to pray – any desperate person can say, “Help!” – but that we have bought into the lie that we only need God’s help sometimes.
We need to address the root cause of prayerless living. It isn’t merely a lack of faith in God, but too much faith in ourselves. This is one of the reasons I love how Jesus taught his disciples to pray. He didn’t just encourage them to pray for things that were clearly beyond their ability, like the forgiveness of sins or supernatural healing. Jesus taught us to pray for the basic necessities of life that we often take for granted. “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Herein Jesus reminds us (and we daily remind ourselves) that we depend upon God for breakfast.
Even the next breath you take is a gratuitous gift from God. It’s when we forget that we’re on borrowed breaths that we stop using them for prayer and praise and start using the life God has given us regrettably. Remember what God told Nebuchadnezzar’s grandson, Belshazzar?
[Y]ou have lifted up yourself against the Lord of heaven. And the vessels of his house have been brought in before you, and you and your lords, your wives and your concubines have drunk wine from them. And you have praised the gods of silver and gold, of bronze, iron, wood, and stone, which do not see or hear or know, but the God in whose hand is your breath, and whose are all your ways, you have not honored. (Daniel 5:23)
In order to cultivate a consistent habit of prayer, you need to embrace the place of dependence. I think this is one of the reasons that raised hands so often accompany prayer in the Bible (1 Timothy 2:8). When we lift our hands to God, it’s as if we’re saying, “I have nothing, Lord, my hands are empty. It’s not my merit, or might; I bring nothing but the empty hand of faith eager to embrace your will.”
We signal with our bodies the proper attitude of our heart. It’s a simple, but profound posture that helps us embrace the dying words of Martin Luther, scribbled onto a piece of paper, “We are beggars. This is true.”2 Luther was right, but we’re also beggars who have been given direct access to the King. You might be tempted to walk by a beggar on the sidewalk, but not if that beggar was your son or daughter. We come empty-handed to our heavenly Father, and he isn’t stingy with his grace, but loves to lavish his children with good and perfect gifts that strengthen us unto everlasting life. Sometimes we have not because we just don’t ask.
Grasping these wonders doesn’t always make prayer easy, but it does make true prayer possible. You’ll still need to put in the effort and lift your hands. The earliest Christians like the Jews before them often set apart times throughout their day to pray (Psalm 55:17; Daniel 6:10; Acts 3:1). I sometimes wonder if this is even more necessary for us with all of our media distractions. It’s a humbling thing to force yourself to pray every day, even when you don’t feel like it, but I think that’s part of the beauty.
There have been times where I’ve had to pray, “Lord, I don’t even want to be here right now, forgive me!” Daily prayer forces us to surrender control and submit to God. In the process, we put to death our self-dependence and confess once again that we need God for each breath and loaf of bread. The simple things in life become occasions for thanksgiving because we see them as gifts from God.
Recognize your place of dependence and make time to pray. If you’re just beginning to form the habit, you’ll find that it might be just as hard as starting to train at the gym or changing your diet. Most of us never feel like doing those things, but begin to see the fruits of our labors in time. When you don’t know what to say, or have the strength to utter your own words, draw from the prayers God has supplied you with throughout the Scriptures in the Psalms, or the Lord’s Prayer.
In his kindness, God doesn’t just invite you to call upon him, but he also gives you prayers that you can make your own when you’re short of words. When you make time to pray each day, you’ll find that you begin to get lost in prayer throughout the day.
The prayers you offer might be short and shaky, like, “Lord, save me!” or, “Help my unbelief.” They might be whispered while you drive, or a yelp amid danger. Prayers are powerful because of who receives them. Each day Jesus is near enough to hear your whisper, and he reaches out his hand to save you from sinking.
Adriel Sanchez is senior pastor of North Park Presbyterian Church in San Diego and cohost of the Core Christianity. He is also the author of Praying with Jesus: Getting to the Heart of the Lord’s Prayer.
1 Spurgeon’s Sermon, Sovereign Grace and Man’s Responsibility preached August 1, 1858.
2 Kittleson, James M.; Wiersma, Hans H. Luther the Reformer: The Story of the Man and His Career Second Edition Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MI. 2016 250.