The True Nature of Prayer
For the first point: What is prayer?
Prayer is a sincere, heartfelt, passionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God through Christ, in the strength and help of the Holy Spirit, for things that God has promised (or that align with the Word) for the good of the church, with submission in faith to the will of God.
This definition contains seven elements:
1. It is a sincere, 2. A sensible, 3. An affectionate pouring out of the soul to God through Christ, 4. By the strength or assistance of the Spirit, 5. For such things as God has promised, or, according to His Word, 6. For the good of the Church, 7. With submission in Faith to the Will of God.
For the first of these, it is a sincere pouring out of the soul to God.
Sincerity is a grace that flows through all of God's other graces in us and through everything a Christian does. It controls those actions too, or else God doesn't regard them at all. This is especially true of prayer, which David talks about when he mentions prayer: "I cried unto the Lord with my mouth, and he was extolled with my tongue. If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear my prayer" (Ps 66:17-18; 17:1-4). Part of what makes prayer genuine is sincerity. Without it, God doesn't look at it as prayer in any good sense. "Then shall you seek me and find me, when you shall search for me with your whole heart" (Jer 29:12-13).
The lack of sincerity is what made the Lord reject their prayers in Hosea 7:14, where He says, "They have not cried unto me with their heart" (that is, in sincerity) "when they howled upon their beds." Instead, they prayed for show, in hypocrisy, to be seen by others and praised for it.
Sincerity was what Christ praised in Nathaniel when he was under the fig tree: "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no guile." This good man was probably pouring out his soul to God in prayer under that fig tree, and doing so with a sincere and genuine spirit before the Lord. The prayer that has this as one of its main ingredients is the prayer that God pays attention to. As Scripture says, "The prayer of the upright is his delight" (Prov 15:8).
Why must sincerity be one of the essentials of prayer that God accepts? Because sincerity carries the soul in complete simplicity to open its heart to God and tell Him the situation plainly without equivocation. It condemns itself plainly without pretense. It cries to God wholeheartedly without flattery. "I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised, as a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke" (Jer 31:18). Sincerity is the same in a corner alone as it is before the face of all the world. It doesn't know how to wear two masks: one for an appearance before men, and another for a quick moment in a corner. Instead, it must have God and be with Him in the duty of prayer. It doesn't regard mere lip service, for it is the heart that God looks at, and that which sincerity looks at, and that which prayer comes from, if it is the kind of prayer that is accompanied with sincerity.
Secondly, it is a sincere and heartfelt pouring out of the heart or soul. It is not, as many take it to be, just a few babbling, chattering, flattering expressions, but a genuine feeling that exists in the heart. Prayer has in it a real awareness of various things: sometimes awareness of sin, sometimes of mercy received, sometimes of God's readiness to give mercy, and so on.
1. First, the soul feels a desperate need for mercy because of the danger of sin. It feels this need deeply, and from that feeling comes sighs, groans, and heartbreak. True prayer bubbles up from the heart when it's crushed by grief and bitterness, like blood forced out of flesh under a heavy weight (1 Sam 1:10). David roars, cries, weeps, grows faint in heart, loses his sight, and dries up (Ps 69:3; 38:8-10). Hezekiah mourns like a dove (Isa 38:14). Ephraim laments his condition (Jer 31:18). Peter weeps bitterly (Matt 26:75). Christ himself prays with loud cries and tears (Heb 5:7). All of this flows from a sense of God's justice, the guilt of sin, and the terror of hell and destruction. "The sorrows of death surrounded me, the pains of hell took hold of me, and I found trouble and sorrow. Then I cried out to the Lord" (Ps 116:3-4). In another place: "My sorrow ran through the night" (Ps 77:2). And again: "I am bent over completely, I go around mourning all day long" (Ps 38:6). In all these examples, and in hundreds more that could be mentioned, you can see that prayer carries a deeply felt emotional quality, starting first from a sense of sin.
2. Secondly**,** sometimes there's a sweet sense of mercy already received: encouraging, comforting, strengthening, life-giving, enlightening mercy.
David pours out his soul to bless, praise, and marvel at the great God for His loving kindness to such poor, worthless sinners. "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and don't forget all His benefits. He forgives all your sins, heals all your diseases, and crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. He redeems your life from destruction and satisfies your mouth with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's" (Ps 103:1-5). This is how the prayers of God's people sometimes turn into praise and thanksgiving, yet they remain prayers all the same.
This is a mystery: God's people pray with their praises, as it is written, "Be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer, with supplication and thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God" (Phil 4:6). A heartfelt thanksgiving for mercies received is a mighty prayer in God's sight. It prevails with Him beyond measure.
Third, in prayer there is sometimes in the soul a sense of mercy about to be received. This again sets the soul on fire. "You, O Lord God," David says, "have revealed to your servant, saying, I will build you a house; therefore your servant has found in his heart to pray to you" (2 Sam 7:27).
This stirred up Jacob, David, Daniel, and others: a sense of mercies about to be received, as you can see in Gen 32:9-12 and Dan 9:2-4. This caused them not to pray in fits and starts, nor in a foolish, frothy way to babble over a few words written on paper, but mightily, fervently, and continually to groan out their conditions before the Lord. They were aware, I say, of their needs, their misery, and God's willingness to show mercy.
A good sense of sin and the wrath of God, combined with some encouragement from God to come to Him, is a better prayer book than the one taken from the Catholic Mass Book, which is made up of scraps and fragments devised by various popes, friars, and who knows what else.
3. Prayer is a sincere, deeply felt, and affectionate pouring out of the soul to God. Oh, the heat, strength, life, vigor, and affection that exists in true prayer!
"As the heart pants after the waterbrooks, so longs my soul after thee, O God" (Ps 42:1). "I have longed for thy precepts; I have longed after thy salvation" (Ps 119:40). "My soul longs, yea, faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh cries out for the living God" (Ps 84:2). "My soul breaks for the longing that it has unto thy judgments at all times" (Ps 119:20). Notice here: "My soul longs, it longs, it longs," and so on. What passion is revealed in prayer!
You find something similar in Daniel: "O Lord hear, O Lord forgive, O Lord hearken and do; defer not for thy name's sake, O my God" (Dan 9:19). Every word carries tremendous intensity.
James calls this "the fervent, or the working prayer" (Jas 5). And again, "being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly" (Luke 22:44); or rather, his emotions were drawn out more and more toward God for His helping hand.
How far most people are with their prayers from this kind of prayer, the kind that God actually counts as prayer! Sadly, most people don't take the duty seriously at all. And as for those who do, I'm afraid many of them are complete strangers to a sincere, heartfelt, passionate pouring out of their hearts or souls to God. Instead, they settle for a little lip service and physical routine, mumbling through a few empty prayers.
When your emotions are truly engaged in prayer, then your whole being is engaged, and in such a way that your soul will exhaust itself completely, if necessary, rather than go without what it desires: real communion and comfort with Christ. This is why the saints have spent their strength and even lost their lives rather than go without the blessing (Ps 69:3; 38:9, 10; Gen 32:24, 25, 26).
All this becomes painfully clear when you look at the ignorance, profaneness, and spirit of envy that rules the hearts of those who are so passionate about the forms of prayer but not its power. Barely one in forty of them knows what it means to be born again, to have communion with the Father through the Son, to feel the power of grace sanctifying their hearts. Despite all their prayers, they still live cursed, drunken, whorish, and abominable lives, full of malice, envy, deceit, and persecution of God's dear children. What a dreadful reckoning is coming for them! All their hypocritical gatherings and all their prayers will never be able to help them against it or shelter them from it.
Again, prayer is a pouring out of the heart or soul. In prayer, there is an unburdening of oneself, an opening of the heart to God, an affectionate pouring out of the soul in requests, sighs, and groans. "All my desires are before thee," David says, "my groanings are not hid from thee" (Ps 38:9). And again, "My soul thirsts for God, even for the living God: When shall I come and appear before God? When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me" (Ps 42:2-3). Notice that phrase: "I pour out my soul." It's an expression signifying that in prayer, the very life and whole strength of a person goes out to God. As another passage says, "Trust in him at all times, ye people, pour out your hearts before him" (Ps 62:8). This is the prayer to which the promise is made for delivering a poor creature out of captivity and bondage: "If from thence thou shall seek the Lord, thou shall find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart, and with all thy soul" (Deut 4:29).
Again, prayer is a pouring out of the heart or soul to God. This also shows the excellence of the Spirit of prayer: it is the great God to whom the soul retreats. "When shall I come and appear before God?" And this demonstrates that the soul that truly prays this way sees an emptiness in all things under heaven, that in God alone there is rest and satisfaction for the soul. "Now she who is a widow, and desolate, trusts in God" (1 Tim 5:5). David says the same: "In you, O Lord, do I put my trust, let me never be put to confusion; deliver me in your righteousness, and cause me to escape; incline your ear to me, and save me: be my strong habitation, to which I may continually resort: For you are my rock and my fortress; deliver me, O God, out of the hand of the unrighteous and cruel man: For you are my hope, O Lord my God, you are my trust from my youth" (Ps 71:1–5). Many people speak of God in a superficial way, but right prayer makes God its hope, stay, and all. Right prayer sees nothing substantial and worth pursuing but God, and (as I said before) it does so in a sincere, heartfelt, and affectionate way.
Again, prayer is a sincere, heartfelt, affectionate pouring out of the heart or soul to God, through Christ. This phrase, "through Christ," must be added, or else we should question whether it is prayer at all, no matter how impressive or eloquent it may appear.
Christ is the way through whom the soul gains access to God (John 14:6), and without Him, it's impossible for even a single desire to reach the ears of the Lord of hosts. "If you ask anything in my Name, whatever you ask the Father in my Name, I will do it" (John 14:13, 14). This was Daniel's approach when he prayed for God's people: he did it in the Name of Christ. "Now therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of your servant, and his supplications, and cause your face to shine upon your Sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake" (Dan 9:17). And David did the same: "For your Name's sake (that is, for your Christ's sake) pardon my iniquity, for it is great" (Ps 25:11).
But not everyone who mentions Christ's Name in prayer actually prays to God in the Name of Christ, or through Him. Coming to God through Christ is the hardest part of prayer. A person may easily become aware of his works, yes, and sincerely desire mercy too, yet still be unable to come to God by Christ. The person who comes to God by Christ must first have knowledge of Him: "For he that comes to God must believe that He is" (Heb 11:6). And so the person who comes to God through Christ must be enabled to know Christ. As Moses said, "Lord, show me your Way, that I may know you" (Exod 33:11).
Only the Father can reveal Christ (Matt 11:27; 16:16). And to come through Christ means for the soul to be enabled by God to shelter itself under the shadow of the Lord Jesus, as a person takes shelter under something for protection.
This is why David so often calls Christ his shield, buckler, tower, fortress, rock of defense, and so on (Ps 18:2; 27:1; 28:1). He does this not only because through Him he overcame his enemies, but because through Him he found favor with God the Father. And so God says to Abraham, "Fear not, I am your shield" (Gen 15:1).
The person who comes to God through Christ must have faith that allows him to put on Christ and appear before God in Him. Now whoever has faith is born of God (John 3:5, 7), born again, and so becomes one of the sons of God (John 1:12). By virtue of this new birth, he is joined to Christ and made a member of Him (Eph 5:30).
Secondly, then, he comes to God as a member of Christ. I mean that God looks on that person as part of Christ, part of His body, flesh, and bones, united to Him by election, conversion, illumination, and the Spirit being conveyed into that poor person's heart by God. So now he comes to God in Christ's merits: in His blood, righteousness, victory, and intercession, and so stands before Him, being accepted in His beloved (Eph 1:6).
And because this poor creature is thus a member of the Lord Jesus, and under this consideration has admittance to come to God, therefore by virtue of this union the Holy Spirit is also conveyed into him. Through the Spirit, he is able to pour out himself (that is, his soul) before God with His audience. And this leads me to the next, or fourth particular.
