What Is Prayer?

Many who are in the habit of praying have but vague notions of the meaning of

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the term “prayer;” and many more of those who sneer at or undervalue prayer do not know what it is that they are making light of. Whether prayer be indulged in or ignored, it were well to be able at least to answer the question, What is prayer? A common thought of prayer connects it with direct petition, with a call for relief or help of some kind. It is used in this sense in legal phrase. A petitioner to a court of justice, to a legislative body, or to a ruler, usually closes his formal request with the words, “And your petitioner as in duty bound will ever pray.” The same idea has prominence in the minds of most of those who pray morning and evening

to God, as the giver of all good. They I

Brayer

ask of God those things which they want, or which they think they need.

Prayer, in even this limited sense, may be for others as well as for one’s self. A legal petition to those in authority, or a call for relief or help from God, may include the friends of the petitioner or others in whom he has an interest. But the idea of supplication and of intercession generally limits the thought of prayer. Yet prayer means a great deal more than this, all the world over.

In the Hebrew of the Old Testament, and in the Greek of the New, there are quite a number of different words translated, in our English Bible, by the one term “prayer.” The meanings of these words severally are, therefore, all included in the Bible idea of prayer. These meanings are: confession, supplication, entreaty, desire, intercession, thanksgiving, adoration, praise, worship, meditation, outpouring of self, communion; and unless prayer

is recognized as covering all these signifi- 2

What is Prayer?

cations, it falls short of what is fairly within the limits of its fullest sense.

- Prayer to God presupposes the fact of God as a hearer and answerer of prayer, in such relations with or in such attitude toward the one who prays, as to justify the privilege of prayer. One would have little encouragement to make a personal request of God, unless he felt that God would be entreated by him as a petitioner. Hence prayer, as mere supplication or intercession, involves an understood relation between him who prays and Him who is prayed to, that carries with it well-known privileges and duties. A man cannot even ask help of God unless he has hope that God will hear and heed him because God is God, and because the petitioner stands as he stands before God; for a cry of despair is not in the spirit of prayer.

Prayer as prayer carries with it the duty of praise as praise. He who comes to God with requests that he expects to have answered, ought to be grateful that he can Prayer

come thus hopefully; and he will naturally give expression to his thankfulness in hearty ascriptions of praise. Asking a favor of one who can give, includes an obligation, and so a virtual promise, to return thanks if the favor be granted, “Think”

and “thank” are radically the same word,

and he who fails to thank God for his good gifts fails to think duly of God as their giver. So again “praising” is but another word for “appraising,” and he who does not come to God in prayer, with praise for the privilege of praying, fails of showing a right estimate and appreciation of prayer.

When ten lepers came to Jesus with a

common petition for their healing, Jesus

healed them all; but he was grieved, for their sakes, that only one of them showed his right appraisal of his cure, by returning to give praise for its granting. And the one whose prayer was thus accompanied with praise had a blessing that was not secured to the other nine. Do one in ten of those who now make requests for 4

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Wihbat is Prayer?

the day, in their morning prayer, preface those requests with praise that they can thus come to God, or do they return to give thanks in the evening for every specific answer to the petitions of the morning?, There can be no spirit of true prayer without the spirit of praise accompanying it. All of the many phases of true prayer are included in the one idea of communing with God. There can be no proper prayer without such communing, or a desire for it. Where such communing exists, or is longed for, confession, supplication, intercession, adoration, meditation, outpouring of self, thanksgiving, and praise, commingle unconsciously. Thus it is that men can “pray without ceasing” and “pray everywhere.” And thus it is that God can hear prayer, when no one on earth can hear it.

“I need not leave the jostling world,
Or wait till daily tasks are o’er,
To fold my palms in secret prayer
Within the close-shut closet door.

“And never through those cry
The clash of life can pierce its w
- Norevercanahumanear
Se Drink in the spirit-words I say.

“One hearkening, even, cannot know Sa Rite: When I have crossed the thresholc “er vs For He alone, who hears my prayer,

Has heard the shutting of the door.”

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