What is prayer?

First — prayer is the language of request addressed to God. It is important to distinguish between prayer and worship, though they may both be found together in the same address to God. In worship, we give something to God — our thanksgiving, praise, or adoration... Praise, then, is an offering, but prayer is a request. The common phrase "offering a prayer" is therefore a mistake. We may offer worship, praise, adoration, thanksgiving. Prayer, however, is not an offering to God, but a request of something from Him.

Secondly — prayer is the expression of dependence. Dependence is the due attitude of the creature towards the Creator. God alone is sufficient to Himself. Every creature, whether he knows it or not, is really dependent; and prayer, in its foundation principle, is the expression of this dependence. To acknowledge it, is to live in truth; to deny it — to live the prayerless life — is to walk in darkness. Man, in revolt, has lost the sense of dependence upon his Creator. He has slipped his moorings, got away from moral connection with the blessed Centre of the universe, and, wandering in sin and darkness, thinks it the finest and grandest thing to be independent.

There are three things contained in prayer — dependence, confidence, and expectation... There might, however, be entire dependence without confidence; and in such a case there could be no real prayer. A natural man, for example, might be convinced that he is dependent on a higher power for his existence; but with his mind at enmity against God he could not turn to Him in prayer. The believer not only knows his dependence on God, but he also has confidence in Him.

Prayer is not a message to the moon. It is not a cry for help to the sun, or to the stars in their courses. It is a petition addressed to Him who made the sun and moon and stars. It is recourse to the ever-present and all-sufficient God. It is weakness running to Almighty power. It is misery at the door of mercy... And prayer is just the searching eye and the believing hand selecting from the "unsearchable riches of Christ" the sweetest mercies and the costliest gifts.

Prayer is the sign of life. What is prayer, but the breathing out of that grace which is breathed into the soul by the Holy Spirit? When God breathed into man the breath of life, he became a living soul; so when God breathes into the creature the breath of spiritual life, he becomes a praying soul: "Behold, he is praying," says God of Paul to Ananias (Acts 9:11). Praying is to the new creature what crying is to the newborn. The child is not taught by art to cry, but by nature — it comes into the world crying. Praying is not a lesson learned by forms and rules of art, but flows from principles of new life.

The Apostle faces the many things that in a world of change and need may give the believer occasion for care and anxiety. In the presence of these things he would have us be free from care, for he says, "be anxious for nothing." Then we learn that this is only possible by taking "everything" to God in prayer with supplication and thanksgiving. It is not simply "some things" or "difficult things" but "everything" is to be taken to Him — the small worries as well as the great trials.

We may close our requests by saying that we make them "in the name of the Lord Jesus," but He will know whether we are really asking for things that are in His interests, or whether we are asking merely for things that suit our own desires. Only that which is really and genuinely "in His name," as representing His interests, is sure to be granted... We have of course full liberty to make known all our requests to God, with thanksgiving, as stated in Philippians 4:6, but that is another matter. We are not told there that what we ask shall be granted, but we are told that our hearts and minds shall be kept in the peace of God through Christ Jesus.