This week's sermon: "Praying in the Closet and in the Spirit"

Are you the disciplined type? Are you more spontaneous? What does the Bible say about how this relates to prayer?

This much is clear: Our various disciplines and spontaneities are Christian to the extent that they are an overflow of our confidence that God is already 100% on our side.

The gospel doesn't rule out spontaneity. "In the Spirit," Jesus' gospel-work for us often moves us to spontaneous prayer.

And the gospel doesn't rule our discipline. It moves us to plan for prayer "in the closet," and to take up various intentional disciplines as fruit of the gospel.

Faith in the gospel leads the Christian to planned private prayer in at least 3 ways:

  1. Because we trust in Jesus as our Lord and know he is for us, we gladly do what he tells us.
  2. Because we trust in Jesus as our Treasure, we have tasted and seen that he is good, and so we are eager to get more of him.
  3. Because we trust in Jesus as our Savior, we know that every true need we have has been purchased for us already, and so we don't come to him in prayer to purchase but to receive.

David Mathis (@davidcmathis) is an elder at Bethlehem Baptist Church, Twin Cities, and works as executive pastoral assistant to John Piper. He and his wife Megan have twin sons (Carson and Coleman) and live in Minneapolis. David is co-editor (with John Piper) of Thinking, Loving, Doing, most recently, and Finish the Mission, forthcoming. Yep, he plays rec softball and went yard in his last game.