Reverence in Prayer

God welcomes His people to draw near His very throne in prayer, but that doesn’t mean we should approach with a cavalier attitude. Today, R.C. Sproul urges us to remember to whom we are praying: the Sovereign over heaven and earth.

Does prayer change things? You bet it changes things. It changes all kinds of things. Prayer changes us. God gave prayer to the church, not for God’s benefit. The Sovereign has condescended to give us an audience. He’s invited us into the heavenly palace. He has lifted the scepter and told us to enter. We have access to His very throne.

But when we go there, we don’t walk in there like Babe Ruth did when he met the king of England. Before Babe Ruth went to England for the first time, he had an audience with the king—King George, I guess. And before he was to meet with the king, the king’s counselors, and the assistants, and so on carefully briefed Babe Ruth on all of the propriety that was necessary to maintain proper protocol and explained how, when he went in, he had to bow before the king, and address him as “Your Majesty,” and all of that sort of thing. And so, what does Babe Ruth do? In typical American fashion, he walks right in the room where the king is and he walks up to him and says, “Hi, king.” See, that’s America. That’s the way we are.

Well, sometimes I think that’s how we feel when we come into the presence of God: “Hey, hi, God. How you doing?” We only talk that way with God, with the kind of familiarity that breeds contempt and reveals contempt, when we forget who He is and we forget who we are. And we forget that we are in the presence of the King. Not just a king, but the King—the King of kings, the Lord of lords, the One who is absolutely sovereign.