Sinners must pray. This fact goes against all that we know and feel in our hearts. Satan, the world, and our sinful flesh all conspire against us, so that we would be inclined to flee God and avoid prayer. Like the guilty child, who has broken mother's vase, we avoid facing our Father with our transgressions. We hold the fig leaf of our excuses before our wickedness (Gn 3:7) and hide from Him. "Pray! Not hardly, not after what I have done. Why would I think God could listen to someone like me?" Clearly, we have no right to stand in God's presence, bringing petitions for ourselves or for anyone else. We flee from God's presence for fear of being swallowed up by His righteousness. He is holy. I am not. The calculus is quite simple.

Yet we have the enduring and continual invitation from our heavenly Father to flee to Him for refuge. His heart is open to our susurrations, our muddled pleas for mercy. He wants us to set aside the truth of our unworthiness in favor of the truth of the worthiness that comes from His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ. He is the One who bridges the gap between "He is holy. I am not." He is the mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus (1Ti 2:5). Only He can change my status. He presents me to His Father and pleads my case on the basis of His perfect sacrifice for me and all sinners. I come blooded by God's Son and on that basis I am God's son. Of course I should ask my dear Father as a child asks! Nothing would delight Him more.

I must then become blind to all my sin. It cannot keep me from crying for mercy with the wild abandon of a hurting child in need of a father's comfort in suffering. Indeed, the certainty of my sinfulness makes more clear my need of prayer and its cry for mercy. It is a counter-intuitive approach to praying. The more I feel my sin, the more clearly I need to approach my Father in heaven. So it is on earth, where the child who has deviated most fully from his father's will is most in need of approaching him with contrition for his rescue, like the lost son of Luke 15. Our desperation over our sin demands aggressive prayer. We are encouraged in this by the promises of God to hear our prayer. How often He invites us. How He longs to hear our petitions. The great saints are also the great sinners, and conscious of their sins, they are driven by their need and confidence in God's promises to cry, "Have mercy on me, O God." He must listen because of my need and His unalterable promise to sinners to hear them.

Nor are we alone in this. Jesus, our Savior, understands our weakness better than we do, because He was clothed in weakened flesh to repair its weakness (Rm 8:3). He gives resources to the weak and fainthearted, who, burdened by the clarity of their own depravity, are in need of divine help to pray. He sends His Spirit to us that we might have the courage to cry in our need to our dear Father. Indeed, when in the hour of deepest need, we know not what to pray, the Spirit prays for us in words that we couldn't utter, even if we wanted to. The less I feel able to pray, the more I should be driven to it. I need it most then. I must pray because I am unworthy.

Martin Luther