PRAYER PART I
“PRAYER PART I” WOULD BE A MORE ACCURATE TITLE for this week’s blog. “What the Bible Says About Prayer” is an overly ambitious title, for the subject is simply too large for one installment. The Bible, indeed, says a lot about prayer. And yet, I believe it is, nevertheless, an accurate title in that in our brief time together I intend to give you a good overview as to just what the Bible does say about prayer. In this study we will discuss in outline fashion, that is, in a general way, what exactly the Bible does say about prayer. So, while “Prayer” may be inadequate a title in some ways, it is all-encompassing in others.
I HAVE PREACHED ABOUT PRAYER MANY TIMES. I have more than a dozen seminary-level books on prayer in my library. Over the years of my ministry I have probably taught about pray either in a classroom, Bible study, or one-on-one, hundreds of times. But for this particular writing I tried hard to approach the subject as if for the first time. I read through several books this week on prayer, yes, but mainly I wanted to be a student of the Word and find out, like a detective gathering clues for the first time, just what the Bible had to say about prayer. I have done this before, but I tried to do it this week as if I had never done it before. It was a wonderful week. While the subject may, indeed, be too large for one installment, I humbly believe I am prepared to speak to you this week on prayer.
AS WE BEGIN, I WOULD LIKE YOU TO CONSIDER THIS THOUGHT: Knowing God is not only the most important thing in life, but it is also the greatest privilege. Knowing God is a privilege. You can say, “Amen,” there. There are mainly two ways we believers come to know God: (1) Bible Study, and (2) Prayer. This week we will be discussing the second way we can come to know God: prayer.
THINK MOMENTARILY, IF YOU WILL, ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIPS OF YOUR LIFE. Consider how limited a relationship is without communication. In order to know someone intimately, you must talk to that person. When we communicate with someone we are willing to open ourselves up to that person and to receive what that other person is sharing with us. Think for a moment about just how important conversation really is…
IN THE LAST TWO-PLUS YEARS MERRY AND I HAVE BEEN BLESSED WITH 2 GREAT GRANDCHILDREN: Elle (2 and 3 months) and Elijah (6 months). Elle and I are tight. She calls me, “Grandpa.” I know her voice and she knows mine. She is fully my great granddaughter; I am entirely, irrevocably her great grandfather. We have a special relationship. Elijah is just as much blood to me and I to him as Elle, but we’re not yet tight. I can’t say we have a relationship yet. Aside from the obvious limitations of his age, the reason is we have not communicated with words yet. It will be, indeed, a special moment for me when I first hear Elijah say, “Grandpa.” When he first says, “Grandpa,” my loving relationship to my great grandson will have taken on an added dimension. And then, soon after that first word will come communication, when he can talk to me, ask me for something, and I can talk to him. It will have officially begun to blossom. It is the same in our relationship with our heavenly Father…
AND THEN THINK ABOUT THE PASSION OF COMMUNICATION. You can have communication with someone and yet that communication is neither sincere, enthusiastic, nor rewarding. We have all talked with people who make it obvious by their expression, tone of voice, or various vibes that they’re not really interested in true communication. Or how about when you talk with some people and you know they are not really listening to much of what you say. Obviously, a foremost requirement to communication is listening. In order to communicate with someone well, we must both talk and listen. It is the same in our relationship with our heavenly Father. Someone once wisely said…
“PRAYER IS OUR TALKING TO GOD AND READING THE BIBLE IS GOD TALKING TO US.”
ONE DEFINITION OF PRAYER IS SIMPLY TALKING TO GOD. Prayer in great part is having an intimate conversation with God. We can literally hear God talking to us anytime we want to when we open His Word the Bible. But, sadly, it is most unlikely that many of us can say we have made it a priority to talk to Him daily and continuously through prayer (cf. 1 Thessalonians 5:17).
“A PASTOR RECEIVED A PHONE CALL ONE DAY from someone he had never met, asking if he would go to the hospital to visit a dying man. He, of course, went. The man lay in bed, a chair pulled up next to him. ‘I’m going to die,’ he said. ‘I know that. But before I do, I’ve got to ask you a question. Some years ago I was struggling with my prayer life and someone told me that it would help me a lot if I could remember that prayer is a conversation, an intimate conversation with God. They suggested I set a chair out where I pray and imagine that I was having a conversation with my Heavenly Father, and that Jesus was in that chair. Right away I knew that was a good idea for me to follow. I’ve been doing that. Sometimes I pray for over an hour, remembering that Jesus is there.’ Then the man looked at the pastor, ‘Is that all right?’ The pastor smiled and told him, ‘Yes. It’s not only all right, but I think it delights the heart of God that your prayer is an intimate conversation with Him.’ A few days later the pastor got a call from the daughter of the man, saying that her father had died. She said that the family had noticed a definite peace settle over the man the last days since he’d talked with the pastor. And then she told the pastor that they’d found his body in a strange position. ‘When we walked into the room,’ the daughter said, ‘ we found dad with his head leaning on a chair he’d pulled up close to the bed.’ That man had come to understand what true prayer is all about. It means coming to understand what the Lord’s Prayer is all about. It means coming to a Heavenly Father whose residence is in heaven and whose name is holy and infinitely praiseworthy. It means exulting in an eternal relationship with the Creator of the universe who has promised to clothe us with a divine holiness that outshines a thousand suns. And it means laying our head on His lap and falling asleep there, content, unafraid, and utterly happy… for eternity!” – rewritten from Prayer – the Great Adventure
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE HAVE TO SAY ABOUT PRAYER?
“THE RULE OF FIRST MENTION.” While I regularly take note of the first time a name or a term first appears in Scripture, I am not one who adheres to what some call “The rule of first mention.” “The rule of first mention” says that the first time a word is mentioned in a book of the Bible, how that word is interpreted there is the meaning of the word throughout the Bible. Said another way, every subsequent mention of the word after its first mention carries the same meaning. The main reason I don’t abide by rule is that it is not a constant. Sometimes it can be instructive, but oftentimes it is misleading. The rule basically undermines the importance of “The rule of first mention” is a tenet. A tenet is a religious doctrine that is proclaimed as true without proof. What is the first time that the word “prayer” or “pray” is found in the Bible?
WELL, THE FIRST TIME “PRAYER” OR “PRAY” IS USED IN SCRIPTURE IS Genesis 12:13, but that’s only in the old King James Bible, a 500 year-old translation that uses the word “pray” when a more accurate translation would be “please tell”…
KJV Genesis 12:13 Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister: that it may be well with me for thy sake; and my soul shall live because of thee.
MODERN TRANSLATIONS…
NAS Genesis 12:13 “Please say that you are my sister so that it may go well with me because of you, and that I may live on account of you.”
NIV Genesis 12:13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
THE FIRST TIME “PRAY” IS FOUND, as we are think of the word and as we are using it in this study, is in Genesis 20:7 where God is speaking to the O.T king Abimelech …
NAS Genesis 20:7 “Now therefore, restore the man’s wife (Abraham’s wife Sarah), for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you, and you will live.”
IN V.17 OF THE SAME CHAPTER WE READ…
NAS Genesis 20:17 And Abraham prayed to God; and God healed Abimelech and his wife and his maids, so that they bore children.
SO ABRAHAM IS THE FIRST ONE WHO PRAYS IN THE BIBLE. That’s not to say that Abraham was the first one in history who prayed. Adam may have prayed, Noah may have prayed, but the Bible doesn’t tell us that.
THE HEBREW WORD FOR “PRAY” IS פלל (pa-lal). It literally means to intervene or interpose. We might think of it as meaning to bear influence, to bring about influence between parties on behalf of one of the parties. When we pray, in great part, we are attempting to influence God on our behalf or on the behalf of someone else.
OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES DEFINE PRAYER SIMILARLY: to pray is to petition God, to earnestly offer devout request to God (a petition is a request).
THE HEBREW WORD FOR “PRAYER” IS תפלה (tef-il-la). One Greek word for “prayer” is προσευχη (pra-seu-kay); another is δεομαι (dee-a-sis) (there are two other words used but two times, both in James 5). The Hebrew word and both Greek words essentially mean a presentation of requests before God. Prayer, as you probably thought before this study, basically means asking.
LET ME TELL YOU FROM MY STUDY THAT defining prayer biblically entails a number of words, especially in the New Testament. Let me give you these N.T. words…
ερωταω 2065. (58) to question, ask, beseech…The first number (2065) is the Strong’s Concordance number. The second number, that is in parentheses, is the number of times it is found in Scripture…
NAS John 14:16 “And I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever;
δεομαι 1189. (22) to have need of; to make request of, beseech, pray
NAS Luke 22:32 but I (Jesus) have prayed for you (Peter), that your faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.”
NAS Acts 4:31 And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken, and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak the word of God with boldness.
αιτεω 154. (71) to ask, pray, require; to ask a favor as a supplicant
NAS Matthew 7:7 “Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you.
NAS John 14:13 “And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
προσευχη 4336. (37) to pray to God, to offer prayer, to pray for…
NAS Romans 8:26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words;
NAS 1 Thessalonians 5:17 pray without ceasing;
A CAREFUL STUDY OF ALL OF THESE WORDS CONFIRMS that the biblical definition of praying is asking.
I HAVE HEARD MORE THAN A FEW PASTORS TEACH that it is improper to always be asking God for things. But if there is fault to be found in the person praying it is more accurately not with the asking but with the things asked for. To pray is to ask. God wants you and me to ask Him for things…
WE MIGHT, THEN, SAY THAT AN ACCURATE DEFINITION OF PRAYER IS to come before God with a request. To pray is essentially to ask something of God…
NAS James 1:5-6 But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all men generously and without reproach, and it will be given to him. But let him ask in faith without any doubting, for the one who doubts is like the surf of the sea driven and tossed by the wind.
JAMES ALSO SAYS…
NAS James 4:3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.
SO LET US BEGIN HERE WITH THIS WORKING DEFINITION OF PRAYER… To pray is basically to ask God for something, either in our behalf or on behalf of others. There is no shame is asking God, so long as we ask in the right way and for the right things…
KJV Matthew 7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
BIBLICAL PRAYER IS ESSENTIALLY ASKING…
CONSIDER HOW CHILDREN ARE WHEN THEY ASK for something they want: they ask and keep on asking. Jesus spoke on this subject…
NAS Matthew 7:8-9 “For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it shall be opened. Or what man is there among you, when his son shall ask him for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he shall ask for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!
PRAYER IS ASKING; PRAISE IS NOT ASKING BUT STATING. Praise is simply saying nice things about God, speaking well of God. When we say, “Lord, You are a wonderful God,” we are not praying (though a statement that might be uttered during our prayer time), we are praising. These two important words are very similar, but they are not the same…
NAS James 5:13 Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray. Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing praises.
SO WHAT IS PRAYER? There are many books about praying, all offering differing definitions of prayer. But the definition most agree upon is that prayer is simply talking to God. That is simple, but it is not simplistic. Prayer is talking to God, communicating your heart to a loving God who is always – always, as our earlier story – ready to listen.
PRAYER IS an act of humble worship in which we seek God with all our hearts…
KJV 2 Chronicles 7:14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.
PRAYER IS a way of life for Christians. It is how we breathe. I heard someone once say that when we don’t pray we are holding our breath spiritually. When we don’t pray we are, then, fighting against the very existence and presence of God in our lives.
I REMEMBER WHEN I BECAME A CHRISTIAN AND FIRST BEGAN TO PRAY. Prayer did not come easy to me. I felt funny closing my eyes and talking to someone I couldn’t see. I’d try and then after a moment I’d feel stupid and stop. I was 37 years old. I’d been around. To be real honest, I felt like a fool praying. I bought books about prayer, but they didn’t really help me all that much. I still felt silly, like pray was for children and women, and weak people maybe, but not for me. I remember the first time I prayed with Merry and my daughters, I wondered if they thought I me silly. Prayer was embarrassing for me at first. And yet, of course, I knew that I had to learn to pray. I knew Jesus prayed and knew He wanted me to pray. If He wanted me to, I’d do it somehow. Now everyone is different; I don’t say my experience was yours or yours was mine. For me, what helped me get past my embarrassment was writing my prayers down. I read a number of prayers by famous Christians (Charles Spurgeon, Martin Luther, John Calvin, for example), and then I’d try writing out my own prayers. Books helped me understand the general structure of prayer, but it was writing them out and then studying what Id written that helped me learn to pray. I got better.
BUT LOOKING BACK ON IT NOW, I don’t think I really learned how to pray until I understood that basically, prayer is simply talking to God…
WHEN I SAY THIS TO NEW CHRISTIANS (or to old Christians who still don’t know how to pray), they inevitably say, “I don’t know what to say.” I tell them, that’s how you begin. Tell God that you don’t know what to say and – guess what? – you’re praying, you’re talking to God. Just start; you’ll think of other things; it will get easier. God is the best listener there is.
BUT WHY IS IT THAT FOR SO MANY PEOPLE, they don’t make that first step until they find themselves in trouble? I never will forget a man I visited in the hospital who told me that before his stoke he’d “never prayed much,” but finding himself alone and in pain and out of breath on the kitchen floor one day, he’d suddenly learned to pray. “Help!” is a one word prayer that most have found quite adequate on occasion…
“TWO IRISHMEN, PAT AND MIKE, had narrowly escaped death on a sinking ship. They were floundering around in icy ocean waters on a couple of wooden planks. Pat was addicted to the grossest profanity and he thought he ought to immediately repent of it and then maybe the Lord would come to his rescue. Mike thought his theology was sound. So Pat closed his eyes and began to pray. But just before Pat arrived at the main thesis of his repentant prayer, Mike spotted a ship coming toward them. As delighted as Columbus when he first spotted the North American shore, Mike hollered at the top of his lungs, ‘Hold it, Pat. Don’t commit yourself. Here’s a ship. We’re going to be saved!’ Hearing Mike’s words, Pat immediately stopped praying! 
Isn’t that, sadly, the way many Christians are? The only time they pray is when they’re in a jam. As soon as things improve, they go about their self-sufficient ways without God.” – Chuck Swindoll
“PRAYER IS NOT A NATURAL RESPONSE; IT’S A SPIRITUAL RESPONSE. If we fail to cultivate this discipline, prayer winds up being our last resort rather than our first response.” – Chuck Swindoll
“WORRY IS WRESTLING WITH ANXIETY ON YOUR OWN rather than releasing it to the Father in prayer” – Chuck Swindoll
BIBLICAL PRAYER IS TO MADE TO THE FATHER, in the name of the Son, and by the Spirit. Prayer in Scripture is prayer addressed to God the Father, in the name or character of God the Son (it really means under the rule of), by or in the spirit of God the Spirit (to pray in concert with)…
NAS Matthew 6:9 “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name.
NAS John 14:13 “And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
NAS Ephesians 6:18 With all prayer and petition pray at all times in the Spirit,
PRAYER IS PETITION MADE BY AN INFERIOR TO A SUPERIOR. Listen to the dictionary definition of “petition”… 1. a supplication or request to a superior authority; an entreaty… 2. to ask for by petition; to formally request…
SO, WE NEED TO TALK TO GOD, ASK HIM TO HELP US IN EVERY AREA OF LIFE. We to talk to Him about everything. He is our greatest Friend, our most faithful supporter, the One who loves us more than anyone else in the world.
PRAYER IS A PRIVILEGE GOD GRANTS HIS CHILDREN. We need to take advantage of this great power with which we have been blessed. God Almighty! the Creator of the universe! longs for us to talk to Him daily. The mode of communication is prayer. The Bible says God delights in to hear from us in prayer…
NAS Proverbs 15:8 The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.
WE NEED TO START EVERY DAY WITH PRAYER and then continue to pray and be in an attitude of prayer throughout the day. Pray as you drive. Pray as you work. Pray before we eat; pray while we eat; pray after we eat. Thanksgiving for everything. We need to cultivate the discipline of prayer. Pray before we answer the phone. Pray when disappointment comes; pray when triumph comes. The more we talk to God the better our life will be…
WHAT DOES THE BIBLE SAY ABOUT PRAYER? It commands us to pray. Therefore it is a sin not to pray. Our prayers bring glory to God. Praying aligns us with God’s purposes. And maybe the most important to us weak and fragile humans, prayer result in answers! Glory to God! Bless His matchless name! Thank You, Lord, for the privilege and power of prayer!
– Professor Thomas A. Rohm
