The Cost of Prayer

From “The Cost of Prayer” by Oswald Chambers:

Paul takes the illustration of battle and applies it to what goes on in a saint’s life. The whole meaning of putting on the armor of God is about prayer.  In this battle the struggle with the Devil centers around the position of prayer and the simplicity of prayer.  Prayer is easy to us because of what it cost God to enable us to pray.  It is the redemption of God, the agony of our Lord, that has made our salvation so easy and prayer so simple.  When we emphasize the cost of prayer to us, we are wrong. The cost to us is nothing.  It is a supreme and superb privilege marked by supernatural ease because of what it cost God.

We tend nowadays to worship prayer.  We stress nights of prayer and the difficulty and cost of prayer.  It is not prayer that is strenuous, but the overcoming of our own laziness.  If we make the basis of prayer our effort and agony, we mistake the basis of prayer.  The basis of prayer is not what it costs us, but what it cost God to enable us to pray.