Pastor John, at the recent Pastors' Conference you gave a mini-theology of prayer, and I was wondering if you could share that here on this episode of Ask Pastor John. What I said at the conference, that I spoke to try to encourage a pastor who had written a question concerning losing hope, losing confidence in prayer, probably because he had seen God do less than he had hoped.

What I said was, Jesus called us to pray first and foremost that His name would be hallowed, that His kingdom would come, that His will would be done, and then as a support and a means to that, that we'd have our daily bread, and that we'd be protected from the devil, and that we'd be led in paths of righteousness, and so on.

And so clearly, at the heart of our prayer life, is to be, "Father, cause your name in this world to be revered, and loved, and praised, and honored, and start right here in my heart this morning. And then advance your kingdom, O God, and cause your will to be done the way the angels do it in heaven." In other words, wrap up and bring your kingdom in, and do everything you need to to get us to that goal.

And what I said was, in the book of Revelation, prayer is being gathered into bowls. This is seen in chapter 5, it's seen in chapter 8. And those bowls have two functions. They are censors, they're like incense, and in the presence of God, that incense is really pleasing to Him.

God loves the aroma of the prayers of His people, which means that if you're on your face crying out for a lost loved one, or for some difficulty in your church, that very act is pleasing to God. It is not wasted. Quite apart from the answer that is going to come now, or ten years from now, or that God's going to just answer in a way totally unexpected, the prayer itself is precious to God.

That's the first meaning of those bowls and that incense. The second is in chapter 8, there's going to come a day when those bowls are full. In other words, the billions upon billions of prayers that have been prayed, "Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come." The last one is going to be prayed, and God's going to look at that angel and say, "Pour it out on the earth." And He's going to take the bowl of prayers, like fire, and throw it on the earth, and the final purposes of God are going to be achieved.

And I think we need to preach to ourselves that our prayers are part of the causality of the final victory of God. He wouldn't have asked us to pray that His kingdom come if He didn't mean for our prayers to be an instrument in the coming of the kingdom.

So it's simply astonishing that when you think of the billions of times the Lord's Prayer has been uttered, all of those times when it's been uttered in faith, God's put it in a bowl there, and it's filling up and filling up, and the day's going to come when that bowl, as it were, will be poured out as the consummation of the age.

So none of those prayers is wasted. I can't think of a greater motive for prayer than to see this theology behind it. Thank you, Pastor John, for this, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Send your prayer questions to us via email at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. Please include your first name and your hometown.

You can find thousands of other free resources from John Piper online at DesiringGod.org. I'm your host Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. Thanks for watching.