A Moment With Pastor Fred

My good friend Pat Quinn serves as the director of counseling at University Reformed Church in East Lansing. He’s preached here several times in my absence. Crossway published a book by Pat on corporate prayer. I quote from his chapter, Prayer Is and Should Be Trinitarian.  Our prayers need to include all members of the Trinity.   

“After decades of reading the Bible, following Jesus Christ, and participating in countless worship services, I am more convinced than ever that prayer is and should be Trinitarian. Of course, this doesn’t mean that every single prayer must reference the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. But for prayer to be truly Christian, it must consistently bear witness to the three-in-one … As the old saying goes, we pray to the Father, through the Son, by the power of the Spirit. Since the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are equally divine and essential for our salvation, it makes perfect biblical, theological, and practical sense that we would refer to each of them in prayer. Matthew Henry’s prayer of adoration is a good example of Trinitarian prayer: ‘We pay our homage to three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: for these three are one. We adore thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth; and the eternal Word, who was in the beginning with God, and was God, by whom all things were made, and without whom was not anything made that was made … We also worship the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, whom the Son has sent from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, who proceedeth from the Father, and who is sent to teach us all things, and to bring all things to remembrance.’”