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Some thoughts on prayer & Thomas Brooks

As we’ve been going through the Gospel of Luke on Sunday mornings, Jesus has challenged us to engage in a robust life of prayer. However, prayer is not easy. We are quick to find something else to do beside prayer, and we do finally decide to pray, we are easily distracted by fleeting thoughts.  Truly, our own infirmities form a significant barrier to the vibrant prayer life we seek.

I was recently doing some reading in Thomas Brooks’ The Secret Key to Heaven, and I ran across this wonderful quote pertaining to our difficulties in prayer:

“The saint’s infirmities can never make void those gracious promises by which God stands engaged to hearken to the prayers of his people (Psa 50:15; Isa. 30:19; 65:24). God’s hearing of our prayers does not depend upon sanctification, but upon Christ’s intercession; not upon what we are in ourselves, but upon what we are in the Lord Jesus; both our persons and our prayers are acceptable in the beloved (Eph. 1:6, 1 Pet. 2:5). When God hears our prayers, it is neither for our own sakes nor yet for our prayers’ sake, but it is for his own sake, and his Son’s sake, and his glory’s sake, and his promise’s sake. Certainly God will never cast off his people for their infirmities.” p.168-9

What a wonderful reminder that the Christian life, even our prayer life, is about what God has done for us in Christ!