(upbeat music) - Welcome back to the Ask Pastor John Podcast. This week we are joined by pastor and author Tim Keller, who is soon to release a new book titled Prayer, Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God. And Tim joins us again to talk about prayer. On to question number seven of 10 this week.

We have passages like Luke 11 verses 11 to 13 that seem to say a fruitful prayer life requires a foundational conviction that God is my father and he is totally for me without hesitation on his part. He is holy and completely for my good. Just how key is this conviction for a healthy prayer life?

- Well, it has to be foundational or Jesus wouldn't have started the Lord's prayer with the words our father. Also, from what we can tell, I don't know that Jesus ever addressed God. Some Bible scholar may find me an exception to what I'm about to say here, but I don't think Jesus ever addressed God without calling him father.

And so it must be foundational. And I would say it's foundational because in the word father, that you are my father, you essentially have the gospel in miniature because if God is my boss, if he's my employer, then even though he might be a very good boss or very good employer, nevertheless, in the end, he's not unconditionally committed to me.

If I act up, eventually, he may give me a break or two, but eventually my boss will say, "I'm sorry, you're terminated." And so if I forget that God is my father, I may come to him in prayer, basically in a mercenary way, basically saying, "I'm gonna do this and this and this, "and now you owe me this and this and this." And that makes prayer into, first of all, that destroys the ability to adore God.

You're basically in a petition. Secondly, it makes prayer a way of manipulating God. But if you say God is my father, I have three sons and I know growing up that they were always in different places, but if one of them was acting up, if one of them was actually being a little more disobedient, a little more rebellious or something like that, as a father, if anything, my heart went out to him more.

It actually got more involved with him because I'm not his boss, I'm his father. And so when I know that, when I call God father, I know I'm coming in Jesus' name, I'm coming only because of God's grace, I know because of Jesus died for me, now God is committed to me.

Now, by the way, to say that God is my father, therefore I can always know that he will hear me and I can rest and I can adore him, that doesn't mean, by the way, that I can sin away. And the reason is, of course, that if you break your boss's rules, that doesn't hurt your boss as much as if you break your father's rules because that's really trampling on your father's heart.

So I would say calling God father means, on the one hand, I'm assured of grace, on the one hand, I'm sure he's always gonna hear me, so that makes my petition stronger, but on the other hand, it also means that I have to confess my sins because this wonderful God who's done all this for me and has brought me into his family at the infinite cost of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, that I need to obey him because of his good grace.

So to call God father enhances everything you do in prayer and if you don't know that God is your father, it basically flattens and reduces and thins out every other kind of prayer. - So true. All right, moving on to question number eight and this is perhaps the thing that I was least expecting to learn from your book and the most surprising thing to see in it, but it makes total sense to me now.

You say that prayer gives us an accurate knowledge of ourselves. Explain this. How does prayer lead to self-knowledge? - C.S. Lewis gives an image that says that if you're a proud person, you'll never be able to see God because a proud person is always looking down on everyone, cannot see something that's above him, bigger than him and from that illustration, that image, I get that it's in God's presence that I learn humility.

I learn, I really do not know how sinful I am unless I'm in the presence of a holy God. That's what happened to Isaiah. You know, the first thing that happens when Isaiah is in the presence of holy, holy, holy God in Isaiah six, what's the first thing he says?

He does not say, oh, you're so holy. He says, you know, I'm a man of unclean lips. See, right away, he senses his sin. Just like the brighter a light is, the more you can see the dirt on your hands. The more beautiful, you know, a person is, the more us unbeautiful people see that we're not very good looking.

I mean, in other words, when you get close to superlativeness, then you see your flaws. And so there's absolutely no way that you will really existentially know that you're a sinner and what's wrong with you unless you draw near to a holy God in prayer. - So is this why we don't pray and we just don't wanna see the dirt on us?

- Yes, I actually do, prayer is very humbling. I mean, I find it very hard, for example, if I'm really upset, it's hard for me to stay upset when I get in God's presence because I say, look, Lord, you know, you're wise and I really don't need to be this upset.

You know what you're doing. Or if I'm, in other words, it's very hard to stay in a kind of high horse, self-righteous spot and then turn around and pray. It just knocks you off your horse right away. That's right. - So true. This was an unexpected lesson, but a valuable one from your book.

Thank you, Dr. Keller. And tomorrow's Friday, we finish out this little series of episodes on prayer. So what types of prayers don't work? I'll ask Dr. Keller that tomorrow. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Aspester John Podcast. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)