Answering Speech E-Book

Daniel J. Brendsel

• Herausgeber: Crossway
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Pursuing an Expansive Life of Prayer In wondrous contrast to silent idols, the one true God speaks. He addresses his people in love, and it's their great privilege to answer him in prayer. At its root, prayer isn't mere self-expression or a prod to get a silent God to speak, but it is a learned skill to answer God's initiating word in Christ. Through this thoughtful book, author and pastor Daniel J. Brendsel explains how responding to God can nurture prayerful engagement with Scripture, shape healthy rhythms among God's praying people, and spur excitement for communion with God. For those disappointed by their current life of prayer, Answering Speech invites readers to enter into an expansive and exuberant life of response to the Father through the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit. - Offers a Unique Perspective: Explores how Christians are not initiators of prayer but responders to what God has already done  - Appeals to Pastors and Thoughtful Laypersons: Focuses on important issues that should be taught within the local church  - Theological yet Accessible: Deeply rooted in theology, this book offers encouragement and practical rhythms for prayer 

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“It is shameful but true. Christians have long struggled to exercise their most astounding privilege: approaching the throne of grace and talking to God, communicating with the one who created and redeems us, who loves us with a love even stronger than death. This thought-provoking book is precisely what we need to put our prayer lives on track. It points us to the one who initiates this marvelous divine communication and invites us to answer him in fear, love, honesty, and ceaseless, awestruck, self-giving speech.”

Douglas A. Sweeney, Dean and Professor of Divinity, Beeson Divinity School, Samford University

“The chief virtue of this book is that it is not about prayer; it is about God. Of course the title gives that away: prayer is a response to who God is and what he has said and done. As the author wisely says, prayer is a way of perceiving what really is. Many of us believe that, but it often does not inform the way we pray. This wonderful book will help you move in the right direction. I highly recommend it.”

William Edgar, Professor Emeritus of Apologetics, Westminster Theological Seminary

“If Dan Brendsel is right—and I believe he is—that a primary pastoral task in the life of the church is teaching God’s people to pray, then the church today needs to read this book! The message of Answering Speech is the profound biblical truth that our life with God is a life of prayer—dialogue with a gracious God who has initiated conversation and covenanted with us. In essence, prayer is living in response to the Trinitarian God. By rooting prayer in canon, church, and creed, and by showing the glorious marriage between the prayer life and the Christian life, Brendsel pastors the individual Christian and the corporate church into deeper communion with Christ. I could not recommend this book more highly!”

Edward W. Klink III, Senior Pastor, Hope Evangelical Free Church, Roscoe, Illinois; author, The Local Church and John

“Prayer is theology in miniature, the essence of the creature’s interpersonal relation with the Creator: human answering speech to the divine address. Prayer is also the beating heart of the Christian life, a participation through the gift of the Spirit in the Son’s response to the Father: “Not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42). Jesus’s disciples asked him to teach them to pray, and as Brendsel rightly notes in this important book, teaching God’s people to pray is one of the pastor’s chief tasks. Answering Speech is an excellent resource for doing just that. Brendsel helpfully engages both theological and practical matters and, in the process, helps us see all of life as eminently theological, an ongoing dialogue in different registers—confession, intercession, adoration—with our covenantal, triune God.”

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, Research Professor of Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School

“This book lights up our place in the life of prayer—in relation to God, who speaks first. Dan Brendsel has given us a thought-provoking, Scripture-saturated, and deeply encouraging discussion of prayer as our answer to God’s initiating word, fully spoken to us in Christ.”

Kathleen Nielson, author; speaker

“This is a book I’ve been waiting for. It approaches prayer in a way that accents and celebrates the initiative of God: he speaks first; then we respond in prayer, answering his word. Dan Brendsel is a careful pastor-scholar who brings together both biblical insights and treasures from the great tradition. Just look at the bibliography. Most of us need to go deeper with prayer—which can seem so simple, even natural, and yet is a bottomless wonder, past finding out. To speak with the living God! There is far more to prayer than we presume—riches here set before us by a learned jeweler.”

David Mathis, Senior Teacher and Executive Editor, desiringGod.org; Pastor, Cities Church, Saint Paul, Minnesota; author, Habits of Grace

Answering Speech

Answering Speech

The Life of Prayer as Response to God

Daniel J. Brendsel

Answering Speech: The Life of Prayer as Response to God

Copyright © 2023 by Daniel J. Brendsel

Published by Crossway1300 Crescent StreetWheaton, Illinois 60187

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, except as provided for by USA copyright law. Crossway® is a registered trademark in the United States of America.

Cover design: Jordan Singer

First printing 2023

Printed in Colombia

Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. The ESV text may not be quoted in any publication made available to the public by a Creative Commons license. The ESV may not be translated into any other language.

Scripture quotations marked NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995, 2020 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.lockman.org.

All emphases in Scripture quotations have been added by the author.

The epigraph for chapter 2 is from Andrew Peterson, “The Silence of God,” copyright ©2003 New Spring Publishing Inc. (ASCAP) (adm. at CapitolCMGPublishing.com). All rights reserved. Used by permission.

Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-4335-8894-5 ePub ISBN: 978-1-4335-8897-6 PDF ISBN: 978-1-4335-8895-2

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brendsel, Daniel J., 1980– author. 

Title: Answering speech : the life of prayer as response to God / Daniel J. 

  Brendsel. 

Description: Wheaton, Illinois : Crossway, 2023. | Includes bibliographical

  references and index. 

Identifiers: LCCN 2022046429 (print) | LCCN 2022046430 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781433588945 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9781433588952 (pdf) | ISBN

  9781433588976 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Prayer. 

Classification: LCC BL560 .B646 2023 (print) | LCC BL560 (ebook) | DDC

  242—dc23/eng20230422

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046429

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022046430

Crossway is a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

2023-06-30 04:26:15 PM

To the members of

First Presbyterian Church,

Hinckley, Minnesota

May the God of endurance and encouragement grant you to live in such harmony with one another, in accord with Christ Jesus, that together you may with one voice glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Romans 15:5–6

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Prayer as “Answering Speech”

Part 1 God

1  Answering the Sovereign God

2  When the Dialogue Seems One-Sided

3  The End and the Beginning of Prayer

Part 2 Scripture

4  Praying in Response to Scripture

5  Praying Scripture

6  Praying (in the Story of) Scripture

Part 3 Language

7  Naming and Receiving Reality Aright

8  The Language of the City of God

9  Learning the Language

Part 4 Rhythms

10  The Weekly Rhythm of Prayer

11  The Daily Rhythm of Prayer

12  The Rhythm and Shape of a Typical Prayer

Conclusion: In Jesus’s Name

Discussion Questions

Sources of Chapter-Opening Epigraphs

Bibliography

General Index

Scripture Index

Acknowledgments

This book began as essays for discussion at our weekly church staff meetings when I served as an associate pastor at Grace Church of DuPage in Warrenville, Illinois. As we considered together the life of prayer, the questions raised and the comments made were invaluable for sharpening my thoughts and articulation. Along the way, others at Grace had the chance to read the manuscript I was noodling on (e.g., our women’s ministry small groups), from whom I received further helpful feedback. “Answering speech” itself is inseparable from the life of Christ’s church. Much the same could be said about the book Answering Speech and the life shared with my brothers and sisters at Grace Church.

In the summer of 2021, I prepared a new draft and an incipient book proposal for review at a symposium of the St. John Fellowship of the Center for Pastor Theologians. Through the years the CPT has been a major boon to my maturation and invigoration as a pastor-theologian, and I am grateful for their scholarship and camaraderie at an important stage in this work.

Lindsey Knott kindly gave of her time and wisdom to read the whole manuscript and to write out detailed comments and encouragements, improving this book in dozens of ways. It is a rare privilege to have such an able and insightful dialogue partner, and it is a great joy to have such a friend.

Thanks are owed to Don Jones, Doug O’Donnell, and Justin Taylor at Crossway for showing initial interest in the project, and for their continued enthusiasm for it. The good people at Crossway more generally have been a delight to work with. In particular, Thom Notaro has proved consistently reliable in his edits, patient and creative in dealing with my many writing quirks, and tremendously gifted in improving the overall expression and realizing my intentions.

My wonderment for my wife Jen continues to grow, as well as for the God who supplies her strength to serve many with untiring gladness. Jen is, of course, naturally tired at the end of long and taxing days. Yet, even then she’s eager to read the latest installment of whatever project I’m working on; to speak wisdom, life, and clarity into the writing; and to encourage an oft-insecure soul by reminding him of our sufficiency in Christ. As if that were not enough, every evening I also get the refreshment and mirth of a story, a game, or a not-infrequent dance party with John, Anna, Elinor, and Evangeline. Where would Answering Speech be—indeed, where would I be—without such a slew of undeserved mercies?

During the writing of this book, the Lord called me to serve as pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hinckley, Minnesota. There, with great joy and gratitude, I was able to walk through the chapters of Answering Speech in conjunction with our Sunday evening prayer services. It was a wonderful, fitting way to finalize the manuscript. It is to the members of First Presbyterian that I dedicate this work. May the years to come find us fervently praying together in answer to the God who addresses us in Christ, being formed by the Spirit ever more into Christ’s image, and glorifying our God and Father with one voice.

Soli Deo gloria.

Teach me to seek You, and reveal yourself to me as I seek, because I can neither seek You if You do not teach me how, nor find You unless You reveal Yourself. Let me seek You in desiring You; let me desire You in seeking You; let me find You in loving You; let me love You in finding You. . . . I do not try, Lord, to attain Your lofty heights, because my understanding is in no way equal to it. But I do desire to understand Your truth a little, that truth that my heart believes and loves. For I do not seek to understand so that I may believe; but I believe so that I may understand. For I believe this also, that “unless I believe, I shall not understand.”

Anselm of Canterbury

Proslogion

1  In Anselm of Canterbury: The Major Works, ed. Brian Davies and G. R. Evans (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 11.

2  Davies and Evans, Anselm of Canterbury, 84–85, emphasis added.

3  Eugene H. Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor: Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction (Dallas: Word, 1989), 100.

4  Charles H. Spurgeon, “Robinson Crusoe’s Text,” sermon preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, August 30, 1885, https://archive.spurgeon.org/sermons/1876.php.

5  Peterson, The Contemplative Pastor, 16.

6  Eugene H. Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989), 6.

7  Tertullian, Concerning Prayer, in Tertullian’s Treatises: Concerning Prayer, Concerning Baptism, trans. Alexander Souter (London: SPCK, 1919), 20–21 (§1); see, further, 27–28 (§9).

8  The present project has several points of overlap with, and many lines of influence from, Michael S. Horton’s covenantal (word-centered) theological prolegomenon. See Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002); Horton, The Christian Faith: A Systematic Theology for Pilgrims on the Way (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011), 35–222.

9  In The Prayers and Meditations of St. Anselm with the Proslogion, trans. and ed. Benedicta Ward (New York: Penguin, 1973), 91–92.

Part 1

God

But, someone will say, does God not know, even without being reminded, both in what respect we are troubled and what is expedient for us, so that it may seem in a sense superfluous that he should be stirred up by our prayers—as if he were drowsily blinking or even sleeping until he is aroused by our voice?

John Calvin

Institutes of the Christian Religion

You, O Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, have made this revelation to your servant, saying, “I will build you a house.” Therefore your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you.

2 Samuel 7:27

1

Answering the Sovereign God

Prayer is our part in dialogue with our covenantal Lord. In the new exodus work of Christ, God has become our Father and our God (John 20:17), so we can address him in prayer as such (Matt. 6:9). But who is the Father and God that we address as ours in prayer? He is the Father of Christ first and by begetting, and he is our Father derivatively and by exodus-wrought adoption “in Jesus’s name.”1 He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who in Christ extends to all nations the covenantal blessing of being “my people” and of him being “your God.” And he is the almighty Maker of earth and sea, the King who is sovereign over and in everything, the all-knowing and all-wise Lord of history, who does whatever he pleases.

It is here that we run into a roadblock when trying to comprehend prayer as dialogue with our covenantal Lord. What kind of dialogueis possible with a God who sovereignly ordains all that comes to pass? As John Calvin asked long ago, what’s the point of lifting up the thoughts and desires of our hearts to a God who already apparently knows them? If God has already made up his mind about what he’s going to do, does it really matter whether we offer our input in prayer? To put it in its simplest form: why pray if God is sovereign?

The question is often raised. And several helpful answers are available, some of which inform coming chapters. Here, as Jesus often does in the Gospels, I want to answer the question with a question: How can we pray with anything like the boldness and persevering fervency on display among biblical pray-ers unless we are persuaded that God is sovereign over all things as Lord of history? To fill this out, let us consider a few examples of prayer from Scripture, beginning with something of a “ground clearing” example, before addressing two further examples that help us construct a sturdy house of prayer.

Hezekiah’s Prayer in Isaiah 37

One of the major concerns of the first half of the book of Isaiah is the threat of Assyrian invasion in the eighth century BC.2 Isaiah exhorts the southern kingdom of Judah to trust in the Lord for deliverance from Assyrian aggression, and not to trust in political alliances with other nations. In particular, throughout Isaiah 28–31, Judah and the house of David seem especially tempted to ally with the powerful Egypt for protection against the Assyrian threat. But the Lord through the prophet makes remarkable promises to Israel, such as this one from Isaiah 31:8–9:

“The Assyrian shall fall by a sword, not of man;

and a sword, not of man, shall devour him;

and he shall flee from the sword,

and his young men shall be put to forced labor.

His rock shall pass away in terror,

and his officers desert the standard in panic,”

declares the Lord, whose fire is in Zion,

and whose furnace is in Jerusalem.

Be that as it may, in Isaiah 36–37, Sennacherib king of Assyria comes a-knockin’. His armies besiege Jerusalem. He mocks the living God and demands surrender. Trapped like a bird in a cage,3 Judah seems hopeless. But it only seems this way. The good news for Israel is this: there is a righteous branch on the throne of David who will lead Israel into peace. King Hezekiah takes charge, but he does so in a remarkable way, in the right way. He prays to the divine King for deliverance.

Hezekiah went up to the house of the Lord. . . . And Hezekiah prayed to the Lord: “O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, enthroned above the cherubim, you are the God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see; and hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he has sent to mock the living God. Truly, O Lord, the kings of Assyria have laid waste all the nations and their lands, and have cast their gods into the fire. For they were no gods, but the work of men’s hands, wood and stone. Therefore they were destroyed. So now, O Lord our God, save us from his hand, that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord.” (Isa. 37:14–20)

God responds immediately with a clear assurance:

Because you have prayed to me concerning Sennacherib king of Assyria, this is the word that the Lord has spoken concerning him:

“. . . I will put my hook in your [Sennacherib’s] nose

and my bit in your mouth,

and I will turn you back on the way

by which you came.” (Isa. 37:21–22, 29)

And God walks the talk. As Isaiah 37 goes on to relate, the angel of the Lord strikes down 185,000 Assyrians overnight, leaving Sennacherib and his armies (or what is left of them) with no choice but to retreat to their country.

For our purposes, the key question is this: What was responsible for the deliverance of Jerusalem? Was it Hezekiah’s prayer? God seems to say so. He assures Hezekiah that he will thwart Assyria “because you have prayed to me” (Isa. 37:21). But didn’t God earlier make promises to Judah that he would deliver from Assyrian oppression, for example in Isaiah 31:8–9? Shouldn’t we say, instead, that Jerusalem’s deliverance was owing to God’s sovereign promise and purpose? After all, God himself in his response to Hezekiah’s prayer says of Assyria’s destruction, “I determined it long ago” (Isa. 37:26). So which is responsible—Hezekiah’s prayer or God’s sovereign plan and promise? It is, of course, a faulty question posing a false alternative. We do not need to choose between God’s promise and our prayers, between God’s rule and our requests, between God’s sovereignty and our supplications. The latter are, in God’s mystery, wisdom, and goodness, the means through which the former works. The sovereign God of the cosmos, whose plan of redemption is perfect and cannot be thwarted, purposes to accomplish his work in the world through the faithful prayers of his people.

Prayer and the “Responsibility Pie Chart”

Far too easily we fall into the trap of pitting God’s sovereign plan against the effectiveness of prayer. The question “Why pray if God is sovereign in everything?” carries in its very terms and structure a skewed outlook. It presents effective prayer as something undermined by God’s sovereignty. If God is sovereign, then prayer doesn’t really do anything. Or if prayer is effective, then God must not be sovereign or must somehow limit his sovereign power. We imagine that God’s sovereignty and our responsibility are comparable items of the same order, related to each other as two divisions of a “responsibility pie chart,” with their percentages being in inverse relationship to each other: the bigger the slice we give to God, the less reason will we have to pray.

Part of the problem with this is a breakdown in a healthy doctrine of creation. At the heart of the doctrine of creation is the conviction that the Creator is fundamentally and absolutely other than the creature. To imagine God’s sovereignty and the necessity of prayer as species of the same genus, and therefore as vying for space in the “responsibility pie chart,” is to contradict the doctrine of creation. It’s to begin with false knowledge about who the Creator is and who we are. It is not adequate to say that God is a lot bigger than us and has a lot more power than us and thus typically bears more responsibility for events than us. Rather, he is wholly other than us. His responsibility and our responsibility are not two different slices of the same pie; rather, God is the Maker of the pie. The Creator establishes our responsibility as his creatures.4 In the same manner, the Creator’s sovereignty does not moot effective prayer but establishes it.

God really does engage our words addressed to him in prayer. He listens to them. He acts on them. But he does so in the manner not of a creature but of the Creator, acting on and through the prayers of the saints as means to bring about changes in the world. In this way, at least, prayer is a matter of real dialogue with the divine. Surely doubts will remain among many. In particular, some might question whether this really counts as dialogue, whether God really responds to prayer or simply incorporates prayer into a prior purpose established quite apart from prayer. We will delay looking at the fullest Christian word on the matter until our conclusion. But for now, when it comes to the general question of God’s plan and our prayer, we can say that Scripture doesn’t present us with an either–or. We are not forced to choose. Episodes like Isaiah 36–37 are given in Scripture to help us know how to think about such things—and, just as importantly, how not to talk about such things. With the help of the prayer of Hezekiah, we can see that the question “Why pray if God is sovereign in everything?” smuggles some wrong-headed assumptions that Scripture neither demands nor expects us to make about the nature of God, responsibility, and prayer. To get better answers, we must ask better questions.5 This leads us to a second biblical prayer.

Jesus’s Prayer in John 17

John 17 is sometimes referred to as Jesus’s high priestly prayer. It is Jesus’s extended prayer just prior to his arrest and crucifixion, a prayer for his disciples, for those who believe in him, for all who are in Christ today. It’s a precious passage of Scripture where we see the love of Christ enacted in the form of prayer to the Father for our everlasting good. Here’s how Jesus begins his prayer: “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you” (v. 1).

That statement requires clarification at two points. First, what is the “hour” to which Jesus refers? This language of a coming “hour” (or “time”) appears in several other places in the Gospel according to John, helping us fill in what Jesus means in John 17.6 An important instance is found in John 12: the “hour” is a time for Jesus to be “glorified” (12:23) and for the Father to “glorify” his own name as well (12:27–28). What’s more, the Father sent the Son into the world with the express purpose of meeting this “hour” (12:27). This was the divine plan all along. So when Jesus says that “the hour has come” in John 17:1, he means something like this: “The appointed time for glorification is upon us.” Or “the moment you’ve been eternally planning for has arrived, in which to glorify me and yourself.”

In one sense, then, it’s unsurprising that Jesus goes on to say, “Father . . . glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.” This glorification of Son and Father is exactly what this “hour” means and is about. It’s almost as if Jesus is being redundant. But it’s not mere repetition. The two statements address the same subject matter; but they are two different kinds of statements, two different speech acts. The first statement is an assertion or affirmation; the second statement is a request, a supplication, a prayer.

Here is where the second clarification becomes crucial. The logical relationship between Jesus’s assertion (“the hour has come”) and his prayer (“glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you”) is not expressly stated. What’s the link that Jesus must be assuming between the assertion and the prayer? How do these statements relate? What conjunctions might we add to clarify the implicit logical connection? Most likely, it is an inferential relationship. Jesus offers in the first statement a reason for the Father to act on his prayer: Father, because the hour has come, therefore glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you.

Let’s pause to think about how odd this is. Jesus is saying, in effect, “Father, since the hour in which you have purposed to glorify me and yourself has come, therefore glorify me and yourself.” Jesus prays that the Father would do what he has sovereignly purposed to do from eternity past!

Why pray if God is going to sovereignly do what he wills anyway? Jesus turns that sensibility on its head, stirring up a different question: How could we pray with enduring confidence, boldness, and fervor without awareness of and assurance about God’s sovereign commitments, purposes, promises, pursuits, and power? On the heels of acknowledging God’s sovereign plan to glorify him, Jesus prays that God would work out his purpose to glorify him. The sovereignty of God doesn’t discourage Jesus from praying. It encourages him to pray. God’s sovereign promises and purposes give him reasons to pray, reasons to offer to God for fulfilling his request, reasons to expect that God will respond favorably. The will of God made known to him informs what he prays for, freeing him to pray with boldness and eagerness, knowing that the things he is seeking in prayer are at the center of the heart and purposes of the sovereign God.

Prayer and the “Will of God”

At this point, we might think that Jesus has a leg up on us. Jesus knows God’s eternal purpose, knows God’s will to glorify the Son. He is the Son of God, after all! Of course, Jesus can pray with boldness and confidence about that. But we are different. We don’t have the advantage of knowing what Jesus knows, of being privy to God’s will, so we can’t pray with confidence and fervency as Jesus prays.

This is muddled thinking. (It doesn’t help that we often functionally operate with an unbiblical Christology that assumes that because Jesus is God, therefore he can do things or know things that we “normal humans” can’t.)7 To be sure, Jesus has a different personal experience and a different personal knowledge than we do, just as you have a different personal experience and knowledge than I have. But it is important to realize that, like Jesus, we too can know the will of God in a way that informs our prayers and strengthens our confidence in praying.

We must specify what “will of God” we are talking about. It is not the secret or hidden will of God, what theologians call the “will of decree,” his sovereign, unbreakable plan wherein he ordains all that comes to pass (see, e.g., Dan. 4:35; Rom. 1:10). As Moses says in Deuteronomy 29:29, “The secret things belong to the Lord our God.” It is not our responsibility, nor is it within our power, to try to divine the secret will of decree of our sovereign God. Access to that will is not the golden ticket to confident prayer. Access to that will of God would, in fact, be the death of prayer. But, as Moses goes on to add, “the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.” We are given access to and can know God’s revealed moral will, what theologians call God’s “will of command.” God has spoken and revealed in his Word (living and written) what he “wills” for us to take up and heed, what he desires to see among the nations, what he is committed to with respect to the creation (see, e.g., Ezra 10:11; 1 Thess. 4:2–3).8 We can and should inform our prayers according to that will of God. We can and should, for the sake of our prayers, attend to what God has revealed of himself and has already brought about in the world.

That Paul was in the practice of this is evident in the letter to the Ephesians. In chapter 1, Paul first blesses God for what he has already accomplished and revealed in Christ for the church (vv. 3–14), then he prays to God for the Ephesian church’s continued growth and good (vv. 15–23). The relationship between the blessing and the supplication is instructive. These two speech acts (blessing and supplicating) are “about” the same stuff, have nearly identical “content.” Table 1 shows some of the most significant parallels, indicating that Paul’s thoughts in verses 15–23 have not strayed far from his thoughts in verses 3–14.

Table 1. Blessing and prayer in Ephesians 1

The Blessing in Ephesians 1:3–14

The Prayer in Ephesians 1:15–23

“the God . . . of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 3)

“the God of our Lord Jesus Christ” (v. 17)

“the praise of his glory” (vv. 12, 14; also v. 6)

“the Father of glory” (v. 17)

“Holy Spirit” (v. 13)

“the Spirit of . . .” (v. 17)*

“wisdom and insight” (v. 8)

“wisdom . . . in the knowledge” (vv. 17–18)

“making known . . . the mystery of his will” (v. 9)

“revelation” (v. 17)

“riches of his grace” (v. 7)

“riches of his glorious inheritance” (v. 18)

“inheritance” (vv. 11, 14)

“inheritance” (v. 18)

“that we should be holy” (v. 4)

“the saints” (v. 18)

“in the heavenly places” (v. 3)