Prayer: A 14-Day Devotional by Tim KellerSample

Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray, healed people with prayers, denounced the corruption of the temple worship (which, He said, should be a “house of prayer”), and insisted that some demons could be cast out only through prayer. He prayed often and regularly with fervent cries and tears (Heb 5:7), and sometimes all night. The Holy Spirit came upon Him and anointed Him as He was praying (Luke 3:21–22), and He was transfigured with the divine glory as He prayed (Luke 9:29). When He faced his greatest crisis, He did so with prayer. We hear Him praying for His disciples and the church on the night before He died (John 17:1–26) and then petitioning God in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Finally, He died praying.

Immediately after their Lord’s death, the disciples prepare for the future by being “constantly in prayer” together (Acts 1:14). All church gatherings are “devoted . . . to prayer” (Acts 2:42; 11:5; 12:5, 12).

The power of the Spirit descends on the early Christians in response to powerful prayer, and leaders are selected and appointed only with prayer. All Christians are expected to have a regular, faithful, devoted, fervent prayer life. In the book of Acts, prayer is one of the main signs that the Spirit has come into the heart through faith in Christ. The Spirit gives us the confidence and desire to pray to God and enables us to pray even when we don’t know what to say. Christians are taught that prayer should pervade their whole day and whole life—they should “pray without ceasing” (1 Thess 5:17).

Prayer is so great that wherever you look in the Bible, it is there. Why? Everywhere God is, prayer is. Since God is everywhere and infinitely great, prayer must be all-pervasive in our lives.

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