Prayer is not something we do so that God can find out what we need, because Jesus tells us “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8). God wants us to pray because prayer expresses our trust in God and is a means whereby our trust in him can increase. In fact, perhaps the primary emphasis of the Bible’s teaching on prayer is that we are to pray in faith, which means trust or dependence on God. God as our Creator delights in being trusted by us as his creatures, for an attitude of dependence is most appropriate to the Creator/creature relationship. Praying in humble dependence also indicates that we are genuinely convinced of God’s wisdom, love, goodness and power, all of the attributes that make up his excellent character.
The first words of the Lord’s prayer, Our Father who art in heaven” (Matthew 6:9), acknowledge our dependence on God as a loving and wise Father and also recognize that he rules all from his heavenly throne. Scripture many times emphasizes our need to trust God as we pray. For example, Jesus compares our praying to a son asking his father for a fish or an egg (Luke 11:9 – 12) and then concludes, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” (Luke 11:13). As children look to their fathers to provide for them, so God expects us to look to him in prayer. Since God is our Father, we should ask in faith. Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Matthew 21:22; James 1:6 – 8; James 5:14 – 15).
God does not only want us to trust him. He also wants us to love him and have fellowship with him. This is another reason to pray: Prayer brings us into deeper fellowship with God, and he loves us and delights in our fellowship with him.
Another reason God wants us to pray is that in prayer God allows us as creatures to be involved in activities that are eternally important. When we pray, the work of the kingdom is advanced. In this way, prayer gives us opportunity to be involved in a significant way in the work of the kingdom and thus gives expression to our greatness as creatures made in God’s image.
So then, how exactly does prayer work? Does prayer not only do us good but also affect God and the world?
(1) Prayer changes the way God acts. James tells us, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). He implies that failure to ask deprives us of what god would otherwise have given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened” (Luke 11:9 – 10). He makes a clear connection between seeking things from God and receiving them. When we ask, God responds.
If we were really convinced that prayer changes the way God acts, and that God does bring about remarkable changes in the world in response to prayer, as Scripture repeatedly teaches that he does, then we would pray much more than we do. If we pray little, it is probably because we really do not really believe that prayer accomplishes much at all.
(2) Effective prayer is made possible by our mediator, Jesus Christ. Because we are sinful and God is holy, we have no right on our own to enter into his presence. We need a mediator to come between us and God and to bring us into God’s presence. Scripture clearly teaches, “There is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5).
But if Jesus is the only mediator between God and man, will God hear they prayers of those who do not trust in Jesus? The answer depends on what we mean by “hear”. Since God is omniscient, he always “hears” in the sense that he is aware of the prayers made by unbelievers who do not come to him through Christ. God may even, from time to time, answer their prayers out of his mercy and in a desire to bring them to salvation through Christ. However, God has nowhere promised to respond to prayers of unbelievers. The only prayers that he promised to “hear” in the sense of listening with a sympathetic ear and undertaking to answer when they are made according to his will, are the prayers of Christians offered through the one mediator, Jesus Christ.
Then what about believers in the Old testament? How could they come to God through Jesus the mediator? The answer is that the work of Jesus as our mediator was foreshadowed by the sacrificial system and the offerings made by the priests of the temple (Hebrews 7:23 – 28; 8:1 – 6; 9:1- 14). There was no saving merit inherent in that system of sacrifices (Hebrews 10:1 – 4). Through the sacrificial system believers were accepted by God only on the basis of the future work of Christ foreshadowed by that system (Romans 3:23 – 26).
Now, since Christ has died as our mediational High Priest (Hebrews 7:26 – 27), he has gained for us boldness and access to the very presence of God. Therefore “we have confidence to enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus” (Hebrews 10:19), that is, into the holy place and into the holy of holies, the very presence of God himself! We enter “by the new and living way” (Hebrews 10:20) that Christ opened for us. The author of Hebrews concludes that since these things are true, “and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith” (Hebrews 10:22). In this way, Christ’s mediational work gives us confidence to approach God in prayer. We do not just come into God’s presence as strangers, or as visitors, or as laypersons, but as priests; as people who belong in the temple and have a right and even a duty to be in the most sacred places in the temple.
(3) What is praying “in Jesus’ name”? Jesus says, “Whatever you ask in my name, I will do it, that the Father may be glorified in the Son; if you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13 – 14). He also says that he chose his disciples “so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you” (John 15:16). Similarly, he says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, if you ask anything of the Father, he will give it to you in my name. Hitherto you have asked nothing in my name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:23 – 24). But what does this mean?
Clearly it does not simply mean adding the phrase “in Jesus’ name” after every prayer, because Jesus did not say, “If you ask anything and add the words ‘in Jesus’ name’ after your prayer, I will do it.” Jesus is not merely speaking about adding certain word as if these were a kind of magical formula that would give power to our prayers. In fact, none of the prayers recorded in Scripture have the phrase “in Jesus name” at the end of them.
To come in the name of someone means that another person has authorized us to come on his authority, not on our own. When Peter commands the lame man, “in the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, walk” (Acts 3:6), he is speaking on the authority of Jesus, not on his own authority. When the Sanhedrin asks the disciples, “By what power or by what name did you do this (Acts 4:7), they are asking, “By whose authority did you do this?” When Paul rebukes an unclean spirit “in the name of Jesus Christ” (Acts 16:18), he makes it clear that he is doing so on Jesus’ authority, not his own. When Paul pronounces judgement “in the name of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 5:4) on a church member who is guilty of immorality, he is acting with the authority of the Lord Jesus. Praying in Jesus’ name is therefore prayer made on his authorization.
(4) Should we pray to Jesus and to the Holy Spirit? A survey of the prayers of the New Testament indicates that they are usually addressed neither to God the Son nor to the Holy Spirit, but to God the Father. Yet a mere count of such prayers may be misleading, for the majority of the prayers recorded in the New Testament are those of Jesus himself, who constantly prayed to God the Father, but of course did not pray to himself as God the Son. Moreover, in the Old Testament, the Trinitarian nature of God was not so clearly revealed, and it is not surprising that we do not find much evidence of prayer addressed directly to God the Son or God the Holy Spirit before the time of Christ.
Though there is a clear pattern of prayer directly to God the Father through the Son (Matthew 6:9; John 16:23; Ephesians 5:20) there are indications that prayer spoken directly to Jesus is also appropriate. The fact that it was Jesus himself who appointed all of the other apostles, suggests that the prayer in Acts 1:24 is addressed to him: “lord, who knows the hearts of all men, show which one of these two you have chosen…” The dying Stephen prays, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59). The conversation between Ananias and “the Lord” in Acts 9:10 – 16 is with Jesus, because in verse 17 Ananias tells Saul, “The Lord Jesus…has sent me that you may regain your sight.” The prayer, “Our Lord, come!” (1 Corinthians 16:22) is addressed to Jesus, as is the prayer in Revelation 22:20, “Come, Lord Jesus!” And Paul also prayed to “the Lord” in 2 Corinthians 12:8 concerning his thorn in the flesh.
There is therefore clear enough scriptural warrant to encourage us to pray not only to God the Father, but also to pray directly to God the Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. Both are correct, and we may pray either to the Father or to the Son.
But should we pray to the Holy Spirit? Though no prayers directly addressed to the Holy Spirit are recorded in the New Testament, there is nothing that would forbid such prayer, for the Holy Spirit, like the Father and the Son is fully God and is worthy of prayer and is powerful to answer our prayers. To say that we cannot pray to the Holy Spirit is really saying that we cannot talk to him or relate to him personally, which hardly seems right. He also relates to us in a personal way since he is a “Comforter” or “Counselor” (John 14:16, 26), believers “know him” (John 14:17), and he teaches us, bears witness to us that we are children of God (Romans 8:16), and be grieved by our sin (Ephesians 4:30). Moreover, the Holy Spirit exercises personal volition in the distribution of spiritual gifts, for he “continually distributes to each one individually as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11). Therefore, it does not seem wrong to pray directly to the Holy Spirit at times, particularly when we are asking him to do something that relates to his special areas of ministry or responsibility.
(5) The role of the Holy Spirit in our Praying. In Romans 8:26 – 27 Paul says:
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words. And he who searches the hearts of men knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
Interpreters differ on whether the “sighs too deep for words” are the sighs of the Holy Spirit himself makes or our own sighs and groans in prayer, which the Holy Spirit makes into effective prayer before God. It seems more likely that the “sighs” or “groans” here are our groans. When Paul says, “The spirit helps us in our wekness” (verse 26), the word translated “helps” is the same word used in Luke 10:40, where Martha wants Mary to come and help her. The word does not indicate that the Holy Spirit prays instead of us, but that the Holy Spirit takes part with us and makes our weak prayer effective. Such sighing or groaning in prayer is best understood to be sighs or groans which we utter, expressing the desires of our heart and spirit, which the Holy Spirit then makes into effective prayer.
Related to this is the question of what it means to pray “in the spirit.” Paul says, “Pray at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication” (Ephesians 6:18), and Jude says, “pray in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20). In order to understand this phrase, we should realize that the New Testament tells us that many different activities can be done “in the Holy Spirit.” It is possible just to be “in the Spirit” as John was on the Lord’s day (Revelations 1:10). And it is possible to rejoice in the Holy Spirit (Luke 10:21), to resolve or decide something in the Holy Spirit (Acts 19:21), to have one’s conscience bear witness in the Holy Spirit (Romans 9:1), to have access to God in the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 2:18), and to love in the Holy Spirit (Colossians 1:8). These expressions seem to refer to dwelling consciously in the presence of the Holy Spirit himself, a presence characterized by the Godlike qualities of power, love, joy, truth, holiness, righteousness, and peace. To pray “in the Holy Spirit,” then, is to pray with the conscious awareness of God’s presence surrounding us and sanctifying both us and our prayer.
Next week we will discuss how to make our prayers effective.