So far, we have defined prayer as being basically two things: soul to soul communication with God, and petition. And I will hold to those meanings. However, with those two meanings prayer may have various descriptions. Here are eight different descriptions of prayer, by various authors, which will fall under either or both of the two meanings.
1. Prayer is asking and receiving. According to E.M. Bounds, “Prayer is the outstretched arms of the child for the Father’s help. Prayer is the child’s cry calling to the Father’s ear…Prayer is the seeking of God’s greatest good, which will not come if we do not pray.”17
Matthew 7:7-8 says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”
2. Prayer is approaching God’s throne. According to Spurgeon, “True prayer is an approach of the soul by the Spirit of God to the throne of God.”18 I would say it this way: it is the approach of the Holy Spirit in our soul that drives us to the throne.
3. Prayer is our service due Him. According to E. M. Bounds, “Prayer is not a duty which must be performed, to ease obligation and to quiet conscience… [it is rather] a solemn service due to God, an adoration, a worship…”19
4. Prayer is letting Jesus come to us and heal us. According to O. Hallesby,
Our prayers are always a result of Jesus ‘knocking at our heart’s doors…He knocks in order to move us by prayer to open the door…giving Jesus access to our needs and permitting Him to exercise His own power in dealing with them…To pray is nothing more involved than to lie in the sunshine of His grace, to expose our distress of body and soul to those healing rays which can in a wonderful way counteract and render ineffective the bacteria of sin.20
5. Prayer is an expression of our fellowship with God. Emil Erpestad gives us another look at prayer. Prayer, he says, is an expression of our fellowship with God. “[It is] the means by which fellowship with Him can become a part of our daily experience.”21
6. Prayer is something we do naturally. God has created in us a natural tendency to cry out to Him when we need help. Even if one is not a Christian, or even if he says that he is an atheist, God nevertheless has created in him a natural desire to get to know Him and to be dependent on Him and to cry out to him when he is in trouble and needing help.
7. Prayer is dominant desire. This description of prayer I think instructs us well and helps us to see clearly what real, effective prayer is, in contrast to prayer that is not genuine and not effective. We know that all petitionary prayer begins with a wish or a desire; then we express that desire with a request. This is the basic meaning of prayer—from the Greek word deesis. In fact, this Greek word can actually be translated as either desire or prayer. However, real prayer, prayer that is heeded by God, must have a desire that dominates, or over rides, all other desires that are more of the flesh and not of the spirit.
8. Prayer is a struggle. If prayer is dominant desire, then prayer must also be a struggle to keep the mind and the desires of the mind on God’s will—and to keep those Godly desires dominant. Certainly, every Christian struggles in prayer to keep himself on the narrow road as he journeys through this evil world. Our struggle in prayer is obviously not only a struggle against outward forces of the world, but also with inward forces of our own flesh. We struggle in prayer with selfishness, our love of ease, and all kinds of lusts. We struggle with our pride and with our temper and with our unwillingness to obey God and to forgive others and to pray for them. And of course, perhaps most of the time unknowingly, we struggle in prayer against the devil and his demons, who are constantly urging us to relax in prayer.
17 E. M. Bounds, The Reality of Prayer, p. 21.
18 Charles Spurgeon, The Power of Prayer in a Believer’s Life (Lynnwood, Washington, Emerald Books, 1993), p. 15.
19 E. M. Bounds, The Reality of Prayer, pp. 20-21.
20 O. Hallesby, Prayer, pp. 11, 13, 15.
21 Emil Erpestad, Ten Studies in Prayer (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1951), pp. 83-88.
