Pretty much everyone prays.

Prayer is a nigh-on universal human activity in which human beings seek to communicate with the divine. In Plato’s Timaeus for example we read of the necessity of prayer to safeguard all human endeavours:

Socrates: And now, Timaeus, you, I suppose, should speak next, after duly calling upon the gods.
Timaeus: All men, Socrates, who have any degree of right feeling, at the beginning of every enterprise, whether small or great, always call upon God. And we, too, who are going to discourse of the nature of the universe, how created or how existing without creation, if we be not altogether out of our wits, must invoke the aid of gods and goddesses and pray that our words may be above all acceptable to them and in consequence to ourselves.

The philosopher William James, in his justly famous book The Varieties of Religious Experience attempted by means of an exhaustive study of religious phenomena to get to the essence of the religious impulse in human life in a non-theological and non-ecclesiastical context.

Comparing accounts of prayer across religious traditions and moments in history, he determined that prayer was the vital heart-beat of all religious consciousness. Religious individuals claim to have intercourse with a higher power – and so must rest on the belief that prayer does something: ‘energy which but for prayer would be bound is by prayer set free and operates in some part, be it objective or subjective, of the world of facts’.  A ‘scientific’ analysis of prayer ought at least in theory to be able to observe some difference being made by prayer.

In many ways Christian prayer does not differ from prayer in other religions, or taken as a general phenomena of human existence. Notwithstanding that many scientists of religion have had Christian paradigms, and so articulated what they found in non-Christian religions in terms congenial to Christianity, making the unfamiliar perhaps more familiar than it really is: still, prayer is above all a normal and even ‘natural’ human activity.

While there are claims that prayer in general ‘works’, as far as I am aware no statistical study exists that vindicates Christian prayer as more ‘effective’ in changing events than prayer in other faiths.

But to analyse Christian prayer only from the outside, from the phenomena, is to grasp it without understanding it at all – other than that it is a human activity.

Theologically, Christian prayer is enabled by the Spirit’s gift of adoption into the family of God. The invocation of God as ‘Father’ is much more than incidental: it is essential to Christian prayer. We are given a share in the sonship of Jesus, which makes it possible to pray to the Father ‘in the name of Jesus’ (see Rom 8:15, 26; Gal 4:6).

Jesus’s own practice of prayer had this shape: it was as the beloved Son that Jesus addressed the Father, in the power of the Holy Spirit. As we are brought into union with Christ, adopted as sons, we too share in this intra-trinitarian life.

The prayers of the Christian are not, then, the implorings of those distant from divinity, but the words of those already bound into the divine life itself. It is to the generous Father who longs to give that we pray (Luke 18:1-7).

What does Christian prayer do? Like all prayer, Christian prayer takes its shape from the particular doctrine of providence that is on view. Since a Christian account of God’s interaction in the world involves Jesus Christ and especially his death and new life, Christian prayer knows somewhat the will of God for the world is and prays accordingly.

Christians pray with the expectation that prayer is not superfluous. Not only is it a clinging to God in the midst of our own uncertainty about the future, the Christian prays with an expectation that her prayer is part of God establishing his kingdom in the world. The Christian is no fatalist.

What can Christians ask for in prayer?

There is in principle nothing for which the Christian cannot ask. Christian asking is premised on the generous character of God our Father, who knows already our needs before we ask (Matt 6:8) and who loves to give to those who ask.

Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?  Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake?  If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Asking God is greatly preferable to the murderous wrestle with others for things (see James 4:2-3). The petitions of the Lord’s Prayer however remind us of the nature of the times in which we are living – that we pray not only on account of and according to God’s general providence, but also on account of and according to his special providence. We learn to pray for God’s will to be done – not because this is some remorseless impersonal force, but because we recognize his wisdom and sovereignty alongside his Fatherly care of us.

And we are permitted to wrestle with God in our prayers. We see this in the Psalms of course, which give voice to human doubts. The remarkable instance is of course Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. The pleading of the Son - that it be some other way - clearly do not fall outside the bounds of what is righteous behavior for the creature. At the same time he acknowledges the priority of the Father’s will – which is done, and revealed to us, by the crucifying of the messiah. The prayer of Paul for the Colossians that they be filled with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding (1:9) points not to some secret knowledge of providence, but to the revelation of the will of God the Father in the cross of the Son. Praying for the provision of daily bread – or the eschatological bread – points to the way in which the Lord Jesus is the answer to the prayer he teaches his disciples. The special providential nature of prayer does not negate the general providential aspect – rather it orders it, in Christ, to an eschatological end. 

And what should a Christian expect to receive in prayer?

Firstly, we can expect that our prayers are heard by a God who as our Father wants for our good, and has provided for us in Christ.

Secondly, we can expect that he delights to use and respond to our prayers. The NT always speaks as if God responds to our prayers in ‘real time’ (not just that by chance our prayers coincide with what was decided beforehand).

Thirdly, we can expect in particular to receive the counsel and knowledge of the will of God that the Holy Spirit provides as we pray. Not for nothing Calvin calls prayer a treasure. As he describes it, prayer to the Father through the Son in the power of the Spirit is itself its own answer.

So why not pray? It seems that prayer is an undiscovered benefit of the Christian life for many of us – an un-exercised muscle that is surprisingly powerful when finally it is put to use. We neglect to pray because we don’t see how good God is, and what treasures lie stored up for us in prayer. What is more, we don’t pray because we don’t grasp the power and majesty of God. We confine our prayers, afraid to ask for too much, as if God were somehow either too stingy or too puny to give us what we ask for.
What we need is to cultivate our faith in God’s goodness and his greatness – both of them unmistakeably revealed to us in the Son, by the Holy Spirit. The glory and his righteousness are surely invitations to us to pray extraordinary prayers of boldness.

Photo credit: Lel4nd