Calvin's First Rule for Prayer: Reverence

In John Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, he offers four "rules" for prayer. The first rule that Calvin gives his readers is this: reverence for God. He writes, “Let the first rule of prayer then be, to have our heart and mind framed as becomes those who are entering into conversation with God.” Calvin explains that we frame our hearts and minds with reverence by laying aside our carnal or earthly thoughts and cares, since they interfere with our contemplation and communion with God. 

Now, Calvin is not advocating that we so disengage our minds or empty our hearts as to think or feel nothing. He is not encouraging some kind of Calvinist zen meditation. Instead, he recognizes that actually, those feelings that we have—that gnawing of anxiety, or burden of shame, or sense of fear—all drive us into genuine prayer. Those are the very things we do bring before the Lord in prayer with absolute honesty. What Calvin insists we leave behind is all of the things that distract us in prayer, that pull us away from God and reveal a disregard for what is truly happening when we engage in prayer. Whether that’s your to-do list, last night’s baseball game, the tug of phone notifications, or that sudden need to begin another task when something pops into your mind in prayer.

To understand why these things diminish our reverence, consider this illustration. If you had a private audience with a king or president in which you had the opportunity to ask him for anything you needed – it would be extremely rude (and foolish) to turn aside to other frivolous matters in that moment. 

And so Calvin presents a solution to this common problem, a way to cultivate reverence and discipline our minds and hearts in prayer. It is this: We must seek to be so impressed with God’s majesty that we are caught up in Him in a way that frees us from our earthly cares. It’s when we do this, that we can truly say with David in Psalm 25, “To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.” When we behold God in the beauty of His holiness, we allow ourselves to be lifted up away from all of our petty distractions, if only but for a moment.