THE URGE TO REACH OUT TO OTHERS IS ONE OF our strongest instincts. It’s as basic as our need for food or sleep. We need to communicate with other people. We need to connect with others and to be understood. We reach out to other people to love and be loved because all of us have an innate desire for relationship.
When we begin to talk about prayer, we are really just talking about finding this same kind of personal connection with God. A noted Bible resource points out that all Christian prayer is “conditioned by the biblical understanding of God as a personal being who hears the prayers of his people.”1 In other words, the God we worship is not an impersonal deity! He is not a distant creator far removed from the lives of his creatures. God is instead a loving God, whose “will is ever directed to his children’s good.”2 This God is the God revealed to us in the Scriptures as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this God wants us to know him, as he knows us.
I have found that prayer can seem like an intimidating thing to some people. I’ve been told more than once by people struggling with personal or spiritual issues that they don’t know how to pray, or else that they’ve tried praying but were afraid they “weren’t doing it right.” So let me offer a simple definition for prayer right here at the outset: prayer is the act of lifting up our thoughts, words, and affections to God. It is a kind of conversation with God, where we both speak and listen.
Prayer is the act of lifting up our thoughts, words, and affections to God.
If prayer is a conversation with God, then obviously it has to involve our own thoughts and words. But I’ve also said that it involves our affections—and I use that word intentionally rather than a word like “emotions.” An emotion is something that we just experience; it emerges out of us unbidden. But an affection is a bit different. Affections of the heart traditionally have been things that can be shaped or molded. Good or holy affections like love and generosity are those we would want to nurture in our lives. Other affections are not so good: timidity, meanness of spirit, or greed. All affections are appropriate to offer up before God, though, because it is God who can give a greater shape to our good affections and can diminish our negative affections. Plus, our affections are also just part of us—as much as our thoughts and words are. They are part of how we communicate with others. So they ought to be a part of how we communicate with God too.
Christians believe that prayer can satisfy a deep yearning of our hearts. Saint Augustine spoke to this yearning at the beginning of his autobiography, The Confessions. He prayed to God, “You have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.” Each of us has had the breath of God breathed into us. God has created us in his own image. And we’re never really home until we’re home with God.
Prayer shows up all throughout the Bible. If prayer is heartfelt conversation with God, then we find it as early as Adam’s interactions with God in the garden of Eden. We also see it as late as the prayer for Jesus Christ to return again in glory at the end of the book of Revelation. There are countless examples of individuals offering up prayers to God within the Bible. And there is a whole book of the Bible—the Psalms—that is made up entirely of prayers.
One of the consistent themes in the New Testament’s teaching about prayer is that we can be assured that God will hear and respond to our prayers. The apostle John points to this when he says, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (1 John 5:14 NIV). This is a wonderful message! It tells us that God knows our needs, and that God absolutely expects us to bring our needs to him through prayer.
One way to think about prayer in the Bible is to look at the different types of prayers that we find. Perhaps the easiest way to think about the major biblical modes of prayer is through the acronym “ACTS.” It stands for Adoration, Confession, Thanksgiving, and Supplication. The four types of prayer that go by these names are found in many places in the Bible.
A prayer of adoration is a prayer that praises God’s goodness and majesty. In the Bible, we find prayers of adoration in the Psalms, which are often called psalms of praise. For instance, Psalm 111:
Praise the LORD!
I will give thanks to the LORD with my whole heart,
in the company of the upright, in the congregation.
Great are the works of the LORD,
studied by all who delight in them.
Full of honor and majesty is his work,
and his righteousness endures forever.
He has gained renown by his wonderful deeds;
the LORD is gracious and merciful.
(vv. 1–4 NRSV)
A prayer of confession is a searching prayer of the heart. When we confess, we bare our souls before God about our sins and shortcomings. Confession to God is also a model for the kind of mutual confession that believers in the body of Christ are called upon to make to one another (see James 5:16). But ultimately, since all sin is sin against God, we are called to confess our sins to God. A key part of the good news of Jesus is that repentance can bring forgiveness and new life. Indeed, the Bible assures us that sincere confession before God will be met with forgiveness. We see this in 1 John 1:9 which says, “If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (NRSV). So prayers of confession ought to be a regular part of our spiritual lives, as we become transformed into the people God would have us be.
A prayer of thanksgiving is a prayer that recognizes the good things God gives us and offers thanks for them: our lives, our health, our families, and our faith. The apostle Paul told us, “Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you” (1 Thess. 5:16–18 NRSV). A part of what it means to live faithfully is to live out of a deep sense of gratitude for all that God has done for us. Prayers of thanksgiving help us to do that. They give proper thanks to God and also shape us into thankful people at our core.
A prayer of supplication is a prayer that lifts up requests before God. Supplications are often divided between those requests we make for ourselves (petitions) and those requests we make on behalf of other people (intercessions). We can turn again to the apostle Paul, who told us in Philippians, “Do not worry about anything, but with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God” (v. 4:6 NRSV). It is natural for us to ask God for the desires of our hearts, and we can be assured that God will answer our prayers. Just so, we feel the need to pray on behalf of others as well—our family and friends, as well as those whose needs we know even if we do not know them personally. God does answer prayer, even if we need to be mindful that God’s answers to prayer are not always the answers we want God to give!
There are other types of prayer in Scripture beyond the four in the ACTS model. Anyone familiar with the Psalms will know that prayers of lament make up a great part of the Psalter. These lament prayers are a particular type of prayer all their own. In addition, there are particular kinds of prayers of invocation in the Bible, calling upon God to be present in special ways. Prayers of healing fit into this category, as when the letter of James refers to the “prayer of faith” that can heal the sick (see James 5:13–15). Even so, becoming familiar with the ACTS prayers is a great way to become more familiar with biblical models of prayer in general.
When we consider prayer as one of the means of grace, our focus turns to the way Jesus shows us how to pray through his teaching and example in the Gospels. We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that Jesus’ ministry is filled with prayer. He prays in the wilderness after his baptism. He heals a man through prayer. He teaches his disciples to pray. He withdraws to lonely places when he gets overwhelmed by the crowds so he can reconnect to the Father through prayer. He prays at Gethsemane so he might have strength to face his coming crucifixion. And he even dies with the prayer on his lips, “Into your hands I commend my spirit.”
Jesus’ life and ministry are clothed in prayer. In that, he offers us a model of how to live as his followers. He invites us to be a people of prayer.
We also find when we go to the Gospels that Jesus wants us to pray as well. The most precious prayer that we can pray is the prayer that Jesus taught to his disciples. It is called the Lord’s Prayer or the “Our Father.” It looks like this:
Our Father, who art in heaven,
hallowed be thy name,
Thy kingdom come,
thy will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation,
but deliver us from evil
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
We find Jesus teaching this prayer to his disciples in both Matthew 6:7–15 and Luke 11:1–4. If we want to be counted amongst his disciples today, we ought to offer this prayer to God daily.
John Wesley believed that the means of grace are given to us because they are the “means of drawing near to God.”3 Wesley’s belief about the power of the means of grace echoes Scripture: “Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you” (James 4:8).
We can see how important prayer is when we think about it as a kind of conversation with God. Think about it: if you want to really get to know another person, you have to build a relationship with that person. And the way you do that is by relating to that other person through language! In this day and age, we can communicate in dozens of different ways: from letter writing to phone calling to text messaging, and from e-mailing to photo sharing via social media. There are new apps being developed every day to facilitate communication between people. But none of these ways can ultimately take the place of face-to-face, personal conversation. A teacher of mine once observed, “If you want to get to really know another person, you have to listen to his story. And then you have to share your story in return.” We learn God’s story with us as it is revealed in Scripture. And we share our story with God through prayer. In this way, we draw near to God and God draws near to us.
One of the ways we can learn about the Wesleyan way of prayer is through the teaching that Wesley himself made about prayer. They include the way that prayer gives us these three gifts: encouragement, assurance, and transformation.
Wesley’s teaching about encouragement in prayer is based on the notion that God’s desire for relationship with us always comes by way of invitation rather than coercion. That is, the very nature of grace is such that it beckons and invites but does not twist our arms. That is the way love works at all times, and it is especially so with God. Wesley’s teaching on prayer is first and foremost to encourage us to be a people of prayer. He says, “God does nothing but in answer to prayer; and even they who have been converted to God, without praying for it themselves (which is exceeding rare), were not without the prayers of others. Every new victory which a soul gains is the effect of a new prayer.”4 When we pray, we are responding to God’s gracious offer of a relationship with us.
For Wesley, the view of prayer as our response to God also explains why the apostle Paul encourages us to “pray without ceasing” in 1 Thessalonians 5:16–18. About this, Wesley says, “God’s command to ‘pray without ceasing’ is founded on the necessity we have of His grace to preserve the life of God in the soul, which can no more subsist one moment without it, than the body can without air.”5 If we need God for life and salvation, then we need to enter into a relationship with God that is sustained in every moment of every day. The means to that daily relationship is, above all, through prayer.
The encouragement to pray leads next to an assurance that God hears our prayers and answers them. We have already seen John’s teaching on that: “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us” (1 John 5:14). Peter echoed him: “Cast all your anxiety on him, because he cares for you” (1 Peter 5:7 NRSV). Wesley’s view of assurance through prayer builds off of these biblical foundations. He told us, “On every occasion of uneasiness we should retire to prayer, that we may give place to the grace and light of God, and then form our resolutions, without being in any pain about what success they may have. . . . In the greatest temptations, a single look to Christ, and the barely pronouncing His name, suffices to overcome the wicked one, so it be done with confidence and calmness of spirit.”6 This does not mean we will always get the answers we want, of course. But it does mean that God hears our prayers and responds. It means we can be assured of the most important need that we have: namely, that God will be present with us and will save us.
Finally, the Wesleyan view of prayer contains within it a belief in God’s transformation through prayer. By nurturing our relationship with God, Wesley says, we “unite ourselves to God, in whom the soul expands itself in prayer.”7 He expresses this view beautifully in his sermon, “The New Birth,” when he writes about what the believer’s life looks like once he is born again by God’s grace:
God is continually breathing, as it were, upon his soul, and his soul is breathing unto God. Grace is descending into his heart, and prayer and praise ascending to heaven. And by this intercourse between God and man, this fellowship with the Father and the Son, as by a kind of spiritual respiration, the life of God in the soul is sustained: and the child of God grows up, till he comes to “the full measure of the stature of Christ.”8
What Wesley calls an “intercourse between God and man” amounts to a rich description of the life of prayer. God pours out his grace into our hearts, which makes us into new people. We then offer what we have to God—which is our prayer and praise in thanksgiving for what God has done for us. This isn’t something that happens only once, of course. Wesley describes is as “spiritual respiration.” It is like breathing, something that simply comes to mark us as new creatures. And the effect in us is a deep transformation, where we come to love God and neighbor with all that we are.
When I was seven years old, my parents bought me my first bicycle. It was glorious—a yellow and red bike with a banana seat and tassels coming off of the handlebars. The best part about it was the big Spiderman shield attached right on the front of the handlebars. It was a Spidey bike! And I loved it the minute I set eyes on it.
The problem with a present like your first bicycle is that to really enjoy it, you have to learn how to ride it. And that took awhile. I used to get my dad to go outside into the driveway with me after he got home from work. I would get on and start peddling, and he’d hold the metal ring at the back of that banana seat, walking along behind me and keeping me upright.
It took awhile before he could let go of the back of my bike without me toppling over. And it took even longer before I could hop up on the bike and start peddling down the driveway without a second thought about my balance. But eventually that’s what happens with riding a bicycle: you get to the point that you can ride it without thinking about what you are actually doing. Balance, peddling, and steering all just get integrated into your experience to the point where it becomes second nature.
Prayer is not terribly different from learning to ride a bicycle. It can seem difficult at first, even unnatural. It can certainly help to have someone more experienced offer a guiding hand. Of course, it requires practice. But over time, it becomes more and more familiar until doing it becomes second nature to daily life. It will help us now to look at what “second-nature” prayer looks like, as well as some of the ways we can think about adopting prayer into our daily discipleship.
One of my favorite descriptions of prayer comes from the early church father Clement of Alexandria, who said, “Prayer, to speak somewhat boldly, is converse with God. Even if we address Him in a whisper, without opening our lips, or uttering a sound, still we cry to Him in our heart. For God never ceases to listen to the inward converse of the heart.”9 I think this description fits with my own experience with prayer, which is that sometimes I don’t feel like I have the right words to speak to God to describe the deep longings of my heart. In fact, it is often at the times I feel the need to be closest to God that I have the trouble finding the language to pray.
In Romans, Paul said, “We do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). In this way, God searches our hearts and hears our longings even when we don’t know how to speak them aloud. I find great assurance in this point of view, because it tells me that God is often closest to me when I am in the midst of my greatest struggles.
Clearly, we need to practice how we pray. If we want to become a people of prayer, then we need to engage in prayer both daily and in a variety of ways. Wesley believed in both written prayers and prayers of the heart. He thought it was essential for Christians to pray together in worship, but he also believed strongly in the value of personal prayer time. He also valued what he called “family prayer.” He counseled people to pray “every morning and evening,” by which he meant upon rising in the morning and before going to sleep at night.11 He encouraged them to pray to God in such a way that they “lift up thy heart to him, to pour out thy soul before him.”12 In other words, he believed that the true Christian life was a life of prayer.
“Prayer is the lifting up of the heart to God: all words of prayer without this are mere hypocrisy. Whenever therefore thou attemptest to pray, see that it be thy one design to commune with God, to lift up thy heart to him, to pour out thy soul before him.”
—John Wesley10
The Wesleyan approach to prayer should lead us to think about a number of possibilities for the practice of prayer in our own discipleship. Let me offer three:
1. We should approach the kind of prayer we do in worship services seriously. When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we should remember that this is the prayer Jesus has taught us to pray. When we confess our sins before God with the rest of our congregation, we should focus on the words we say, recognizing that there is great value in lifting up our confessions together as the body of Christ. And when our pastors offer prayers for us, we should pay attention to what is actually being prayed, remembering that this is a collective prayer that we are all offering up together.
2. We should make private prayer a daily habit. Wesley’s advice about praying upon waking in the morning and praying before going to bed at night is helpful. Such times of the day are excellent points to remember with thankfulness all that God has given us. Praying in the morning prepares us for the day and helps us to adopt “the same mind that was in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 2:5 NRSV). Praying at night is a way to recollect the day we have just spent, examining ourselves and offering up our adoration, confession, thanksgiving, and supplication to God.
3. We should make a concerted attempt to engage in family prayer, both at mealtimes and at a set-aside time with our spouses and children. In my experience, this is one of the most neglected opportunities for prayer that is before us. It is too easy to allow a mealtime blessing to become a perfunctory prayer, when in fact it is a time for the family to offer its earnest thanksgivings to God. Children also should be taught the practice and discipline of prayer, and their parents are by far the best people to do that. A time for family prayer in the evening should be a staple of any family’s devotion. It is something that can become a building block for faith in the young.
One of the types of prayer that I was introduced to some years ago is called a “breath prayer.” It is a kind of prayer that I pray often now, and it has helped me to pray much more regularly in general. In a breath prayer, a simple prayer of only one or two sentences can be said over and over until it becomes a rhythm. One breath prayer that I pray when I am in the shower, driving to work, exercising, or mowing the yard, goes like this: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”13 I’ve found that this prayer draws me to Christ and helps me to internalize the practice of prayer in a wonderful way.
Wesley once said, “In souls filled with love, the desire to please God is a continual prayer.”14 This should be our aim in practicing prayer as a means of grace—that our entire being would become a prayer offered up to God. By embracing prayer in this way, we can come to know the kind of spiritual life that Wesley talks about. We can come to know the presence of the Holy Spirit as close as our own breath.