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How Theology Shapes Our Prayers
by Graham Cole
How does our theological awareness show up in our prayers? That is a very good question.
It shows itself in how we address God, and in what we pray about and for. When our Lord prayed in the garden in John 17, His prayer was grounded in His knowledge of God the Father.
How does He address God? Holy Father, Righteous Father.
When we talk to God in our prayers, we are not speaking to an abstraction or an impersonal “force be with you.” We are speaking to the God who has revealed His character, His ways, His promises, and His purposes.
When we pray using this revealed knowledge—when we recall His character and His promises—we know that we are praying in alignment with who God is.
J. I. Packer has been very helpful here. He says that biblical meditation is turning what we know of God from Scripture into prayer and praise to God.
Theology helps us uncover exactly what those things are that can be turned into prayer and praise.
This is a guest article by Graham Cole, author of Faithful Theology. This post originally appeared on Crossway.org; used with permission. Graham Cole is the author.
Check out the rest of our series The Discipline and Power of Prayer and at our YouTube.
Graham A. Cole (ThD, Australian College of Theology) is the dean and professor of biblical and systematic theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. An ordained Anglican minister, he has served in two parishes and was formerly the principal of Ridley College. Graham lives in Libertyville, Illinois, with his wife, Jules. He is a member at Church of the Redeemer in Highwood, Illinois.
