Love and Prayer

John Piper's book Desiring God is loaded with one-liners that leave the born again reader reeling back in wonderment of the potency and efficacy of the Scriptures. Piper is gifted with the ability to paint pictures of biblical truths with one and two sentence brush strokes that captivate and fascinate the mind.

In the chapter on Prayer, he stated something profoundly true along these lines (I was listening to it on audiobook): "When the pump of love has run dry, the pipe of prayer has not gone deep enough."

When I read across this section of the chapter about how prayer enables us to love one another, it stung my heart with immediate conviction. I had to pause my iPod, stop running alongside the street, and just contemplate its application to my life...as I huffed and puffed as a sweaty mess.

Questions swirled in my mind:

Who is difficult for me to love?
Where is the limit of my love exposed?
What is the love of Christ?
How do I pray for them?
How can I pray for them more?

The depth of Christ's prayer life was continually found in the depth of the Father's love. He withdrew into the hills for prayer with His Father, He cried over unrepentant Jerusalem, He sweat drops of blood in the Garden of Gethsemane before He endured the cross. What love. What prayer.

Hebrews 5:7 "In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence."