The Trinity and My Prayers

Who do I pray to? The Father? The Son? The Spirit? God? The Trinity? All of the above?

Here is the theologically correct answer: pray to the Father, in the name of the Son, through the power of the Holy Spirit. Most New Testament prayers follow that pattern. There are a few recorded prayers to Jesus in the New Testament and, as far as I know, no recorded prayers to the Holy Spirit. But the Son is a divine person, and the Spirit is a divine person, and you can pray to them. But don’t forget … about the way the Spirit and the Son occupy the offices of intercessor and mediator to bring us before the Father. There is a current that runs that direction, and when you know that, you can immerse yourself in that current. It is the logic of how prayer is actually working anyway. Think about it: if you are in the habit of praying to Jesus, are you approaching Jesus the eternal Son of God on the basis of your own merits and deserving? No. Then on what basis? On the basis of his propitiation and mediation. Even prayer to Jesus has to be prayer in Jesus name. So you can see how that current of mediation runs in that direction, and you can be aligned to it by praying habitually to the Father in Jesus’ name.

Fred Sanders in The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything.

What Is the Trinity For?

[T]he first and clearest answer has to be that the Trinity isn’t ultimately for anything, any more than God is for the purpose of anything. Just as you wouldn’t ask what purpose God serves or what function he fulfills, it makes no sense to ask what the point of the Trinity is or what purpose the Trinity serves. The Trinity isn’t for anything beyond itself, because the Trinity is God. God is God in this way: God’s way of being God is to be Father, Son, and Holy Spirit simultaneously from all eternity, perfectly complete in a triune fellowhip of love. If we don’t take this as our starting point, everything we say about the practical relevance of the Trinity could lead us to one colossal misunderstanding: thinking of God the Trinity as as a means to some other end, as if God were the Trinity in order to make himself useful. But God the Trinity is the end, the goal, the telos, the omega. In himself and without any reference to a created world or the plan of salvation, God is that being who exists as the triune love of the Father for the Son in the unity of the Spirit. The boundless life that God lives in himself, at home, within the happy land of the Trinity above all worlds, is perfect. It is complete, inexhaustibly full, and infinitely blessed. 

—Fred Sanders in The Deep Things of God: How the Trinity Changes Everything.

When it comes to the study the Trinity, or the study of God in general, we’re too quick, I think, to run straight to the practical implications and ask ourselves, “What does this doctrine mean for me? How does it affect my life? And what should I do in light of this truth about God?”

Of course, learning about God does have practical implications. But first, because God as he is in himself is “the end, the goal, the telos, the omega,” we should desire to know God for his sake. To get at what God is in himself, we can ask, “What is he like ‘without any reference to a created world or the plan of salvation’?” Priority #1 is simply gazing for a while on the answer to this question and marveling at what we see.

It's All Pink

Too often as women, we have restricted ourselves to the “pink” parts of the Bible. When we identify first and foremost as women, we can begin to believe that knowledge of ourselves will come primarily through passages that speak to women’s issues or include heroines like Ruth or Esther. But when we do this, when we craft our learning and discipleship programs around being “women,” we make womanhood the central focus or our pursuits of knowledge instead of Christ.   …

Because you are an image bearer, you must allow the entirety of Scripture to shape your sense of self. You must begin to see every verse as a “pink” passage because every verse speaks to who God is and therefore who you are as His daughter. You must begin to believe that theology and doctrine are not men’s issues but that they are imago dei issues because they reveal the God in whose image you are made.

—Hannah Anderson in Made for More: An Invitation to Live in God’s Image, p. 105.