It needs to be said with the greatest possible emphasis that God's promises, including those that relate to prayer, are utterly trustworthy, and uncertainty as to whether He will keep them in our own case, uncertainty that will of course keep our prayer half-hearted if it does not stop us praying entirely, is unbelief, and unbelief is sin. The diffidence we have described is not the reverence and humility that it imagines itself to be; it is in fact the lapse that James, talking about prayer for wisdom, calls double-mindedness and condemns as an offense to God that invalidates the petition. "Ask in faith, with no doubting, for the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways"(Jas 1:6-8; cf. Jas 4:9). Attitudinally, secret suspicion that praying will do no good is at the opposite extreme from the cry, "I believe; help my unbelief" (Mk 9:24), which expresses strong faith distressed that it is not stronger and more wholehearted still. Skeptical suspicion that after all God may not be concerned to care for me will become in experience a self-fulfilling prophecy. God is to be petitioned on the basis of full trust in His love and His promises.
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from Praying, J.I. Packer & Carolyn Nystrom, page 61
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The notation I made alongside this paragraph in the margin of my copy of Praying says "quite sobering," and indeed, the idea that unbelief in God's promises to answer prayer is sin convicts me in my innermost being. How fallen is that? to sin while you are praying, even because you are praying (with the wrong attitude)? Oh God, help me in my unbelief!!!
