Week 2: The Upward Movement: From Grocery Lists to Glory
Estimated Reading time: 10-15 minutes.
For many Christians, prayer is meant to be life-giving, yet it often remains a hidden source of frustration and shame. We know it is essential, yet we find a thousand reasons to avoid it. We readily declare our trust in God, but our anxiety usually consumes far more of our time than our prayers.
Why is it so hard to simply sit and be with our Father?
It is not just because we are busy or distracted. It is an issue of the heart. As John Calvin famously stated, the human heart is a perpetual idol factory. We are constantly manufacturing rival gods—taking good longings like approval, comfort, or control, and turning them into ultimate things. Due to the Fall, our natural, default inclination is not to worship God; it is to worship ourselves and our desires.
When we choose not to pray, we are revealing what our hearts truly trust. It is our way of telling our Creator that we can handle life on our own. Theologian Michael Reeves expands on this reality, noting how our prayer habits act as a direct mirror to our souls:
"In one sense your prayer life is disgustingly revealing: it does reveal who you really are. For all your talk and theory of faith, your prayer life reveals how much you really want communion with God and how much you really depend on him. I stress it absolutely does not tell you about your security as an unrejectable child of God, but it does tell you, very accurately, how much of a baby you are spiritually, how much of a hypocrite you are, and how much you actually love the Lord. Thus if your tendency is to think you’re rather wonderful, just remember your prayer life." — Michael Reeves, Enjoy Your Prayer Life
Those words sting, but we must remember that God’s exposure is never meant to shame us into hiding; it is meant to lovingly reveal our deep need so He can draw us closer.
An Honest Inventory and a New Beginning
Take a gentle, honest inventory of your own prayer life right now. When you pray, is the pull of your heart Godward—toward adoration and worship—or does it immediately pull inward, centering entirely on yourself, your schedule, and your problems?
There is no shame or condemnation if we are inward; some seasons its unavoidable and there’s buckets of grace for it. It is simply a diagnostic tool to help locate where our heart is at. To be clear, as Pastor Michael recently noted: "Don’t hear me wrong, God wants us to bring our needs before Him; in fact, we are commanded to do so. But if prayer only becomes seeking God’s hand: what He can give us, we will miss His face." Daniel Henderson states, “If you seek his face, he is delighted to show you his hand.”
However, if we find that our prayers have become mostly about us, the pathway forward isn't to muster up more discipline or just "try harder." It begins with confession. We simply confess to our Father that we have made prayer about ourselves rather than Him. We acknowledge our idols and ask Him to forgive our self-centeredness. This honest admission is not a moment of failture; it is the beautiful, freeing starting line for a new journey of God-centered prayer.
The ultimate goal of prayer is God Himself. If we want a prayer life that lasts, we have to change our motivation. Henderson reminds us, "The only enduring motive for prayer is that our never-changing God is worthy to be sought."
The First Step: Reverence
This brings us to the first crucial step in reshaping our prayer lives: Reverence. This is the upward movement.
Reverence begins by realizing that we aren't the ones initiating this communion in the first place. In his book Habits of Grace, David Mathis reminds us that God has already spoken through His Word:
"Prayer, for the Christian, is not merely talking to God, but responding to the One who has initiated toward us. He has spoken first. This is not a conversation we start, but a conversation that has already begun into which we’ve been drawn. His voice breaks the silence. Then, in prayer, we speak to the God who has spoken."
When we realize we are stepping into a conversation He has already started, our posture can shift.
In this light, reverence is the active pursuit of beholding God's character before presenting our needs. For most of us, our default ratio is roughly 10% reverence and 90% requests. If we want our hearts to change, we have to learn how to momentarily set aside our requests so we can simply worship.
As Henderson explains, "Prayer becomes transformational when we embrace the original and enduring context for all praying. A worship-based approach fixes our heart first on the majesty of God, the person of Christ…—and excites within us an appetite for Him."
This worship-based approach isn't just a modern method we are trying; it is the exact pattern Jesus gave us. When the disciples observed the vibrant, life-giving way Jesus communed with the Father, they asked, "Lord, teach us to pray." Jesus responded by giving them a template—a rhythm for their hearts to follow.
And where did He start?
Not with a list of needs, but with reverence. He began with, “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” In this single opening line, He holds together two seemingly opposed realities:
Our Father (The Intimate): Representing deep intimacy, warmth, authority, and provision.
In heaven (The Infinite): Representing absolute holiness, purity, and a majesty that has no equal or rival.
Reverence is holding that tension—approaching God with both intimacy and awe.
The Necessity of the Spirit
Before we look at how to practically do this, we must acknowledge a humbling reality: you cannot force yourself into adoration.
You can read the right chapters and use the best questions, but if you are relying purely on your own mental effort, the Bible remains a flat book of facts, and God remains distant. To actually behold God, we need supernatural help.
This is why the Apostle Paul prayed for the Ephesian church, asking "that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened" (Ephesians 1:17-18).
Reverence is impossible without the Holy Spirit. We need the Spirit to flood our hearts. Any only then, can we truly see! Before we read a single verse to behold His face, our very first prayer must be a plea for the Spirit to open the eyes of our hearts so we can actually behold Him.
How to Practice Reverence: Hunting for Glory
We do not rely on human formulas; we rely on a pattern where Scripture feeds and the Spirit leads. When you open the Word, don't immediately look for a life lesson or a quick fix to your problems. Look for God.
However, we face a common hurdle: familiarity. We read a phrase like "The Lord is good," and because we’ve heard it a thousand times, it doesn't move our hearts to awe. We check the box and move on. To bridge the gap from head-level observation to heart-level worship, we can learn to double-click on the character of God using these four diagnostic prompts:
Observation: What is the specific attribute of God in the text?
Contrast (What is the alternative?): Why is it amazing that He treats you this way? What do you actually deserve, or what would a lesser god do?
Cross: How did Jesus demonstrate this specific attribute to you on the cross?
Adoration: Turn those thoughts into a direct statement of praise.
Let’s look at how this works practically, using a familiar passage:
“The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The Lord is good to all, and his mercy is over all that he has made.” — Psalm 145:8-9
Instead of reading this and immediately asking God to be merciful to your current stressful situation, pause and double-click on the text to bypass the mind to get to the heart:
Observation: He is slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
Contrast: I am so quick to anger, and my love is incredibly fickle. If God operated like I do, He would have abandoned me long ago. But His patience is infinite, and His love is stubborn.
Cross: The ultimate display of this mercy was at Calvary. Jesus took the holy, righteous anger I deserved so that I could receive the steadfast love I didn't earn.
Adoration: "God, I praise You because You do not treat me as my sins deserve. I praise You for Your costly mercy over me, despite my repeated failures Great is your steadfast love!"
Seeking His Face First
When we take the time to seek His face first, a profound shift happens. As Henderson says, "Our very motives for prayer are changed and elevated beyond anything merely earthly. Our heart is renewed with a longing for His glory."
When we are renewed with that longing, all of our other problems are finally seen in their rightful place—under His sovereign care. But if we start with our problems first, our vision becomes so clouded by anxiety that we miss His face entirely, and we rarely find true peace for the problems themselves. We lose on both levels.
Before you ask for a single thing today, spend time just looking at Him. When we finally see our Father clearly, the idols lose their power, and all of life is then seen in light of Him!