Remembering Our Need: A Stimulus to Prayer

I just began a series of sermons on the Lord's Prayer. One of the issues I am grappling with again is the question of how to awaken and develop a sustained passion for prayer. This is both a pastoral and a personal concern. Here are a few preliminary thoughts. I welcome your comments. (You may have tried to leave a comment on an earlier post and been sent away for lack of registration. I think I now have it set so that anyone may leave a comment. Please do. You may also use the link provided to e-mail me.)

• A precondition for prayer is a sense of need; i.e., there must be a desire for either personal or situational transformation. Its not hard to pray when the plane we're on is hijacked (cf. Lisa Beamer's, A Reason for Hope} or when the we lie beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center (cf. Oliver Stone's excellent film The World Trade Center. But we don't live in perpetual crisis.
  
• The desired outcome must be conceived as something beyond one's own capacity to perform or effectuate.
• Prayerlessness, therefore, arises from a shallow contentment with things as they are or a chronically low set of expectations regarding the need for personal (internal) or situational (external) transformation.
• Herein lies the genius of utilizing the pattern of the Lord's prayer. In it we are reminded of our great and continuing need for sustenance, forgiveness and protection.