D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on prayer

I was having a remarkable hour-without-anybody-talking-to-me the other evening, so I opened up a book of D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones sermons on 1 John and started reading.  And I read this:

...In a situation of difficulty and of crisis, the first thing we must do is make sure that we have grasped the New Testament teaching.  I do not want to be controversial, and I am particularly anxious not to be misunderstood, but if I may put it in a phrase, in order to call attention to what I have in mind, I would say that in a situation of crisis the New Testament does not immediately say, 'Let us pray.'  It always says first, 'Let us think, let us understand the truth, let us take a firm hold of doctrine.'  ...Prayer is sometimes an excuse for not thinking, an excuse for avoiding a problem or situation.

Have we not all known something of this in our personal experience?  We have often been in difficulty and we have prayed to God to deliver us, but in the meantime we have not put something right in our lives as we should have done.   Instead of facing the trouble, and doing what we knew we should be doing, we have prayed.  I suggest that at a point like that, our duty is not to pray but to face the truth, to face the doctrine and to apply it....

I mean something like this: if the whole attitude of the Christian in any situation of crisis or difficulty were just to be immediately one of prayer, then these New Testament epistles with all of their involved teaching would never have been necessary.

Then I sat there, and pondered these paragraphs because they seemed both contradictory to the typical teaching on Christian prayer and yet completely true.

Am I ever tempted to use prayer as a "cop out" for actually addressing an issue in my own life?  Is it easier to say, "I'll just pray about it," instead of actually bringing God's truth to someone in difficulty?  Am I afraid that God isn't going to hold up his end of the deal?

Are my prayers "educated," as it were, by the doctrinal truths of the New Testament, so that they are congruent to what God desires?

Do I place more spiritual weight on my ability to pray than on what God has already revealed in his Word?

Something to ponder on this Columbus day.