Is God important when you pray?

On the Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 this afternoon a guest was trying to make the case that everyone prays. At one point he said, "...even if you don't believe in God you can actually pray."
The guest had been introduced as a Christian, which caused me some surprise when I heard him say what I've quoted above.

Some thoughts on this:
1. Prayer is directed to God.
There are many positive thinking programmes encouraging us to cast our positive wishes into the cosmos and attract good things to ourselves. This is not prayer.
Prayer is not the same as broadcasting your radio show into the ether and hoping someone is listening. Prayer is very specifically directed to God. How can you pray if you don't believe there is a god to pray to?
2. Prayer depends upon the character of God.
The kind of god to whom you pray will greatly influence the kind of prayers you pray. If god is far away and uninterestetd in your life what would you pray for? If god is weak and powerless why would you ask him to powerfully intervene in your life?
The character of our God, made known uniquely to us as Father through Jesus Christ his Son is one of love and grace. A God who is not far from us but close to us, a God who having powerfully created all things, seen and unseen, remains powerfully able to answer his childrens prayers.
3. Prayer stands upon the promises of God.
God has graciously made himself known in Scripture. With many wonderful promises our God encourages us to pray. When we know the promises of God to us and for us we can pray asking this God who made us these promises to keep his promises, to be the faithful God he always has been. Our confidence that we are praying in a way pleasing to our God is that we pray standing upon the promises God has given us.
We pray continually because we know this God to be our Father through Jesus Christ our Saviour.

The Scandal of Fundamentalism

It has become common for the term fundamentalism to be used in a vague and undefined way as a term of abuse. It is being used in this way in an article in the Feb 2008 edition of Life and Work “A New Reformation” pages 23-25.

My Collins English Dictionary defines fundamental as ‘1. of, involving, or comprising a foundation; basic. 2. of, involving, or comprising a source; primary.’ Fundamentalism should then properly describe the appeal to what is fundamental, foundational or primary.

Most recently Andrew McGowan in his book The Divine Spiration of Scripture (IVP 2007) describes the history of ‘the publication of a series of volumes to articulate and defend the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith’ (p. 87, see section pp. 87-97). This is the background to the use of the term in the United States of America. It is surely in this sense that we ask Ministers at Ordination and Induction ‘Do you believe the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith contained in the Confession of Faith of this Church?’ We affirm that there are fundamental doctrines; our Christian faith has a foundation in certain doctrines.

Thus the Church of Scotland is a fundamentalist church. The question then becomes to what do you appeal as fundamental, foundational or primary?

Confession of Faith and a Broad Church

“ … mere negation is incapable of creating fellowship.”
(H Bavinck Reformed Dogmatics Prolegomena, page 84)

One of the purposes of a confession of faith is to define the ground of the unity of faith. Where Christian people stand together and make a common confession of faith there we find a unity in faith, a fellowship of Christian people.

When the attempt is made to establish a broad church more attention is paid to what is not believed, what is negated of the historic confessions of the Church catholic. The fragmentation, or more strongly, the disunity that we see in denominations seeking to be ‘broad’ begins here. Where there is no commitment to a common confession of faith there is no fellowship.

Those who would hold firmly to an historic confession of faith need not apologise for this commitment. It is in our confession of faith that we stand in the communion of the saints with the Church of all ages and places, it is in our confession of faith that we seek to establish a living unity of faith in our day and in our communities. It might even be said that in our making a confident confession of faith we are creating the proper context for fruitful ecumenical fellowship with fellowship Christians who recognise the truth of the gospel in our confession.