Ep. 53: How to Enrich Your Prayer Life w/ Megan Hill (Gospel Coalition)

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, this is Andrew. Welcome to THE INDOUBT SHOW. Listen, we got a wonderful program today. We have Megan Hill, who is the managing editor at the Gospel Coalition, and we’re talking about the importance and significance of prayer. We explore the biblical lens on prayer and how it impacts a person’s life. And so she’s going to share some stories. I’m going to share some stories, and we’re just going to dive in and talk about all things prayer. And I know it is going to encourage you and bless you and challenge you when it comes to your prayer walk. The reality is all of us could improve our prayer life, and so we pray this impacts you, deeply, blesses you, and encourages you and your walk with God. All right, well, we have Megan Hill joining us. Megan, how are you doing?

Megan Hill:

I’m doing great. Thanks so much for having me, Andrew.

Andrew Marcus:

This is so awesome. We’re so honored to be connecting with you. So for our listeners, tell us a little bit about who you are, your ministry life, family life.

Megan Hill:

Yeah, sure. So I am coming to you from Western Massachusetts where I live with my husband, who is a PCA pastor. And we have four children, three boys who are in high school, and then a little girl who’s in elementary school. And I serve as the managing editor for the Gospel Coalition, and so I manage the content that goes on our website. And then I also do writing projects of my own, and so I have various books that I’ve written as well.

Andrew Marcus:

And you’ve written a book specifically on prayer.

Megan Hill:

Yeah, so it’s called Praying Together, and it’s about praying corporately with our families or communities, roommates, churches, the people that are around us.

Andrew Marcus:

Amazing. Amazing. So we’re doing, this month, we’re having a focus on prayer. And so I thought, man, it’ll be so amazing to connect with you, I’ve seen the book, and I’ve seen some of the articles you’ve written on Gospel Coalition, and you just have such a heart for prayer and for teaching on prayer, and so I thought let’s connect with you and dive in. Why is prayer significant? Maybe give us a current understanding of the practice of prayer in your personal life and what that looks like.

Megan Hill:

Yeah, sure. So I feel like prayer is one of those really intimidating topics to talk about or write about because none of us feel like we do it very well. And I don’t think you’ll ever meet a Christian who says, “Oh, my prayer life is all that it could be.” I think all of us, when we come to that topic, we’re immediately thinking, oh man. But simply understood, prayer is just talking to God. And so it is intended, it’s the Lord’s gift to us to be sort of just as natural as the conversations you have with your friends and your roommates and the people in your home. And so in my own personal life, what does that look like? Well, it looks like my alarm goes off in the morning, and I lay there for a few minutes and commit the day to the Lord, and bring to him the needs that I have and praise him and thank him for the day that’s before me and seek to receive it from his hand with thanksgiving.

Then later, it looks like a time of Bible reading and turning what I’m reading in scripture into prayer, praising God for the things he’s revealing in the scripture that I’m reading, asking him for the things that he says that I need. Then later, it looks like a time of family worship with the people in my home and spending time together, just 15 minutes with the people that are there, my kids, my husband, who’s there that night, guests, and reading the Bible, singing, spending time praying. And there, we especially pray for missionaries, for needs in our church, so some of those concerns that are kind of outside of ourselves. And then some days, depending on the day, it’s a church prayer meeting or it’s a time to pray with a friend who calls and says, “Hey, I’ve got this thing going on.” And I say, “Hey, can we just pray about that really quick right now?” So it’s those little things, just like those little conversations that we have that are the points where we’re talking to God, we’re bringing our request to him, we’re praising him.

And for each person, of course, it looks a little different, but I think the important thing is that we’re constant in prayer, as the scriptures say, that prayers are natural.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s so good. And so that family prayer and worship, does that happen every day?

Megan Hill:

Yeah, we try to do it every day.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s amazing.

Megan Hill:

It doesn’t always, always happen, but last night we were driving home from the basketball game, and we had a couple of teammates in the car with us, and it’s, okay, well, we’re all here in the same space, so we’re going to do it here. Sometimes we’re home and we do it in the living room, but wherever we happen to all be together, we do that.

Andrew Marcus:

So it’s a good reminder. Prayer is not just when you go to church on Sunday or prayer has to be in a certain place. It could be anywhere.

Megan Hill:

Right.

Andrew Marcus:

Anywhere and any time. And I love how you start the day right away. Some people will have an hour of devotions in the morning, but everyone has a different story, different family life, just a different setup. And so we don’t have to put pressure on ourselves, like, oh, I have to have X amount of time. No, no. It could just be a two five minute prayer just committing the day to the Lord, which I love that you mentioned that. And I wonder it’s intimidating because people get a little bit worried that they pray wrong. Is there such thing as wrong prayer or bad prayer?

Megan Hill:

I think that’s a great question. In Romans 8, the Bible talks about how the spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words, and that the Spirit knows the mind of the Father. And I love what J.I. Packer says about that verse. J.I. Packer says that the spirit fixes our prayers on the way up. And so that by the time our prayers jumbled and confused and not sure what we should pray for, and oh goodness, this sounds terrible, and my grammar’s wrong and my whatever’s wrong, by the time that prayer leaves your mouth or leaves your heart and gets to the throne of the Father, the spirit has fixed it, and it’s a perfect prayer-

Andrew Marcus:

That’s amazing.

Megan Hill:

… by the time it gets there.

Andrew Marcus:

Isn’t that amazing? It’s like the Holy Spirit is the chief editor, and all we have to do is just bring just the verbal whatever, and he just fixes it, edits it. By the time it gets there, oh, this is a great prayer.

Megan Hill:

Yes, exactly.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s such a good picture because people get so worried they’re going to pray wrong or they’re going to ask for the wrong things, or they just put too much pressure on themselves, and then they end up just not doing it. What an amazing tactic that the enemy has right now on people, and then they just stop communing with God because they’re afraid they’re going to screw up or say something wrong. So walk our listeners through the importance of prayer from a biblical lens. Give us some passages of scripture that maybe really stand out to you or mean a lot to you for your prayer life, and walk through what the Bible says about the significance and importance of prayer.

Megan Hill:

Yeah. We see prayer very early in the scriptures. Obviously when we see Adam and Eve right in the very first chapters of scripture, well, what are they doing? Well, even before sin, they’re walking through the garden and they’re talking with God, and they’re having this communion with God. And so we see, even just from the moment of their creation, that what they’re doing… Adam, well, the minute Eve was created, he just says this psalm of praise to God for this beautiful woman that God has created for him. So our very first parents, Adam and Eve, were people of prayer. And then we just continually see this throughout scripture. When Isaac and his wife, Rebecca were barren, that he prayed for his wife, the scripture tells us. And so he had this concern, and so he brought it to the Lord and he prayed.

When Abram was standing before Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Lord told him, “I’m going to destroy these cities,” then Abram prays and he asked for the Lord to have mercy. So even in the Old Testament, we see this pattern of prayer, but of course then, when we get to the New Testament, then prayer doesn’t become less important. In fact, it becomes more important. We have the example of Jesus himself who you might think, “Oh, why did Jesus need to pray? Jesus was God.” And yet he was talking with the Father, and that relationship was so important that he was always in the place of prayer. People were always going to look for him. Where is Jesus? Oh, he’s gone off to pray. And he teaches us to pray. So in the prayer that we call the Lord’s Prayer, that was his disciples coming to him saying, “We don’t know how to pray. How do we pray?”

And so Jesus taught them to pray and gave them that pattern for prayer. And then as we move further into the New Testament, then we see the church. And of course, the New Testament churches all the time praying. In the Book of Acts, they’re praying for the Holy Spirit, they’re praying for boldness, they’re praying for gospel success. And then in the epistles, those letters that Paul wrote to the New Testament churches, he’s always giving them commands and exhortations to pray. Pray without ceasing. Pray at all times in the Spirit. Those familiar verses that we know about prayer come to us as exhortations to us to pray as well.

Andrew Marcus:

So good. And then continuing on, so we see the epistles, we see Paul, what does it mean to pray in the Spirit?

Megan Hill:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

What would that look like for someone who’s listening, they’re like, “Oh, I don’t know how to do that, or what that even means”?

Megan Hill:

Yeah. So I think one part of that is what we already said with this awareness that the spirit is praying alongside us, and the spirit is hearing our prayers, and the spirit is fixing them and sanctifying them. I think another part of that is that the spirit moves us to pray. Non-Christians don’t really have an interest in talking to God. But when the Lord has changed your heart and he has given you the spirit, then you want to talk to the Lord. You want to talk to God. And so the spirit in us moves us to pray. And I think sometimes we too quickly pass that over, and we should lean into that a little bit more. When you feel concerned for someone, well, that’s not just concern. That may be the spirit prompting you to pray for them. When you wake up in the middle of the night and you can’t figure out, why am I thinking about this person or this situation? Well, it may not be random that you’ve woken up in the middle of the night. That may be the spirit waking you up for the purpose of prayer.

When you meet somebody who is in a hard situation, well, that’s the Spirit that’s brought them to you. I sometimes say that we can pray even for opportunities to pray, and my friend calls them divine appointments. You can start your day by saying, “Lord, give me something to pray about. Show me what you want me to pray about.” And the Spirit gives you those things to pray about as well.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, it’s so good. I feel like for me. In my life personally, I’ll see someone on the road that looks like someone I know, and I’ll always take that as, oh, I think I need to just quickly pray. Again, it doesn’t have to be an hour long prayer. Even if you look at Nehemiah, there’s, “Oh, why are you look down? What’s wrong? What’s going on?” And then he says, “I waited. I looked up, I prayed to the Lord, and then I responded.” So obviously, he wasn’t looking up and praying for an hour while this person’s waiting in front of him and it’s super awkward. It’s just a quick popcorn prayer, like a short, “Lord, would you give me the word? Lord?, would you help me?” And so it’s just a good reminder that we could be praying throughout the day when the spirit reminds us of someone or someone looks like someone we know, or we wake up in the middle of the night thinking of someone.

They’re not ironic or coincidences. These are moments that maybe the spirit is telling you, hey, this person needs prayer. I love that so much. Would you recommend… So someone who’s listening right now, and they have a… I guess we all would say, we don’t have the best prayer life because it could always be getting better, like you mentioned before. Would you recommend, since there are prayers, like the Lord’s Prayer, for example, that Jesus provides, are there prayers that you think, okay, if you don’t know what to say or you have no idea how to pray, read this prayer in God’s word and just start there?

Megan Hill:

Yeah. Yeah. I think obviously, as you said, the Lord’s Prayer provides us a great framework for prayer. And even if you’re taking those petitions, hallowed be your name, and then you’re turning it into your own words. Lord, I praise you. Thank you for who you are. Forgive us our debts. Lord, here’s a sin that I did just five minutes ago. Please forgive me for that. So using those as frameworks, I absolutely think. So I think there are prayers in scripture that we have recorded for us. Paul has prayers. At the beginning of most of his epistles, he has prayers that he’s praying for the churches, the Christians that he’s writing to, and then there are prayers in other places throughout scripture that we can use. I think we can also use almost any text and turn that into prayer. So you read a text. God so loved the world that he gave his only son, right?

Well, immediately, there’s so much fodder for prayer there. Thank you Lord for loving the world. Thank you for giving your son the Lord Jesus. And now we pray that people would come to salvation. And oh, yes, that reminds me of my unbelieving sister. Lord, I pray that she would come to salvation. So any text that we read is material for prayer. And those, in some ways, are the best prayers, as it were, because we know that there are things that the Lord loves to do. He said in his word, “I love to save people. I love to save people so much that I sent my son to save them.” And so we can pray those things with great confidence because he’s already told us it’s what he likes.

Andrew Marcus:

Oh, that’s so good. That’s so good. This is such an encouragement. So I have kind of a twofold question. I’d love to hear a personal story of the impact of prayer in your life, just a testimony just encourage our listeners the power and significance of prayer. But I also want to ask you first, have you ever been in a season in your life where it was hard to pray or you just didn’t want to pray? I know you mentioned non-believers, they don’t care to talk to God. They don’t care to pray. But for believers, obviously there’s this hunger and desire. But sometimes in a believer’s life, there’s also like a, I just don’t want to pray. Has that ever happened in your life? And maybe walk through that if it has.

Megan Hill:

Yeah, I feel like I go through that frequently, honestly, that whether it’s through just busyness and the things of the world are just crowding out my spiritual desire, or it’s through sometimes you just sort of step back and go, I’m in a room by myself talking, and is anybody even really listening? This doesn’t even seem to make sense. And so sort of spiritual attacks and doubt in that way I think come to us as well. Honestly, one of the best helps for me in a season of spiritual dryness or prayerlessness or reluctance to pray has been praying with other people, because I think that when you have that someone else that you’re praying with, well, one, it forces you to pray, right? Because here we are at the prayer meeting, or here we are at our small group, or here we are, and we said we would get together and pray, or here we are before a meal, and we got to pray.

And so it forces you to do that habit. But then, I think the other really precious thing is that other people’s faith encourages yours. And so often when I’m in that season where I’m like, “What am I even doing? Is this even worth it?” then I hear my sister next to me, I hear my brother next to me. They have full confidence that the Lord is hearing and that the Lord is going to answer, and that encourages me. That stirs me up. When I’m on my own, I think Satan’s prone to attack. But when you’re together, there’s a way in which you lift one another up to prayer. And so that has probably been the single most helpful thing to me in prayerlessness.

Andrew Marcus:

Yeah, that’s so good, and it’s such a good reminder, the importance and significance of doing life and community. Surround yourself with people who love the Lord and pray with others. And don’t be afraid to reach out to people. Don’t just stay alone and believe the lies and just run from God. No, push yourself out of that and surround yourself with believers and let them help you towards Christ. I love that. What about a story in your life where you’ve just seen prayer, just an amazing testimony of just God answering or just seeing him move through the power and significance of prayer?

Megan Hill:

So for a long time, for many years, there is a person in my life who is severely disabled, and I have prayed since he was born. He’s my children’s age. And since he was born, maybe even before he was born, we knew that he was going to have some disabilities. And so since he was born, I have prayed for his healing, and I’ve prayed faithfully for his healing. But when you pray for 17 years now for someone with significant disabilities to be healed, you don’t really see a lot of answers sometimes. And I think that one thing that happened to me probably 10 years in, I had been praying for his healing, and I was reading something on prayer, and I was reading Dan Doriani, who had written a commentary, and he said in there, he said, “God heals all of his people sooner or later.”

And that was so encouraging to me in my prayers because it reminded me that I could keep praying for this young man’s healing and that the Lord was going to answer, and that he maybe would answer in this life, and maybe he’ll answer in the next life. But whenever he answers, it’s going to be his answer to my prayers. And so if it’s not until eternity that he heals this young man and gives him a new body and makes him perfect in holiness, well, on that day when I see him in eternity, I’m going to say, thank you Lord for this answer to my prayer. And that has helped me in so many things that I pray for that I don’t see answers to remember that many of these things, the Lord will do sooner or later. Somebody who has no job, who’s in material need, who’s in need, and we’re praying as a church Lord, give them a job, provide for them.

And we’re thinking, is this going to happen, or is this not going to happen? Well, it’s going to happen sooner or later. One day they’re going to be in heaven and have no physical needs whatsoever, and the Lord’s going to give them good work to do in his kingdom, and that will be an answer to our prayers. And so that has really helped me as I pray, when I don’t see those immediate answers, to remember that the answer is coming and that I can keep praying for it.

Andrew Marcus:

That’s a good word. It’ll happen sooner or later.

Megan Hill:

Yeah.

Andrew Marcus:

I love that so much. So obviously, we pray for people, for healing, for provision. A big one is when we pray for decision-making, even just we pray for big things, but we also pray or should be praying for small things. When seeking God’s guidance and decision-making through prayer, do you have any specific approach or a process when you’re trying to make decisions?

Megan Hill:

Yeah. I think that all of scripture leads us to this position of just submission to the Lord. And I think prayer is really key in that, that we are not making decisions on our own strength, we’re not making them in our own human wisdom. We’re submitting to the Lord in them. And so I think that when we come to the Lord with these things, we come even in the spirit of Jesus in the garden, right? Jesus in the garden is facing crucifixion, and he is asking the Lord that he would not have to do that. And what does he say? Well, he says, “Not my will, but yours be done.” And I think all of us in decisions can take Jesus’s prayer on our lips, and we can say to the Lord, “This is what seems good to me. This is what I would like to happen, or maybe I don’t even know what I would like to happen here, and yet not my will but yours be done.”

And then I think with that, then we can ask the Lord to work. And so we can ask him, “Give me good counselors. Give me people in my life who know me, who know this situation, who can give me advice. Open and shut doors. Lord. We believe that you’re sovereign over everything. We believe that you’re in control of all things, and so we pray that you would just make it clear, that you would make it impossible for something to happen, or that you would make it possible for something to happen, and that we could see that. Work in my own heart. Lord. Help me to want what you want. Change my heart so that the right thing is the thing that I love.” And then I think having submitted it to the Lord, not my will, but your will, then we can walk forward in confidence.

And we can trust that the Lord is at work, and we can do what seems the best. Given Godly counsel, given knowledge of the scriptures, given our own personal circumstances, we can walk forward in confidence knowing that we’ve entrusted it to the Lord and that he’s at work.

Andrew Marcus:

It’s a hard thing to do sometimes to let go and just have that complete surrender and trust. But I think it’s the way to live, and there’s so much freedom, even though it’s hard. And I think that works with decision making like we’re talking about, but it also works just a moment ago when we’re talking about healing. It’s like we just have to… I’ve prayed for some people and seen them miraculously healed. Stage four cancer, huge tumors everywhere. We annoint with oil, we pray, they go back for a test, everything is gone, and the doctors can’t believe it and we can’t believe it, and God is so good. And I’ve also prayed for my uncle who had leukemia, and in two weeks, he was gone. And it’s like, God is still good, and we just have to surrender. It’s a good reminder. Jesus saying, “Not my will, but I’d like this to not happen. It would be a preference, but not my will your be done.”

And so it’s just this complete surrender, this complete…. I trust you with every decision. I trust you with every prayer for healing and every prayer for provision. Not my will, but your will be done. I find with prayer, a lot of the times people pray just checklists. I want this, or we need that. And they could be not wants, they could be needs, but it’s usually just, this is all that I would like you to look at today, Lord. And I wonder, even just talking with you, when you were talking a little earlier about what your family life looks like for prayer, you were talking about a specific prayer towards the evening specifically for missions and people who are, just to get a little bit outside yourself. I find sometimes when we make all these checklist prayers, we’re very individualistic and self-centered. And that’s just how we are. It’s just a reality.

How do we change that to be a little bit more outward focused? Because I feel like the checklist is… And it’s not a bad thing to tell God our needs and desires. He wants to hear from us, but there should be other things on our minds as well. How do we navigate that balance?

Megan Hill:

Yeah, I think that’s a great question. I think you’re exactly right, that that’s kind of our default, and partly sometimes we don’t have very much time and we think, oh, these are the urgent things I need to pray about, or yeah. I think that is where praying scripture can be really helpful, because as you look at the prayers in scripture, you see that they are bringing concerns to the Lord, but they’re also full of praise to the Lord and thanks for his character and rejoicing in who he is. And I think that if we say that prayer is talking to God, as we think about the conversations that we have with people in our own lives, we realize that it would be a pretty thin conversational relationship if all we ever did was just show up with a list of things that we needed an answer for, or show up with a to-do list of things we wanted them to do for us. That’s not really furthering your relationship with somebody.

What we talk about with the people that we love, with friends, or with roommates, or with church members or whatever, is we talk about the things that they’re interested in, and we tell them the things we appreciate about them, and we delight in the things that we have in common. And we spend a lot of time talking with people that are not things we’re asking them to do for us. And I think that that’s what we sometimes lack in our prayer life.

But I think the interesting thing is, at least I found in my own life, that the more time that I spend in prayer, praising God for who he is and thanking him for those things and just savoring his character and praising him for what he’s done in the past and praising him for his works, the more time that I spend doing that, then the more confidence I actually have when I’m petitioning him to do something, because I’ve realized, oh, I’ve spent all this time praising him as the God who is sovereign and who is in control and who rules everything. And so then when I come to say, “And Lord about that thing,” well, I have a lot of confidence then because I’ve remembered that he can do this and that he is in control. Whereas if I just come going, “Lord about that thing,” then I haven’t already prepared my heart to have confidence that he can do anything about that thing. And so yeah, so I think savoring who God is so essential to our prayer life.

Andrew Marcus:

So good. So good. Praise God. Well, we really appreciate your time, and we appreciate all you’re doing for ministry. We’re just so grateful. Thank you so much for spending time with us today. I’m so confident that you have stirred up encouragement and passion for prayer, so thank you so much for doing that. Thank you for your time. God bless you, your ministry this year, and all that God allows you to do.

Megan Hill:

Thank you so much for having me. It’s been great fun.

Andrew Marcus:

Hey, thanks so much for joining us today. For more great content. Check out THE INDOUBT SHOW on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Music, or wherever you stream your podcast. We hope you enjoyed it today. Feel free to check out indoubt.ca. We have some great resources available to you. Have an awesome day.

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