Romans 12:1 informs our prayer, “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The word “therefore” points back to the previous eleven chapters, the Apostle Paul’s masterful exposition of God’s glorious work of redemption in Christ Jesus. There we learn that the Christian is united with Christ in his death and with Christ in his resurrection, raised to a new life, a life lived to God. In using the word sacrifice, Paul’s appeal is not for the Christian to present his body daily to God. The word “sacrifice” connotes a one-time surrendering of oneself to God. So, is our daily prayer unbiblical? No, it is not.
What we are doing each morning in prayer is twofold. First, we are acknowledging to God, and reminding ourselves, what God’s Word says of those who are in Christ, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So, glorify God with your body.” We surrendered our lives to God decades ago and now live with the understanding that our lives are not our own. Second, we are admitting that our flesh is weak and that, were we to strive to glorify God in our own strength, we would fail. We are asking God to enable us to glorify him by filling us with his Spirit.
Understand, the Spirit is not a sometimes visitor we must summon, nor is he a consumable commodity that God must replenish in us. God’s Word teaches that the Spirit of God permanently indwells the Christian the moment of their salvation. We have the Spirit in full, but we do not always fully rely on the indwelling Spirit, choosing instead to continue to live our former lives. To ask God to fill us with his Spirit is to ask him to empower us by his Spirit to will and to do his good pleasure.
Back to the question at hand: is God tired of hearing this same prayer every day? I think that God is pleased with our daily prayer because it asks for his help to daily conforms to his will as revealed in his Word. We are asking God to help us live our lives more dependent on him and, when we live more God-dependent lives, God is greatly glorified. In fact, I do not think that God would find it tiresome if every Christian prayed this way daily.
