ArticleBlog | The problem with prayer: problems, perils and pearls
The problem with prayer: problems, perils and pearls
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 19.06.17
At the very heart of preaching is a problem about prayer. Preachers have always had a problem with prayer. They can’t seem to shake it off. This is because both preaching and prayer rest on the very same theological mystery of divine–human interaction. The age-old conundrum, ‘why pray to a sovereign God?’ is precisely the same as ‘why preach for a sovereign God?’ Both of these unique activities expect us to do something in the midst of us expecting God to do something. And if we believe – with Paul – that prayer requires faith, and faith requires hearing, and hearing requires preaching (Romans 10:14) then we begin to see the unbreakable connection between preaching and prayer. After all, there never was a true preacher who didn’t first pray; and there never was a true prayer that wasn’t first made possible by preaching.
So, OK, preaching rests unconditionally on prayer. But if we’re honest, most of the time we don’t really know what we’re doing with it. And if we’re really honest, we’re often far too busy to do all that much of it ourselves. Even when we try to do it we are so easily distracted that, with John Donne, we find we happily ‘ignore God and his angels for the noise of a fly’.1
