Calvin's Second Rule of Prayer

One thing all of God’s people can do in an uncertain time such as ours is to pray fervently and regularly while trusting in God’s providential purposes, whatever these purposes might be. John Calvin is a useful guide here. His rules for prayer are wise and simple.

In his second rule, Calvin cautions against rote prayers arising from habit and cold hearts. What do we seek when we pray?

The Second Rule—Repentance and a Sincere Sense of Need

The Sense of Need Excludes Unreality

Let this be the second rule: that in our petitions we ever sense our own insufficiency, and earnestly pondering how we need all that we seek, join with this prayer an earnest—nay, burning—desire to attain it. For many perfunctorily intone prayers after a set form, as if discharging a duty to God. And although they admit it to be a necessary remedy for their ills, because it would be fatal to lack the help of God which they are beseeching, still it appears that they perform this duty from habit, because their hearts are meanwhile cold, and they do not ponder what they ask.

Calvin also cautions against praying for forgiveness when someone does not truly acknowledge they are sinners. Such people mock God and are merely going through the motions because they are “stuffed with depravity.”

Indeed, a general and confused feeling of their need leads them to prayer, but it does not arouse them, as it were in present reality, to seek the relief of their poverty. Now what do we account more hateful or even execrable to God than the fiction of someone asking pardon for his sins, all the while either thinking he is not a sinner or at least not thinking he is a sinner? Unquestionably something in which God himself is mocked! Yet, as I have just said, mankind is so stuffed with such depravity that for the sake of mere performance men often beseech God for many things that they are dead sure will, apart from his kindness, come to them from some other source, or already lie in their possession.

Nor, cautions Calvin, should rote and thoughtless prayer be seen as a way to appease God.

A fault that seems less serious but is also not tolerable is that of others who, having been imbued with this one principle—that God must be appeased by devotions—mumble prayers without meditation. Now the godly must particularly beware of presenting themselves before God to request anything unless they yearn for it with sincere affection of heart, and at the same time desire to obtain it from him. Indeed, even though in those things which we seek only to God’s glory we do not seem at first glance to be providing for our own need, yet it is fitting that they be sought with no less ardor and eagerness. When, for example, we pray that “his name be sanctified” [Matt. 6:9; Luke 11:2], we should, so to speak, eagerly hunger and thirst after that sanctification.

Calvin then asks the question we all ought to consider before praying—what is our state of mind when we pray? God often prompts us to pray fervently especially in times of difficult circumstances.

Is prayer at times dependent upon our passing mood?

If anyone should object that we are not always urged with equal necessity to pray, I admit it. And to our benefit James gives us this distinction: “Is anyone among you sad? Let him pray. Is any cheerful? Let him sing” [James 5:13]. Therefore common sense itself dictates that, because we are too lazy, God pricks us the more sharply, as occasion demands, to pray earnestly. David calls this a “seasonable time” [Ps. 32:6; 31:6] because, as he teaches in many other passages [e.g., Ps. 94:19], the more harshly troubles, discomforts, fears, and trials of other sorts press us, the freer is our access to him, as if God were summoning us to himself.

At the same time Paul’s statement is no less true, that we must “pray at all times” [Eph. 6:18; 1 Thess. 5:17]. For however much after our heart’s desire affairs may prosperously flow and occasion for happiness surround us on all sides, still there is no point of time when our need does not urge us to pray. . . Now if we should consider how many dangers at every moment threaten, fear itself will teach us that we at no single time may leave off praying.

Awareness of our sinfulness should keep us from being nonchalant during prayer.

Still, we can better recognize this fact in spiritual matters. For when should the many sins of which we are conscious allow us nonchalantly to stop praying as suppliants for pardon of our guilt and penalty? When do temptations yield us a truce from hastening after help? Moreover, zeal for the Kingdom of God and his glory ought so to lay hold on us, not intermittently but constantly, that the same opportunity may ever remain ours. It is therefore not in vain that constancy in prayer is enjoined upon us.

Proper prayer demands repentance–Calvin cautions that God closes the door to us without it.

For this reason, they who delight in their own foulness aspire not at all. Lawful prayer, therefore, demands repentance. Hence arises the commonplace in Scripture that God does not hearken to the wicked [John 9:31], and that their prayers [cf. Prov. 28:9; Isa. 1:15]—just as their sacrifices [cf. Prov. 15:8; 21:27]—are abominable to him. For it is right that they who bar their hearts should find God’s ears closed, and that they who by their hardheartedness provoke his severity should not feel him conciliatory. . . . It is indeed true, as we shall again see a little later, that the prayers poured out by the godly do not depend upon their worthiness; yet John’s warning is not superfluous: “We receive from him whatever we ask because we keep his commandments” [1 John 3:22], while a bad conscience closes the door to us. From this it follows that only sincere worshipers of God pray aright and are heard. Let each one, therefore, as he prepares to pray be displeased with his own evil deeds, and (something that cannot happen without repentance) let him take the person and disposition of a beggar.

Institutes 3.20.6-7