Calvin on Prayer
Calvin on Prayer
The church father Tertullian (160-220) has said that in every religion people pray, but Christians pray differently, for they pray from the heart, as children to their dear Father. This childlike trust and inner devotion, characterizing Christian prayer, was lost during the Middle Ages, due to formalism and legalism. But it was revived in the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century. It was especially John Calvin who emphasized personal prayer. It has been estimated that around 20% of his Institutes focus on prayer. Calvin calls prayer "the chief exercise of faith by which we daily receive God's benefits" (Institutes, III, 20).
Word and Prayer⤒🔗
For Calvin, prayer is intimately related to reading Holy Scripture and living according to its precepts. Before everything, Calvin was a student of the Scriptures. This determined also his prayer life. He taught that God's Word is the door by which we enter into the kingdom of heaven. That is why we must love the Word of God and embrace it, so that it would take root in our hearts. This does not happen by our own strength, but by the power of the Holy Spirit. Yet it does not release us from the duty to study God's Word diligently and frequently to gather with the church of God (Catechism of Geneva, Q/A 300-304). Prayer, according to Calvin, is only possible because of God's gracious condescension towards man. God can only be truly invoked by those who have been acquainted with His goodness and lovingkindness through the true preaching of God's Word (Institutes, III, 20,11).
To love the Lord, one must know Him, and one learns to know the Lord by means of His Word. By prayer we unearth the treasures that are promised to us therein. To pray is really nothing else than listening to the Word of God and responding to it. In order to pray, we must first drink from the fountain of God's Word. In prayer we are beggars, reaching out our hand, not as we would do towards everyone who passes by, but only to Him who comes to us in His Word. It is God's Word that gives us the words that pass over our lips and that teaches us to pray with our heart. There is no firmer basis for prayer than the Word of God. It is as though God forbids us to pray, unless He Himself tells us what we should pray.
Prayer is Profitable←⤒🔗
"Words fail to explain how necessary prayer is, and in how many ways the exercise of prayer is profitable" (Institutes, III, 20,2). Calvin encourages his readers with the example of Elijah in 1 Kings 18:42. Although Elijah had given the promise of rain to King Ahab, he still bows down before the Lord on his knees, because he knows it is his duty to lay his needs before the Lord.
We must strive likewise to know our needs and sense our weakness in order to call upon God in prayer. The first need we have is the need of our sins. Nothing is more detestable than to pray for forgiveness of our sins while we think we really are not such terrible sinners at all.
The godly must lay their needs before the Lord with the fervent desire of the heart to receive what they are praying for. For example, when we pray that God's Name would be hallowed, there should be an urgent longing in us for personal holiness. Our hearts must always burn with a zealous and passionate desire to seek after the Lord and to love Him and serve Him. This will accustom us to flee to Him for every need as to a sacred anchor for our life and soul.
Praying Always←⤒🔗
A Christian must always pray. One of the reasons why God can cause afflictions to take place in our life is to promote fervent prayer. Hardships often lead to intensified prayer.
Yet prayer must not only take place when there are afflictions; we must always pray, as Paul writes in Ephesians 6:18. Even when we do not sense a need, we should still realize we have needs and we ought to pray. Calvin reasons that if our cellars are filled with food, we still need to pray for our daily bread, because we are unable to take one bite of bread without the ongoing grace of God. We must realize that daily we are in many dangers and that we therefore need God's ongoing care and protection.
The longing for the coming of God's kingdom and His righteousness should not be intermittent but should continually fill us with desires and ongoing prayers. We too easily are negligent in prayer because we fail to realize how we need God's constant care.
Contrition is Necessary←⤒🔗
True prayer necessitates contrition and humility, for God looks upon the proud from afar, but those who humble themselves before God will be delivered. Calvin wants us to cast our pride far away and he quotes Daniel 9:18: "We do not pour forth our prayers unto thee on the ground of our righteousnesses but on the ground of thy great mercy. O Lord, hear us." He also quotes Jeremiah 14:7, "Though our iniquities testify against us, act...for thy name's sake." As Calvin sums it up: the beginning, and even the preparation, of proper prayer is the plea for pardon with a humble and sincere confession of guilt (Institutes, III, 20,9).
A Rich Invitation←⤒🔗
Calvin writes (Institutes, III, 20,5) that God deals most kindly and friendly with us because He invites us to unburden ourselves from all our cares. The reformer draws the conclusion that we have no excuse when God's benefits do not deeply humble us before Him, more than anything else. We are to be sincere and we may not harbour desires in our hearts that would cause us to be ashamed, but we must pour out our whole heart to God in prayer.
God promises that He will hear those who call upon Him in truth and that those who seek Him with their whole heart will surely find Him. Therefore, we must pray with a sincere hope that we are heard. Because of the greatness of God's goodness, we may have great expectations from Him that He will hear our prayers. For it is an offence to God when we ask a benefit of Him and do not expect to receive what we ask.
One In a Hundred←⤒🔗
Calvin is concerned that many do not really make use of the rich blessing of prayer. He states that it is amazing when the great kindness of God as displayed in His promises fail to stir us, so that the majority of people prefer to forsake the fountain of living waters and dig dry pits for themselves instead of embracing God's loving kindness. In his Institutes III, 20,14 Calvin makes the statement that scarcely one in a hundred is moved to approach God in true prayer. However, God promises that He will be gracious to even the most miserable person, "provided sincerity of heart, dissatisfaction with ourselves, humility, and faith are present in order that our hypocrisy may not profane God's name by calling upon him deceitfully. Our most gracious Father will not cast out those whom he not only urges, but stirs up with every possible means, to come to him."
It can be difficult to articulate our prayers. Calvin mentions very openly that even those who are exercised in prayer often experience that they cannot find the right words to pray and their prayers are more like stammering. Therefore God sends the help of the Holy Spirit to support God's children in their prayers.
Thankfulness←⤒🔗
Calvin takes note that we are to receive God's benefits with true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving. All our blessings come from His hand. When we have obtained what we were seeking for, we should be convinced that it is God who has graciously answered our prayers. This should lead us to more ardently meditate upon His kindness. "Also when we have received blessings let us embrace with greater delight those things which we acknowledge to have been obtained by prayers" (Institutes, III, 20.3).
We end with an example of one of John Calvin's many prayers. After having expounded Jeremiah 17:10 (Lecture 66) Calvin prays:
Grant, Almighty God, that as we are wholly nothing and less than nothing, we may know our nothingness, and having cast away all confidence in the world as well as in ourselves, we may learn to flee to thee as suppliants, and so put our trust in thee for our present life and for eternal salvation, that thou alone mayest be glorified: and may we be devoted to thee through the whole course of our life, and so persevere in humility and in calling on thy name, that thou mayest not only for once bring us help, but that we may know that thou art always present with those who truly and from the heart call upon thee, until we shall at length be filled with the fullness of all those blessings, which are laid up for us in heaven by Christ our Lord — Amen.
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