by Matthew Raley D. A. Carson. A Call to Spiritual Reformation: Priorities from Paul and his Prayers. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011.

D. A. Carson’s enriching book is more than a manifesto for revival. It is a searching meditation on the imperative, the power, and the generative attitudes of prayer. First published in 1992, the book may be an even more sobering read today, more than twenty years later. The decline of the American church has continued without interruption, and the contributing factors and cultural symptoms of our decline are now worse. Carson’s exegetical depth, however, gives me fresh hope.

Carson opens with an analysis of the American church’s prayerlessness (Introduction), the conclusion of which is that we do not know God well enough. He opens the nature and focus of prayer in a series of chapters drawing on the example of other Christians (Chapter 1), the model of 2 Thessalonians 1 (Chapters 2 and 3), the overall burden for people in Paul’s prayers (Chapters 4-5), and the model of Colossians 1 (Chapter 6). Carson pauses to examine various excuses for prayerlessness and to expound the motivations for overcoming them (Chapters 7-8). He then develops much-needed theological rationales for prayer, dealing with the nature of God (Chapters 9-10), the nature of spiritual power (Chapter 11), and vision for ministry (Chapter 12).

In order to find fault with any of Carson’s exegesis, one would have to marshal detailed technical objections. Even where that might be possible, his devotion to expounding the Scriptures accurately is displayed on every page. Carson’s examination of 2 Thessalonians 1 is rich with applications derived meticulously from context (Chapter 3). On page after page, Carson gives appropriate details about Paul’s inferential and referential particles to clarify why Paul prays and what he prays for. In fact, one of the most edifying features of Carson’s book is his frequent reproduction of lengthy passages that the reader can mull over without any commentary.

Many books are filled with solid exegetical details that nevertheless clutter big themes. Carson’s book is not one of them. He shows the Bible’s big picture of prayer.

In particular, the book corrects the overly individualistic concept of prayer many evangelicals have. Carson doesn’t belabor the inadequacy of a prayer life that is exclusively private, or attack individualism outright. Instead, he shows the communal prayer life of Paul in high definition. And that is rebuke enough. In chapter 4, Carson reproduces prayers from all of Paul’s letters to show how immersed he was in the lives of his fellow believers. Chapter 5 is devoted to an even more detailed treatment of this theme, unpacking 2 Thessalonians 3:9-13. Also, Carson demonstrates that this relational aspect of prayer, taught so exhaustively in the New Testament, was a feature of God’s people more recently. He tells many stories of how the people in his life influenced his praying in chapter 1, and he consistently draws on the history of revivals throughout the book.

This emphasis on human relationships in prayer continues to be neglected, and Carson’s faithfulness to the biblical model remains urgently needed.

There are issues about which I would like to learn more from Carson. For example, he addresses spiritual warfare briefly in chapter 12, which focuses on Romans 15. Prayer in this connection is almost exclusively the preserve of charismatic believers, as it was when Carson first wrote the book. The role of angels and demons in the life of Christ and the growth of the church is a prominent theme of the New Testament. I would like to have seen more about such issues in relation to prayer, especially in light of the mainstreaming of New Age spirituality that has occurred in the last twenty years.

Still, Carson’s book is a powerful antidote to the prayerlessness that has poisoned our spirits.

by Matthew Raley Five years ago this morning I awoke to a new reality. I had slept at my parents' home, with my then 5-year-old son Dylan in a trundle bed below, and my infant son Malcolm across the hall. My 35-year-old wife Bridget was in ICU unable to see, walk, or even sit up. She was on morphine to control pain that had left her hyperventilating the night before.

I learned that afternoon what we had suspected the previous day: Bridget had had a stroke. It had occurred in her brain-stem, which technicians had not bothered to scan at first. I was told that someone who has a stroke there usually isn't alive to need a scan.

So, five years ago today, I was wondering what sort of a life God had blessed us with. Maybe the dreams Bridget and I had treasured for life and ministry would not be realized. Maybe the scale of life would shrink radically.

My immediate concern was for Dylan. He had seen his mom collapse while getting him ready for school, and had watched her crawl to the telephone. I couldn't give him any assurance that she would get better.

Lacking any other approach, I simply told Dylan what her condition was and asked him what specific thing we should ask the Lord to do first. Dylan asked for her sight. The next morning, Bridget could see. Then Dylan asked for her relief from pain. The next day, she was given relief and the morphine dosage was lowered, soon to be eliminated entirely. Then Dylan prayed that she could walk.

The next day, she got up with the aid of walker and took new steps. I was there. It was one of the toughest moments for me, because it was clear progress in a brutal reality. So much had to improve for her to take those steps at all. But Bridget's command of her legs had been broken. She was holding herself with her arms to walk like a ninety-year-old.

I can't say whether any of these answers to prayer were miracles, or just God's normal providence through bodies he designed to heal, and the skill with which he has endowed human beings. I can say that all of these blessings were hard.

Over the next weeks, we were confronted with enormous bills that inadequate insurance had dropped in our laps, all of which were paid by the Enloe Foundation. During Bridget's hospitalization and physical therapy, many people came forward to help care for Malcolm while I was at work. We received meals, help cleaning the house, and ongoing aid while Bridget regained her balance and strength at home.

All of this blessing came little by little, one day after another. Now, after years of difficulty, Bridget is free from medications, though not totally free from stroke-related pain. She has all of her abilities, but not all of her old energy. Dylan has a tremendous faith, which he is building on from these experiences. Both boys have their mother.

I call these things to mind today because the difficulties of ministry are crushing. Though we are crushed, we are not destroyed. Though the blessings are hard, our hope is greater. And this hope in Jesus Christ does not leave me disappointed.

One Sunday when I was a sophomore in high school, our pastor gave a sermon on baptism and invited people to come forward. My parents had not made an issue of the ordinance because they felt they had been baptized too young, and they wanted the decision to come from me. I went forward. As I knelt, my grandpa's hand came around my shoulder. It was a decision he had been praying I would make, though he hadn't ever mentioned it. My dad decided to be baptized again in the same service with me, and I remember several significant friends waiting their turns around the baptistry while I gave my testimony.

It was humbling for me to undergo something so physical in front of the whole church on a Sunday morning, something that left me wet and sputtering. It was also a moment of high commitment in front of my fathers. At the end of my testimony, I said, "I want everyone to know that I'm going to follow Christ for my whole life."

Later, I learned that some people took my statement as prideful.

I realized why they thought so -- my stomach tightening and my spine freezing at the memory of my tone of voice in speaking those words. I regretted sounding so pompous in front of several hundred people at an event I had wanted to honor the Lord. It was humiliating.

I was also angry. As poorly as my words came across, they had no guile. I meant what I said, and I understood as well as someone can at 16 that my commitment would have a price. I felt I had been willfully misunderstood by a group for which loftiness was a big negative. My feeling was (though the exact term wasn't in currency then), "Do I have to spin my own baptism?"

In Sunday's sermon, we saw Hannah's experience of being rebuked by Eli (1 Samuel 1). On top of her other humiliations, the high priest of Israel mistook her prayers for a drunken stupor. She shot back, "Do not regard your servant as a worthless woman, for all along I have been speaking out of my great anxiety and vexation."

Such destructive judgments can leave you hobbled by unbelief. When the people around you do not regard your searching for Christ as sincere, or worse, when they make accusations that are untrue, you can feel that your  pursuit of godliness makes your life worse rather than better. You can even feel that Christ is unreachable beyond the barrier of judgmentalism.

Some observations:

1. The admonition to ignore the people around you is not wise.

The cliché spouters would have you believe that "it doesn't matter what other people think," as if you can build a godly life in isolation.

It does matter what people think. We all know it matters, and there's no healthy way to ignore such judgments. When you get slapped with a label, you are driven to tear it off -- or to prove that it doesn't matter. You're lazy. You're too emotional. You're proud. Words like these can determine your whole strategy in life.

Hannah didn't ignore Eli judgment, as if she could rise above it. She confronted the priest's assumptions.

How can you do the same?

2. The ability to sift a speck of gold out of a pan full of mud is worth having.

I have learned a great deal from criticism, even when it's unjust. When my baptism testimony sounded proud to some, I tried to see what they saw, and hear what they heard. I tried to hear my voice without the affirmation of my emotions.

I began the arduous work -- as yet incomplete -- of finding tones that match my best intentions instead of expressing my strongest feelings.

But I learned something far more important from the blow: I can stand back from myself and evaluate. I am not imprisoned in my own point of view. Over time, this realization has given me confidence.

3. The way to deal rightly with judgmental people is to draw near to a gracious God.

Hannah chose to trust God more than God's representative. Her demand that Eli not consider her worthless was linked tellingly to her declaration, "I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord." Her sense of worth came from the fact that the Lord listened to her. She had, in other words, a relationship that trumped Eli's claims.

Nowhere is a high view of God more powerful than in nurturing a healthy view of ourselves. When individuals cultivate a deep fellowship with him -- that is, when Christ ceases to be a scorekeeper and becomes a coach -- they are able to escape the talons of others' manipulation and anger.

Small gods make small people. The living God makes large people.

4. Having seen the destructive power of reactive judgment, double-check the way you use your own influence.

Are you Eli too?

There is the poison in the pomposity I am still learning to discard.

Sermon audio (11-16-08): How To Pray For Our Region Much of the deadness of evangelicalism today traces to an uncomfortable fact: it is often a religion of mere words.

Families go to church, singing, speaking, and listening to waterfalls of words, but after the families return home, their lives do not change. Christians read page after page of words. They listen to still more words on the radio. They surf blogs to find more words yet. But the words have at best a momentary impact.

Sometimes the words themselves are solid. Faith is an ancient term describing a real action of reposing confidence in God, and when the term is paired with a definite article, the faith, it describes a real system of thought. But if a Christian uses such terms without reverence for the realities they describe, he will become more insensitive to truth. Solid words can't be thrown around without danger.

More often, the words are not solid, but squishy. Christian preaching, writing, and conversation reek of clichés, piles of vain phrases that stink up the mind's moldy corners. Let go is an imperative that can be obeyed with reference to dollars, ropes, and Eggo waffles. Let go and let God cannot be obeyed because it cannot be understood. Let go of what, exactly?

There are two words today that seem to have become poisonous: ought and should. They both express obligations. "I ought to read my Bible." "You should witness to your friends." But they also give a tacit qualification: should, ought to, but won't. These two words now express primarily guilt and yearning.

The spirituality of ought and should is what many Christians live out, a religion of mere words that presses condemnation deeper into the conscience without any hope of redemption. The biblical term for this state is unbelief.

How can a person be raised from such a death?

The only answer is prayer. Concerning which, some semi-random thoughts:

1. The realization that faith and unbelief describe the two roads of ultimate human destiny can be a powerful motivation to seek God. It's a realization that can move you from yearning to doing. It suggests danger and possibility at the same time -- the danger of unbelief, and the possibilities latent in prayer.

2. Here is a discipline that can revolutionize your prayers. Treat each word you say to people as if it were a promise. Treating your words as promises means screening out flippancy, evasion, inaccuracy, and lies, and placing sincerity, justice, and simple accuracy into your speech. This is a recognition that others depend on your words.

What is the connection between this discipline and prayer?

I think you'll find a strange dynamic begin once you weigh your every word. You start seeking God's wisdom, consulting him in real time. You start organizing your biblical knowledge for application, for quick mental retrieval, and you start asking God for his priorities in each situation. In short, you start to pray.

What I have just written may seem strange. But it works.

3. A high view of God can draw your prayers upward. If you view Jesus Christ as royal, unstoppable, and intimately engaged with everything that happens in this world, then your mind will be drawn toward him irresistably. This is the view of God behind statements like Colossians 3.1: "If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God."

The religion of mere words has a view of God that is low. God is not royal, but remote. Far from being unstoppable, God seems hindered by our inability to do his will. Far from feeling his engagement in the world, we seem unable to hold his interest.

To be raised up from dead spirituality, we have to exchange our mute idol -- an abstract, cool deity -- for the living God. The God of the Bible listens to us and knows us. That is why Jesus taught (Matthew 6.7-8), "And when you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this . . ."