June 18, 2020

Jesus lived dependently upon His Father. Luke 5:16 says that He often withdrew to lonely places to pray. And the disciples took notice. Out of all the things they could have inquired about they asked Jesus to teach them to pray (Luke 11:1). Prayer is vital to the Christian life. It is like how breathing is vital to living. Yet with something so fundamental we can easily take it for granted. We forget about its importance. We even rather move to more ‘important’ topics. And soon the model of the dependent life with the Father that Jesus displayed slowly becomes unrecognizable in our life.

This temptation toward independence can grow with the urgent. The story of Mary and Martha illustrates (Luke 10:38-42). Martha served Jesus with urgency. Yet she became distracted in the urgency and lost sight of the precious blessing of sitting at the feet of Jesus. There was nothing wrong with Martha’s service. In fact, it was virtuous in many ways. We need to act. We need to take initiative. We need to serve. We need to get things done. Yet any of these things, at the expense of the prayer, is mere distraction. The call is to prayerfully serve. It is to serve dependently upon our heavenly Father.

In light of the news of our day, we need to act. There is a sense of urgency. We need to consider the uncomfortable reality of racial tension. We need to look into the mirror regarding the topic of injustice and pose questions: In what ways can we serve those in need? How can we listen and learn from those different from us? What does it look like to walk with the marginalized? How can we get out of our comfortable context in order to be salt and light of the gospel? All of these questions help clarify concrete steps we can take to obey our Lord- “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8). Yet we must not forget to do these things as we stand on the foundation of prayer.

Please consider some thoughts from an article about the importance of prayer in light of our urgent times:

“Prayer is ultimately a form of activism and campaigning, just as protesting and marching may be. As we take to the streets, share a post on justice, or donate to a justice-seeking organization, we are petitioning authorities to recognize the gross injustice of racism and to enact change.

Prayer is no different in Scripture in times of injustice. Think of David, in anger and raw honesty, petitioning God for justice (Ps. 10:12–18). Think of Jeremiah as he laments and pleads for mercy (Jer. 14:19–22), or Daniel as he begs for God to “incline your ear and hear” and “open your eyes and see our desolations” (Dan. 9:18).

When we pray in times of injustice, we are protesting to the highest authority in the universe, the perfect arbiter of all justice. As human beings made in the image of the God of justice, prayer is our foundational path to justice. Blaise Pascal calls it “the dignity of causality” that in prayer God gives us a direct line to the King of kings.

Our apathy about prayer—and our rush to “do justice” in any number of other ways, rather than pray—may uncover not a disbelief in prayer itself, but a failure to see God as judge. Jesus, in his parable of the persistent widow, notes that while imperfect human judges and rulers respond to justice only because persistent activism becomes annoying, God will give justice more speedily: “Will not God give justice to his elect, who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long over them?” (Luke 18:7).

I’m not saying prayer should be the church’s only functional response to injustice, but should it not be one of the first and foundational responses?”

And let me encourage you to join The Gospel Coalition on June 20 for “A Night of Lament for Racial Justice.” It’ll be a time of guided prayer and song. Let us depend upon the Lord in prayer as we do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with our God. Amen.