Given that it’s summer and we’ve been traveling, my wife and I have had the chance to attend a number of different churches all across the country. One thread running through all of them has been the lack of coherency in prayer. We’ve heard prayers to Jesus, commands for rain, prayers for the price of oil to drop, and the list goes on. The Gospels and the Epistles set out the proper way to pray:
We pray to the Father through the work (the name) of the Lord Jesus Christ by unction of the Holy Spirit according to the Word.
If you read Paul’s prayers in his epistles, this is exactly the way that he encouraged us to pray. It is also consistent with Jesus’s instruction in John 16.23, 24:
And in that day you will ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full. (KJV)
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