BASIC BIBLE DOCTRINE

Essential Tools for Christian Growth

Lesson Eight: An Introduction to Prayer

Prayer is one of the most important activities that a believer can be engaged in—yet it is a subject of which many Christians are woefully ignorant.  These believers, unaware of the principles and protocols of prayer spend many hours praying, only to become frustrated and disillusioned when their prayers go unanswered, never getting any higher than the ceiling.  Many backslidden Christians got that way because they never learned what the Word of God says about prayer, and never learned how to make their prayers effective—all because of ignorance. As Hosea 4:6 puts it, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”   

 

BASIC BIBLE DOCTRINE

Essential Tools for Christian Growth

Lesson Eight

An Introduction to Prayer 

by John McReynolds

We are about to begin a study of the subject of prayer, which will take several lessons.  For the Christian one of the most important prayers is offered when he realizes that he has unconfessed sins in his life, and he goes before the Father to confess them and be restored to fellowship and filled with the Holy Spirit.  The Filling of the Holy Spirit is essential before one can receive any benefit from the study of the Scriptures.  1 Cor 11:31 and 2 Cor. 13:5 both exhort us to examine ourselves to see if there is any unrighteousness in our lives, and then 1 John 1:9 promises that if we confess our sins God will cleanse us of that sin and of any other unrighteousness that contaminates our life.  So before we begin our study let us take a moment to do just that. Let us pray:

Thank You, Heavenly Father for the opportunity to study one of the most important subjects in Your Word—how to communicate with You. Help us to learn, understand, believe, and apply these truths that we might be drawn ever closer to You—for we ask it in the name of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, amen.

There is probably no person of normal intelligence and mental capability who has not at some point tried to pray to God—believers and unbelievers, moral and immoral, even agnostics and atheists.  Mostly the content of those prayers is something along the lines of “God, help me! I’m in a real jam here!”  I always find it amusing that so many people choose to ignore God except when they think they need supernatural help.

I remember the story of one outspoken atheist who was out hiking one day in a national park in Wyoming.  He was enjoying the vista of unspoiled nature and he spontaneously exclaimed, “What fantastic lakes!  What marvelous forests!  What majestic mountains!  Nature is absolutely fantastic!  The beautiful birds, the fragrant flowers—how wonderful are the results of evolution!”

Just then a grizzly bear came charging out of the woods toward the man.  Panicked, he tried to run from the beast, but the bear quickly caught up with the man and knocked him down flat on his back and straddled him, jaws wide and slavering, its breath steaming in the cold air, and one great paw lined with two inch claws raised for the killing blow.  Horrified, the atheist involuntarily screamed out, “Oh God please help me!”

Time stopped. The bear’s dripping saliva paused in mid drip, and its misty breath froze in place.  A voice came from nowhere and said, “You ask Me to help you, yet you have spent your life refuting My existence, ridiculing My messengers, impugning My Church, and denying My Christ.  And, after I have given you countless opportunities, you have stubbornly refused to believe in Me.  Why should I help you?”

“You are right, God,” the atheist replied. “It would be hypocritical of me at this point to promise to be a Christian. But would you grant me one request—could you make this bear a Christian?”

Time restarted.  The bear sat back on its haunches, brought its paws together, closed its eyes and intoned, “Heavenly Father, I thank You for this marvelous bounty of which I am about to partake …”

Prayer is one of the most important activities that a believer can be engaged in—yet it is a subject of which many Christians are woefully ignorant.  These believers, unaware of the principles and protocols of prayer spend many hours praying, only to become frustrated and disillusioned when their prayers go unanswered, never getting any higher than the ceiling.  Many backslidden Christians got that way because they never learned what the Word of God says about prayer, and never learned how to make their prayers effective—all because of ignorance. As Hosea 4:6 puts it, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”   

Our purpose in this series of lessons is to correct some of that lack.  We’re going to look at what prayer is, the purpose of prayer, procedures for praying correctly, legitimate and illegitimate reasons for prayer, categories of answers to prayer, reasons why prayers go unanswered, and some general principles of prayer.  We’ll only get to a couple of those in this lesson.

What does the word “prayer” mean? According to Webster’s dictionary it means, an earnest request; entreaty or supplication. Our English word comes a 14th century French word, preiere, which itself comes from an earlier Latin word precari, meaning to ask earnestly or beg—the concept being to ask, entreat, or beg favor from one who is in a position of power or authority.

The word used in the Old Testament Hebrew is palal (פּלל – pronounced paw-lal). According to Strong’s Concordance it has the meaning “to intercede, pray, intreat, make prayer, make supplication.” In the New Testament Greek the word is proseuchomai (προσεύχομαι – pronounced pros-yoo-khom-ahee). It means to supplicate as in worship, and it comes from two Greek words, pros (πρός) meaning “face to face with”, and euchomai (εὔχομαι), meaning “to will” or “to wish”. So the New Testament meaning of the word is to make petition or literally to present a wish face to face with God.

What Exactly Is Prayer? 

Very simply, prayer is the way believers communicate with God.  As with all aspects of our relationship with Him, God took the initiative in communicating with us—He spoke to us first—in fact He has had an ongoing dialogue with mankind from the beginning.  As lost unbelievers He communicated to us by giving us abundant evidence that He exists.  To those of us who communicated back to Him by responding positively in our hearts that we knew He exists and wanted to know more about Him, He gave the Gospel.  To those of us who then communicated back to Him by responding positively to the Gospel and receiving Jesus Christ as our Savior, He imparted salvation with its many blessings. 

Among those blessings is His communication to us in the Word of God, the Bible, by which He imparts knowledge about Himself.  For every communication to us He expects a reply from us—he wants us to have an ongoing conversation with Him.  And the way we communicate back to Him, as born again believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, is through prayer.

Prayer Expresses Bible Doctrine Resident in Our Souls 

In our last lesson we looked at the Grace System of Comprehension.  In it we examined two processes: Faith Perception and Faith Application.  It is this last process, Faith Application, that is at work when we dialogue with God in prayer.  God communicates Bible truths to us from His word, we believe them in faith, the Holy Spirit makes those truths real and applicable in our lives.  And when we pray, through Faith Application we communicate those truths right back to God.  This is how God wants to relate to us. 

When our daughter was born, we loved her very much, and we did everything we could to shelter, nurture, and protect her.  But while she remained an infant it wasn’t very satisfying to try to hold a conversation with her.  But as she grew and gained an understanding of the world around her and became more able to interact with us, more and more we had that special joy that parents experience when they are able to interact with their children on an adult level. It is God’s purpose for us to have that kind of relationship with Him.

So then prayer is the means whereby we communicate with God, and it requires that we be able to give back to Him what He has given to us.  Like any parent, God is delighted when His children are able to dialogue with Him.  The only way we are able to do that is for us to be in His word enough to have something to say to Him.  He wants us as spiritual adults to converse with Him by expressing His truth in prayer.

Prayer Requires Vocabulary, Thinking, and Concentration 

Whether we think our prayers or speak them out loud, all prayer is in its essence, thought.  Any child learning to talk must develop a vocabulary in order to express himself.  Likewise, new believers must develop a spiritual vocabulary in order to express themselves to God.  God gives us this spiritual vocabulary through His Grace System of Comprehension (GSC), which we studied in the last lesson.  We must be able to think—to intelligently “string together” vocabulary into thoughts that are coherent—that make sense.  The process of learning in the GSC exercises our minds to be able to think clearly—to think properly so as to make the proper application of the Bible Doctrine we are trying to express through prayer.

And that requires concentration.  Our minds must be progressively disciplined to be able to focus on the Lord and His Word so that we can offer effective prayer to the Father in all situations.  This is one of the functions of the local church—we studied that concept recently as enforced humility.  When an assembly of believers gather together to worship God, in order to do that properly they must align their wills and purpose.  When the proclamation of the Word of God begins everyone must remain quiet and attentive, minimizing movement or any activity that might be distracting to others.  This attitude of humility expresses respect for the communicator, for your fellow believer, and most importantly for God.  And this enhances and develops your own concentration.  When believers do this consistently, over time they will develop the concentration skills that are vital for successful prayer.

Prayer Is a Measure of Spiritual Maturity 

If you have been paying attention to what you’ve been reading so far in this lesson, you probably have realized by now that prayer is an index to the effectiveness of a person’s spiritual life.  It is one of the tests of spiritual maturity. The prayers of a person who is advanced in the Christian life will be succinct, not rambling—it will be focused, and always in line with the will of God as revealed in His Word.  Most people just starting out in the Christian life have a hard time with prayer, but as they hang in there and gradually “… grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ …” (2 Pet 3:18), they find themselves becoming more and more adept at prayer, and more able to recognize God’s answers to their prayers.

Things For Which We Use Prayer 

Prayer is the primary vehicle for the application of Bible Doctrine in the believer’s life.  In prayer we express God’s truth to Him.  The more we learn of the Bible the more we are able to do this.  The content of the Bible is God’s truth.  There are countless truths that can be gleaned from its pages.  Many of these are Promises of God, which we have looked at in earlier posts. Others show the infinite perfections of God, others speak of the truths regarding our “so great salvation,” while still others describe procedures for living the Christian life.  And regardless what category is the specific truth in our mind, prayer gives us an opportunity to express back to God what we have learned.  And God loves it when we express His truths back to him in prayer.  Prov. 15:8 – “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the LORD, But the prayer of the upright is His delight.”  We apply Bible truths when we praise Him.  We apply truths when we intercede for others.  We apply Bible truths when we place our own needs and petitions before Him.  We even apply Bible truths when we confess our sins to Him. 

For Restoration to Fellowship

Hopefully this is what you do before each study in the Word, as we have studied in Lesson 1 of this series.  But for the sake of review, Restoration to Fellowship (RTF) is a spiritual exercise, wherein, if you know you are out of fellowship (or not sure), you confess your known sins to the Father, restore the Filling of the Holy Spirit (FHS), thereby restoring power to your Christian life and the ability to spiritually understand the Word of God.  RTF is not just to be used before each Bible study, either.  For some folks, the only time they confess their sins is before Bible class.  But RTF was meant to be used the second you become aware of your out of fellowship condition.

For Thanksgiving, Worship, and Praise

All prayer should contain thanksgiving.  In Phil. 4:6 the Apostle Paul says, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.”  Here God specifically ties presenting our petitions to God with thanksgiving.  And that doesn’t just mean giving thanks just for the “good things” in life either, but also giving thanks for the bad situations in life, because those situations give opportunity for God to be glorified in how He works out solutions to them, or simply for the way he sees his children through bad situations.  God commands us to do this: 1 Thess. 5:18 — “In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

The term worship comes from an old Anglo-Saxon word, “weordscipe,” which would be rendered “worthship” in modern English.  It means to ascribe great worth or value to something.  When we worship God we are expressing the truth of His infinite worth, value, and worthiness.  Praise is a term closely related to worship.  What’s the difference?  Well, the short answer is that praise involves the public declaration or expression of God’s infinite value and worthiness.  Worship can involve public praise, but it also includes private devotions, Bible study, and—of course—prayer.

For Petition and Intercession

Petition and intercession are two very related words.  Petition means to make a request to a higher authority.  In its strictest sense it can include petitions for a person’s own needs, and it can include petitions on behalf of others. On the other hand, intercession means to intervene on behalf of another person.  Usually, when we approach the topic of prayer, we distinguish between prayers for others from prayers for our own needs.  When we pray, it is usual to present intercessory prayer for others before we present our own petitions for ourselves.  This is because the Bible enjoins us to consider the needs of others above our own—Phil. 2:3-4 “Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.”

We are commanded in many places to pray for others, for example in Jas. 5:16— “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.” .  Paul asked the Ephesian believers to pray on his behalf – Eph. 6:19.  And Paul prayed for the Philippian believers in Phil. 1:9, and for the Colossian church in Col 1:9.  There are many other examples.

Presenting petitions for your own needs is very Biblical and not at all selfish.  Phil. 4:6 – “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  Notice that prayer and thanksgiving are linked in this verse. I need to point out here that God does not need you to tell Him what your needs are because He doesn’t know what they are.  God is omniscient (all-knowing)—He already knows what your needs are, better than you do yourself.  He has always known what our legitimate needs are, and He made provision for them in eternity past.  But God expects you to come to Him as the source of your supply.  You can think of it this way: God hears our prayers twice—once in eternity past when He actually answered it, and again when we actually present our prayer to Him.  Isa. 65:24 says, “It will also come to pass that before they call, I will answer; and while they are still speaking, I will hear.”  Praying for our own needs is how we acknowledge God as the all-sufficient source of everything we need in life.  We bring glory and honor to the Father when we present legitimate requests to Him in prayer. 

God’s Protocol for Prayer 

It is popular in contemporary Christianity to think of God the Father as a kindly, beneficent, approachable “Daddy” whose lap we can crawl into like little children.  And because of God’s provision for us there is a very real sense in which that is true.  In Romans 8:15 we read, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’”  In fact, the word “Abba” is an Aramaic word that roughly translates as “Daddy!” (Aramaic was the everyday street language of the Jews at the time of Christ.)

However, we must not make the mistake of forgetting Who God really is.  He is the sovereign ruler of the universe.  He is perfectly righteous and just and cannot tolerate sin, and were it not for the fact that He made provision for our salvation, as sinful humans He would blast us all into hell.  Isaiah had a vision of God and he recorded his reaction to being face to face with God’s holiness in Isa. 6:5 — “Then I said, ‘Woe is me, for I am ruined! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.’”

Most often when people pray to God their prayers are what I call “gimme” prayers—“gimme this; gimme that; gimme blessings; gimme the person I want; gimme success; gimme wealth; gimme the winning lottery ticket.”  This self-centered attitude was clearly expressed in the lyrics of the old Janis Joplin song of the late 1960’s, “Oh Lord, won’t ya buy me A Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends!” People treat the sovereign Lord of the universe as if He were some kind of “sugar daddy”.  But if people had a clear notion of Who they were dealing with, they wouldn’t treat Him in such a cavalier manner.  They would approach Him in humility, complete deference, and awe.

In many places we are told to fear the Lord.  The Greek word translated “fear” is phobos (φόβος).  It is the source of our word “phobia.” It does mean fear, but the English word “fear” usually implies terror—something that we want to run away from; something undesirable or bad.  In Greek it does not have that same connotation.  A better translation in my opinion is “awe,”  especially where believers are concerned.  Now unbelievers who never seek a right relationship have reason to regard God with terror, but believers who are rightly related to Him should have a healthy sense of awe, respect, and love for Him.  So this sense of awe and respect is properly reflected when we approach God while observing the proper protocol.

So let’s look at God’s protocol for approaching Him in prayer.  What do I mean by protocol?  Protocol is a term defined by Merriam Webster’s dictionary as “a code prescribing strict adherence to correct etiquette and precedence.” In the matter of approaching God on His throne of grace, He has set the protocols, and He expects us to strictly observe these protocols.  In fact, much of the reason why our prayers don’t get past the ceiling is because we don’t observe the protocols God has established.

As Christians we recognize that while God is One in His essence, He in fact exists as three persons—the Father, the Son (the Lord Jesus Christ), and the Holy Spirit.  These three Persons make up what we call the Godhead.  All three persons of the Godhead play distinct roles in receiving and answering prayer.  God the Father is the One to whom prayer is addressed.  All proper prayer is made in the name of God the Son, and in the power of God the Holy Spirit.  Also, both the Son and the Holy Spirit are involved in prayer ministries of their own on behalf of the believer.  The Lord Jesus Christ Himself intercedes for us: Rom. 8:34 – “… Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” And the Holy Spirit also has His ministry: Rom. 8:26 – “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 …” 

Pray to the Father

We just summarized the roles the Members of the Trinity play in prayer.  But let’s go into a little more detail.  When we pray we are to pray to the Father.  Our Lord Jesus told us in Matt. 6:6, “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father …”.  And again in the so-called “Lord’s Prayer,” Matt. 6:9, “Pray, then, in this way: ‘Our Father who is in heaven, Hallowed be Your name …’”  Other verses on praying to the Father are Eph. 3:14; and 1 Pet. 1:17.

When you pray to the Father you are recognizing that He is the Supreme Authority of God’s plan for the ages.   Even God the Son and God the Holy Spirit—both coequal Members of the Trinity—recognize the Father as the Supreme Authority.  Even though both the Son and the Spirit are absolutely the equal of the Father in every respect, they voluntarily submitted to the authority of the Father, since He is the author of the Plan of God.

Pray in the Name of the Son

We born-again believers have access to God’s Throne of Grace for one reason and one reason only—we have been bought by the precious blood of the Lamb—the Lord Jesus Christ.  It was His sacrifice on the cross of Calvary that made it possible for God to have a relationship with fallen, sinful man.  It was Jesus Christ Who accomplished the work of salvation.  God the Father “… made Him who knew no sin [Jesus Christ] to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Cor. 5:21).  Jesus Christ represents all of humanity at the Throne of Grace, so when we come to the Father in prayer, we must come to Him through the Son—just as we must come to the Father through Jesus Christ for salvation.  John 14:6 – “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.’”

So when we seek to exercise that relationship in prayer we are to approach the Father’s Throne in the name of the Son—the Lord Jesus Christ.  Jesus, speaking as recorded in the Gospel of John said, “Whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13).  “If you ask Me anything in My name, I will do it” (John 14:14).  At no other time in history have people had the privileges of access to the Father that we believers in the Church Age have.  We, as Church Age believers, can enter the very Throne Room of God!  But getting into the Throne Room of God requires a special pass. And we show that pass in prayer when we invoke the name of Jesus.

But praying in the name of the Son also means that your prayer is aligned with the will of God.  In 1 John 5:14 the apostle tells us, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.”  It will do you no good to pray a prayer like, “O God, please let this be the winning lottery ticket—in Jesus name, amen.”

Pray in the Power of the Holy Spirit

Another unique feature of the time in which we live—the Church Age—is that the power of the Holy Spirit is available to every believer.  Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ has been indwelled by the Holy Spirit since the moment of his or her salvation, making the power of the Holy Spirit available to the believer at all times.  And, at the moment of salvation, every believer was filled with the Holy Spirit, placing him or her under the Spirit’s control.

These are concepts that can be pretty confusing—the Indwelling of the Holy Spirit (IHS) and the Filling of the Holy Spirit (FHS).  And while we don’t have the space to get into these subjects in this lesson, we can use an illustration to help you understand the difference between the IHS and the FHS.  In most places, people live in houses with electrical wiring.  And while in some places the availability of electrical power can be pretty iffy, most people have it available pretty much on a continuous basis. 

My house, like most folks’ houses, is wired for electricity.  My house lights are already wired into the circuits, ready to operate at the flick of a switch.  Now I may choose to turn the light on in a room, or I may choose to leave it dark—it’s up to me—but the electricity is there, available for my use all the time.  That’s a picture of the IHS—the Indwelling Holy Spirit.  The Holy Spirit indwells the believer, making His infinite power available to him at any time, just as you could say electricity “indwells” my house, available for my use.

But it’s up to me to turn on the light in a dark room.  I may choose to see where I’m going, or I may choose to stumble around in the dark.  If I flip the switch and electricity floods the room with light, well that’s analogous to the FHS—the Filling of the Spirit.  The Holy Spirit is right there, waiting for the believer to confess his sins and get back into fellowship with God—to “flip the switch” as it were—so that the Holy Spirit of God can get some Divine electricity into the believer’s life, so he’s not just stumbling around in the dark.  This same Divine power is absolutely essential if the believer is to be heard by the Father.  No believer will be heard if there is unconfessed sin in his life. In Psa. 66:18 it says, “If I regard wickedness in my heart, The Lord will not hear …”

if we observe the proper protocols in approaching God in prayer He will hear us.  And obviously that is the first step in getting our prayers answered.  There are, of course, many reasons why our prayers are not answered, but we have no space left to address them in this lesson, so we’ll take up further considerations in the matter of prayer next time.

Heavenly Father, we are so thankful that you have provided us with a system for communicating with You.  We praise You, Father that You have not just provided any old system, but You have designed the perfect system, enabled by the work of Jesus Christ on the cross, and powered by the most potent energy source in the universe, the Holy Spirit.  May the Spirit take these truths we’ve studied and make them potent and operable in our lives, for we ask it in the name of the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, amen.

 

To the reader:  If you have read this lesson, I would greatly appreciate any feedback, questions, or comments you have.  Getting feedback from my readers is very helpful and encouraging to me.  I promise to respond to all legitimate questions or comments as appropriate.  But please, do keep your questions and comments appropriate and constructive.

Thank you very much.

In His Service,

John McReynolds

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