I’m feeling very convicted by what I read in Don Carson’s book, “A Call to Spiritual Reformation“.
Some time ago I developed a very strange way to evaluate my prayer life that actually led me to pray less. Originally this helped to alleviate my feelings of guilt about not being as prayerful as the giants of the faith, and it ironically arose from a deeper grasp of the doctrine of my salvation by grace alone. Where before I had wrongly viewed prayer as an obligation to earn God’s love and acceptance, yet because I now knew it was not by my prayerfulness or any other good works that I am saved and justified, I find myself less motivated to pray. Why should that be?
I say things like “I’m sure God doesn’t want me to pray out of obligation”, and “praying when I don’t feel like it means I am doing it to justify myself and earn brownie points, thus nullifying the Cross, and that’s wrong”. I was thinking that to please the Lord by praying more is to deny the power of the Cross. But what was good and right was that I came to see I didn’t have to pray in order to get grace and love from God. Whenever I was tired or dry, or just don’t feel like praying I’d simply say “It’s okay not to pray.” I sure thought I was avoiding legalism successfully.
Don Carson writes in the chapter on ‘Excuses for Not Praying” that we are in fact ‘casting a terrible slur on the cross when we act as if the usefulness or acceptability of our prayers turns on whether we feel full or dry’ (pg 114). And then he describes a further error I make, which is ‘to assign to my mood or my feelings the right to determine what I ought to do (which is) unbearably self-centered. It is to act as if the Bible never says, “Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer” (Rom 12:12, emphasis added)’ (pg 115)
Of course it’s catastrophic and heretical to think that my prayerfulness earns my salvation, justifies me before God, and is the basis of his love for me. But, on the basis of the Cross alone, now that I am reconciled to him, it would be more atrocious notto seek him in regular prayer, which is essentially communion witth him.
As one preacher I’ve been learning from often puts it: It’s not that we ought to pray, but we get to pray. To the God of the Universe, who loves me not on the basis of my saintliness or prayerfulness but on the basis of his own faithful love! So I should pray even when I feel spiritually dry. It’s my privilege and also a command which I should love to obey, because it’s for my good that he has commanded it.
Now I should stop writing this and go apply what I’ve learnt.
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But for now, I honestly feel I’ve married the best wife I could ever have. It’s not that we don’t disagree or sin against each other. By God’s grace we could forgive each other, and I’m grateful she overlooks my wrong and respects me as her husband. She puts our little three-room home in order, and cooks me dinner (not often, but scrumptious and welcome each time). Most of all, she’s teachable and submissive to God, and that’s all a man could ever wish for. 
