Three ways the Word helps shape our prayer life:
1. Content - it helps us understand what we are to pray for. It makes sure we don't go off being all crazy. Now, admittedly, some people take the Word and think it says to pray for this or that. They make a lot of money selling that formula on TV via their "world-wide ministries" and promises of blessings. But they're charlatans and peddlers. The Bible helps us pray by shaping our content that will make Jesus look more famous, not us have more convenience.
2. Motive - it purifies the motives we ask with. The more we're in the Bible, the more the Spirit of God will help us by convicting us and making sure we're not asking "to spend it on ourselves" (James 4). Sometimes this is the deepest and most difficult work.
3. Answer - it helps us understand and interpret God's answer when it comes. It's not always the answer we want. Sometimes it's not an answer we can even fathom. But it's God's answer. And crazy, view-shaping verses like "As for God, His way is perfect" (Ps. 18.30) put it all in its proper place. Examples like the three guys in the furnace in Daniel 3 - "God can save us. And if He doesn't we'll die. But either way we're not going to be unfaithful to Him" - rattle our comfortable cages. Rightly so. But they do help us understand and interpret His answers.
But that's just me thinking thoughts...
This is good. Thanks.
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