Prayer: it is a mainstay of the Christian life, but is also a struggle, at least for me. The temptations of the world around me, the calendar events of the day, the lack of discipline of my own mind: these often lead me away from the duty and joy of prayer. Reading Calvin on prayer has been both practical and encouraging. Those who talk of Calvin as strictly intellectual and inaccessible have evidently never read him when he says:
...[I]t is fully evident that unless voice and song, if interposed with prayer, spring from deep feeling of heart, neither has any value or profit in the least with God...
~Jean Calvin, Institutes Book III, Chapter 20, Part 31
That is practical, personal advice from a pastor's heart. And I was edified by this reminder that we may pray unceasingly because God give to us unceasingly:
The reason why Paul enjoins us both to pray and to give thanks without ceasing is, of course, that he wishes all men to lift up their desires to God, with all possible constancy, at all times, in all places, and in all affairs and transactions, to expect all things from him, and give give him praise for all things, since he offers us unfailing reasons to praise and pray.
J. Calvin, Institutes, Book III, Chapter 20, Part 28
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