A call to pray

"Call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know." (Jeremiah 33:3)

These words were given to the prophet Jeremiah while he was in prison. In the previous chapter he had promised that good would come out of calamity (32:42), now he is showing Jeremiah how this good will come about. Prayer is a constant theme in the Scriptures, and the constant means through which a Sovereign God delivers and blesses His people. This text reveals three ways in which God encourages us to pray:

1. To continue in prayer - ' Call to me' . Jesus told the parable of the importunate widow with the intent: 'that men always ought to pray and not lose heart' (Luke 18:1). The Christian has the great privilege of calling on the Lord at any time, through our great High Priest, the Lord Jesus Christ.
   
2. Expect answers to prayer - ' and I will answer you, and show you '. The God who commands us to pray promises that He will answer. CH Spurgeon said: '[God] has appointed prayer, and made arrangements for its presentation and acceptance. He could'ne have meant it to be a mere farce: that were to treat us as fools.'
   
3. Expect great things from God - ' and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know. ' Many great things happen when we pray. The most important is that we enter deeper in our relationship with God - what could be greater than this! We also get to know the mind of God, especially when our prayer is the result of meditation upon God's Word.

Jeremiah was in prison. We too are sometimes imprisoned by our circumstances, our sin, or our unbelief. These are like prison bars that keep us from the blessedness of His presence.

God delivers His people in many ways, but at the root are the prayers of His people. When Peter was in prison the church prayed and an angel delivered him. As Thomas Watson put it: 'The angel fetched Peter out of prison, but it was prayer that fetched the angel.'