With Christmas behind us and the New Year ahead of us, many people begin looking ahead to resolutions for the new year. Whether pursuing New Year’s resolutions is a helpful practice to you or not, I want to take the opportunity to introduce the primary New Year’s resolution that I intend to pursue. This is also a resolution I have been presenting to our church.
Why be so bold about suggesting a resolution to a large group of people? I believe the answer is related to this question. What is the greatest sin of the modern American church? There are of course many sins that may be justifiably laid at the church’s feet. Pragmatism that replaces biblical conviction, or contextualizing God’s Word so much that we reject clear, applicable teaching, or bowing to culture’s woke sensitivities, are all candidates. While these issues are serious, and compromise and heresy should be confronted wherever they are found, there is a greater and more widespread sin: the sin of prayerlessness.
Perhaps you already recognize your own need to grow in the discipline of prayer. Many Christians, even godly ones, admit to me that their prayer life is an area of weakness that needs strengthening. It is my desire to be more diligent with prayer that pleases the Lord in 2025. If you agree that you need to be strengthened in communing with the Lord, keep reading for specific ways we as Christians can do this in the New Year.
Need for Prayer
We are not the only ones who recognize the importance of growing in prayer. In Luke 11:1 the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him directly, “Lord, teach us to pray.” Notice that they were not primarily asking Jesus to teach them how to pray. Rather, they were asking Him to teach them to engage in prayer regularly. They apparently recognized this need by observing the disciples of John the Baptist. He apparently taught his disciples to engage in prayer frequently and fervently. By asking Jesus to teach them to pray, His disciples were admitting that their major problem was prayerlessness.
If we zoom out and observe the surrounding context of Luke 11, we can plainly see that Jesus also wanted His disciples to learn how to pray. His instruction is summarized in the word “importunity” from Luke 11:8. In addressing the disciples’ request, Jesus explained they need to learn how to keep asking, to keep seeking, and to keep knocking. They needed to pray with boldness and shamelessness. This is what it means to pray with importunity. 2025 needs to be a year in which Christians all around the world pray with importunity.
The context of Luke 11 further strengthens the case that prayer is of first importance. At the very end of Luke 10, the text explains that Martha was “encumbered about with much serving” (Luke 10:40). Mary, by contrast, did the right thing, which was spending time with Jesus. In rebuking Martha, Jesus said that spending time with Him was the “one thing [that] is needful” (Luke 10:42).
Many of us find this Martha mentality in us. Even if we wouldn’t say it, we act as if we’re too busy doing “important things” to take time to be with Jesus. Beware that mentality. Believers have nothing more important to do than to spend time with Jesus!
Further, it is in both the Old Testament where the Lord makes two surprising statements about how much prayer is lacking. In James 4:2, the Spirit tells us that “ye have not, because ye ask not.” Think of the ways we would see the Lord work if only we talked to Him about it! Likewise, in Isaiah 59:16, the Lord “saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor.” How amazing is it that God wondered at what He saw. He looked for a man to intercede for others, but His search came up empty. May it not be said of us in 2025 that there are no intercessors. If the Lord tarries in His coming, this New Year provides us a fresh opportunity to prioritize our prayer time like it should be.
Righteous Prayers
If we are to grow in prayer, we must be sure that our prayers please our Lord. The kinds of prayers to avoid include asking “amiss,” as James 4:3 says. Something that is amiss is diseased and evil, full of greed and rooted in selfishness. Another kind of praying to avoid is praying to be seen, like Jesus described the Pharisees in Matthew 6:5. Their prayers were full of the desirer earthly recognition and rooted vanity. Praying to boost the ego this way is hypocritical behavior. Jesus says in Matthew 6 that such people will not be heard.
A third kind of unrighteous prayer is to pray with unconfessed sin. Psalm 66:18 simply states that, “if I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me.” Praying without confessing sin leads to God hiding His face, as Isaiah 66:18 says. We cannot hold onto our sin while we pray to get ahold of God. The only prayer He will hear from a person engaging in such unrighteousness is a prayer of repentance.
Answered Prayer
While the Lord declines prayers offered in unrighteousness, He promises to hear righteous prayers. James 5:16 says that “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much. Though sometimes God says “no,” He often answers in the affirmative. Scripture provides several wonderful examples of God granting requests, such as hearing the petitions of the church and miraculously delivering Peter from prison in Acts 12. James 5 gives another example, stating that, although “Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are,” he prayed and the Lord withheld rain for three years, and, when the man of God prayed again, blessed the earth with rain in response to his prayer. It has been rightly said that there’s no greater defense for the Christian faith than answered prayer.
Focused prayers
With these things said, let me make a few practical suggestions. First, remember that things that get scheduled to get done. So, assess your responsibilities throughout the week and pick a time and a place to set aside for your prayer-and-Bible-reading-time. Plan to protect the time and make the place sacred.
Second, consider writing each of your daily prayers all year long. The prayers don’t have to be lengthy, maybe 100 words or less. After all, the model prayer recorded in Matthew 6:9-13 is only 65 words. These written prayers could offer a couple benefits. The first benefit is that you will end the year with a record of 365 written prayers, that detail how you’re talking to the Lord. The second benefit is that it can help you be thoughtful about your prayer time, instead of just winging it and falling asleep or being distracted.
Third, I challenge you to write half your prayers as praise, and the other half as petition. For example, your January 1 prayer could be exclusively a prayer of adoration and praise to God. Then, January 2 would the first day you would petition God for things you need. Following this pattern, the odd days of the year would be praise days, and the even days would be petition days. This pattern has biblical precedent. After all, the model prayer begins with praise before moving on to petitions. If you develop a habit of praise, especially by using the prayers of praise modeled in Scripture, you will find yourself more often praying the will of God during your times of petition. Also, you will be more in tune to praying things for the Lord’s sake and not just your own. Our tendency is to treat God like a cosmic Santa Claus. Beware that tendency. He is our Master, our Creator, and our Lord, and He is worthy to be humbly and thoughtfully and intentionally praised.
A final benefit of alternating praise and petition this way is that, if you take time to write out your prayers of praise and prayers of petition on alternating days, it will become much easier for you to come up with prayers of praise. This is because you’ll have a record of your petitions to reference the things you asked God for and His corresponding affirmative answer. Each answer to prayer He gives will be yet another motivation to praise Him. Nothing will strengthen your faith in God more then asking Him to meet a need, or the need of a loved one, and then you taking time to recognize how He provided. If you follow this pattern throughout 2025, your faith in Christ will be strengthened.
Conclusion
Of course, not everybody will be able to do exactly what I’m suggesting. Perhaps, though, you adopt your own version. Strength for Life has prayer journals available in our store, but regardless of where you get the journal, plan to fill it with daily praises and petitions.
Prayer is the “one thing that’s needful” in 2025. Let this be a year Christians all over the world pray with importunity.
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