Prayer

Prayer is a conversation. It is important, powerful, beautiful, because we serve a caring Father who hears us and responds. 

Maybe you pray before a meal. Maybe you pray before falling asleep at night. Maybe you pray when you are in trouble. Many grow up with routine prayer. People pray for blessing, pray for favor, pray for protection. Sure, we can pray for these things, but what is prayer? What does it mean? Why do we pray? Does prayer “work?” 

Prayer is precious. It’s brave. It’s bold. In summary, it's a conversation with God. Every time you lift up praises or requests or even a groan, that is a prayer to God. He hears you. He knows you. He knows what you will tell Him before you tell Him, but He still wants to hear it from your own voice. He loves when we talk to Him, but He also speaks to us. Conversation implies that two people are communicating. This is no different with God. Sometimes it just takes a little longer to learn the sound of His voice. It is usually quiet and gentle. Jesus prayed to His Father in heaven and was attentive to the Father’s voice. In fact, He said “For I have not spoken on My own authority; but the Father who sent Me gave Me a command, what I should say and what I should speak” (John 12:49). He spoke only the words that the Father gave to Him. He was so close with the Father. If we have salvation through Christ, a relationship with Him, we can know that we pray to a personal God. You can say, “My God” or “Abba, Father” (Galatians 4:6; Romans 8:15). This nearness with the Father comes through Scripture and prayer. 

Let’s take a minute to look at Jesus’ prayer life and what He said about prayer:

Jesus Himself demonstrated a committed prayer life. Luke 5:16 says that “He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.” Some of His last words to His disciples were in prayer for Himself, for His disciples, and for believers across the world (John 17). He prayed for Himself that the Father would be glorified through Him. He prayed for eternal life for those the Father had given Him. He prayed for His disciples that the Father would not remove them from the world but would keep them from the evil one (the devil). He prayed that His disciples might be sanctified by the truth, which is His Word (John 17:17). He prayed for all believers that they might believe in Him and know His love.

Jesus prayed to His Father as if in conversation. He recognized who He was praying to and made requests. When we pray, although we can talk to Him as a Friend and as a Father, we also have to recognize that He is the Creator of the universe, worthy of our respect and admiration. Jesus overthrew tables in the Temple because the people were using the sacred space for secular purposes. He said, “‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you have made it a ‘den of thieves’” (Matthew 21:13). 

Prayer is powerful and important! We should pray, not only for ourselves and those that we know, but also for people around the world. Jesus said that we should “pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’” (Matthew 9:38). His heart is to see all saved, and He encourages us to pray for this too! So, we see that Jesus has given us His own prayer life as an example: go away to a quiet place if possible, pray knowing who He hears you, pray for yourself, pray for others, praise the Father, and pray for believers across the world! 

Many of you are probably familiar with the Lord’s Prayer, found in Matthew 6:9-13 and Luke 11:1-4. This was intended to be a model prayer, not one that is repeated out of a heart of obligation (Matthew 6:7). What did Jesus model in this prayer? Let’s look at it part-by-part:

“Our Father in heaven, Hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.”: Jesus acknowledges that He is talking to the Father and that He is worthy of praise! In prayer, we should give thanksgiving and acknowledge who we are speaking to. 

“Your will be done On earth as it is in heaven”: Jesus prays for the will of God. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed so intensely the night of His arrest that He physically sweated blood (Luke 22:44). He prayed that maybe the “cup” (probably referring to God’s wrath) be taken from Him, but not His will but that of the Father. When we pray, we should surrender the outcome to the will of the Father.

“Give us this day our daily bread.”: Jesus prays for provision! He tells us in Matthew 6:25-34 that we should not worry what we will eat because the Father knows. Also, we can remember that Jesus offers so much more than physical food but spiritual food too (John 6:22-40). 

“And forgive us our debts, As we forgive our debtors.”: Jesus models praying for forgiveness, even though He had never sinned. We know that God forgives us (1 John 1:9), but if we have His forgiveness, we must extend it to other people (Matthew 6:14-15). Jesus told a parable of a servant who did not show mercy and forgiveness (Matthew 18:21-35). We have to forgive. 

“And do not lead us into temptation, But deliver us from the evil one.”: Jesus prays for deliverance. We can know that God will NEVER tempt us (James 1:13), but He Himself prayed for deliverance from the evil one FOR US (John 17:15). 

“For Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.”: Jesus ends the prayer by acknowledging that everything belongs to the Lord forever!!! AMEN (so be it). 

Whenever someone prays, we know when the prayer ends because the speaker says, “Amen.” Why say “amen?”

According to the Blue Letter Bible’s lexicon, “amen” means the following: “so it is, so be it, may it be fulfilled. It was a custom, which passed over from the synagogues to the Christian assemblies, that when he who had read or discoursed, had offered up solemn prayer to God, the others responded Amen, and thus made the substance of what was uttered their own.” When we say amen, we are in agreement with what was prayed. We make it our own prayer. This is beautiful, especially in large bodies of believers. It is so sweet to be in agreement with the prayers of our brothers and sisters in Christ! 

One might also note that at the end of prayer, people often say, “In Jesus’ name.” Do we HAVE to pray in His name? Can we pray to God the Father or to the Holy Spirit? 

These are all good and valid questions! Know that the Trinity is three persons in one: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are all in equal agreement. In John 10:30, Jesus says that “I and the Father are one,” and 1 John 5:5-8 talks about how the Spirit testifies to who Jesus was/is. Knowing that they are all one, we can pray to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, but we pray in Jesus’ name because of what Jesus did. Let me explain: Sin separates us from God. God is perfect, and we are not. Someone had to be the mediator, the one who went to God on our behalf. Jesus, who knew no sin, was willing to take on ALL sin for us so that we could become the righteousness of God (2 Corinthians 5:21). He was the perfect sacrifice that we needed to enter God’s perfect presence! In fact, a priest used to have to go into the Holy of Holies once a year to offer a sacrifice for sins. The priest would purify himself before going behind the curtain. When Jesus died on the cross, the veil in the temple was TORN in half because we no longer need a physical priest to go into God’s holy presence (Matthew 27:51). Jesus is our Mediator. 1 Timothy 2:5 says, “For there is one God and one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus.” He is our High Priest. It is because of Him that we can “come boldly to the throne of grace,” (Hebrews 4:16). That’s beautiful. We can boldly ask our Heavenly Father when we are in need. I also think about John 14:6 that no one comes to the Father except through Jesus. It makes sense that we would pray in His Name as He is our Mediator, the one who makes direct prayer possible. John 14:13-14 says, “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in My name, I will do it.” Of course, this does not mean that we can ask God for a Mercedes and receive it. As our relationship with God grows, He aligns our desires with His, so we begin to ask the things of God. For example, Jesus said that the harvest of souls is plentiful, but the workers are few, so we should “pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest” (Matthew 9:37-38). This is a prayer that is the desire of His heart, for all to come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). So, when we pray, we pray to the Lord alone, no one else and nothing else. He is the only One who always hears, always knows, always cares. He is omnipotent (all-powerful), omnipresent (present everywhere at all times), and omniscient (all-knowing). There’s one other beautiful thing that I love about prayer and the Trinity, and that is the intercession of the Holy Spirit on our behalf. Romans 8:26 says, “Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” When we do not know what to pray for, the Father knows our hearts and exactly what we need. Even a sigh reaches His ears. 

So when we pray, how does He respond? 

We can bring anything to God. Nothing is too much for Him. He responds in one of three ways: yes, no, and wait. But, we can know that His answer is always for our good. When we do not understand, we must remember that He says, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, Nor are your ways My ways,’ says the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, So are My ways higher than your ways, And My thoughts than your thoughts” (Isaiah 55:8-9). Thankfully, He sees the whole picture when we see only a little piece of the plan. But whatever answer we receive from Him, we can know that He is the Father that gives good gifts. Matthew 7:7-11 says that we should seek and knock. Jesus says, “if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” And again, this is not a “say it, receive it” message, this is reassurance that the Father hears and knows what we need. And if we are in a right relationship with Jesus, our desires and prayers will align with His desires. One way to be in line with these desires is to start prayer with thanksgiving. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you.” It is His will that we pray and that we pray with thankful hearts. Ephesians 5:18-20 says, “And do not be drunk with wine, in which is dissipation; but be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord, giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Additionally, we should pray for one another: “Continue earnestly in prayer, being vigilant in it with thanksgiving; meanwhile praying also for us, that God would open to use a door for the word, to speak the mystery of Christ, for which I am also in chains, that I may make it manifest, as I ought to speak” (Colossians 4:2-4). It is biblical to intercede on others’ behalf. It makes our problems a bit smaller when we focus our prayers on the needs of others. This does not mean that we should not pray for ourselves. Many psalms are personal prayers of authors crying out to the Lord in times of trouble, personal trouble. So, you can just start talking. Open the conversation. He wants to hear from you. 

I want to leave you with Philippians 4:6-7: “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.”