Prayer: A 14-Day Devotional by Tim KellerSýnishorn

Edmund P. Clowney wrote, “The Bible does not present an art of prayer; it presents the God of prayer. ”We should not decide how to pray based on the experiences and feelings we want. Instead, we should do everything possible to behold our God as He is, and prayer will follow. The more clearly we grasp who God is, the more our prayer is shaped and determined accordingly.

Without immersion in God’s words, our prayers may not be merely limited and shallow but also untethered from reality. We may be responding not to the real God but to what we wish God and life to be like. Indeed, if left to themselves our hearts will tend to create a God who doesn’t exist. People from Western cultures want a God who is loving and forgiving but not holy and transcendent. Studies of the spiritual lives of young adults in Western countries reveal that their prayers, therefore, are generally devoid of both repentance and of the joy of being forgiven. Without prayer that answers the God of the Bible, we will only be talking to ourselves.

Excerpt from prayer by Timothy Keller
Reprinted by arrangement with Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, A Penguin Random House Company. Copyright © 2014 by Timothy Keller