Get Renew.org Weekly Emails

Want fresh teachings and disciple making content? Sign up to receive a weekly newsletters highlighting our resources and new content to help equip you in your disciple making journey. We’ll also send you emails with other equipping resources from time to time.

8 minutes
Download

2 Fundamental Reasons to Pray

In what follows, we want to share with you two of the most fundamental reasons we pray.

God Calls Us to Pray

The first reason to pray is that God, our Heavenly Father, created the medium of prayer. It was His decision to make an open line of mental, emotional, and spiritual communication with mankind. From the beginning, the Father has desired to have a positive and healthy relationship with His people. In the Garden of Eden, God came in the cool of the day to see Adam and Eve (Genesis 3:8–9). It is amazing to think that the Creator of the universe was seeking out man and woman. He desired to connect with them and wanted to cultivate a relationship with them. He desires the same today with His children.

It is a significant point to remember that no relationship on earth can be sustained without communication. This is one of the reasons that prayer is so important to our Father. Communication is the lifeblood in all relationships; it is one spirit, heart, and mind connecting to another. Richard Foster rightly observes, “Of all the spiritual disciplines, prayer is the most central because it ushers us into perpetual communion with the Father.”[1] Our Father created this concept and He is asking us to practice it, as well. Our Father loves our prayers! Proverbs 15:8 (NASB) says, “The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight.”


“The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, but the prayer of the upright is His delight.”


It is no wonder that a loving Father desires this communication; consider some of the transformation that comes about through prayer: Through prayer, the lifting of our minds, hearts, and souls to God brings us into His presence. Through prayer, we grow in our love, devotion, and commitment to Him. Through prayer, we connect with Him. So today, God is calling us to pray. He is calling us to come to Him and receive a renewed spirit, to be in His presence and enjoy refreshing, encouraging, nurturing times with Him.

Jesus Gives Us an Example to Pray

We discover a second fundamental reason to pray when we look at the life of Jesus. A fitting question when studying the life of Jesus would be to ask what, from His life and ministry, Jesus thought was important. What did He model and emphasize? We know that living a life of holiness and purity was important to Him. We know that believing in God as our Father and Himself as the Son of God was important. Justice, mercy, faith, and truth were important factors in His thinking.

We also see from His example that Jesus placed a high premium on the practice of prayer. It was not an afterthought to Him but a main staple of His life and ministry. Prayer was of primary importance to Jesus.

The great prayer writer, E.M. Bounds, makes this observation:

“The praying of Jesus was real. No man prayed as He prayed. Prayer pressed upon Him as a solemn, all-imperative, all-commanding duty, as well as a royal privilege in which all sweetness was condensed, alluring, and absorbing. Prayer was the secret of His power, the law of His life, the inspiration of His toil and the source of His wealth, His joy, His communion, and His strength. To Christ, prayer occupied no secondary place, but was exacting and paramount, a necessity, a life, the satisfying of a restless yearning and a preparation for heavy responsibilities. Closeting with His Father in counsel and fellowship, with vigor and in deep joy, all this was His praying.”[2]


“It was not an afterthought to Jesus but a main staple of His life and ministry.”


Consider how much of Jesus’ ministry was fueled by prayer. Tim Keller, in his excellent book on prayer, points out the frequency and impact of prayer in Jesus’ life. He writes:

“Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray, healed people with prayers, denounced the corruption of the temple worship (which, he said, should be a ‘house of prayer’), and insisted that some demons could be cast out only through prayer. He prayed often and regularly with fervent cries and tears (Heb. 5:7), and sometimes all night. The Holy Spirit came upon him and anointed him as he was praying (Luke 3:21–22), and he was transfigured with the divine glory as he prayed (Luke 9:29). When he faced his greatest crisis, he did so with prayer. We hear him praying for his disciples and the church on the night before he died (John 17:1–26) and then petitioning God in agony in the Garden of Gethsemane. Finally, he died praying.”[3]

As He demonstrated from the beginning of His ministry (Luke 3:21) all the way to the cross (Luke 23:46), Jesus our Lord clearly understood the importance of prayer in His experience here on earth. After His public ministry began, His schedule was intense and His time was dramatically pressured. In the midst of all of the need around Him, He still specifically planned times for meeting with His Heavenly Father (Matt. 14:23; Mark 1:35; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 6:46; 9:18). He worked at opening space for this important discipline. He would leave the crowds and even His apostles, going to a quiet and lonely place, to create time for communication with His Father. He would get up early, stay up late (sometimes all night), and not allow the pressure of His schedule or the demands of people to stop Him from this appointed time.


“He would leave the crowds and even His apostles, going to a quiet and lonely place, to create time for communication with His Father.”


Jesus clearly models the great importance of maintaining and nurturing this connecting link. Because it was a major priority for Him, He worked at making time. What a dramatic lesson for us who live pressured lifestyles today! If Jesus modeled this with such emphasis, we must understand how important prayer should be in our lives as we follow His sacred example.

Even as we understand God’s call to pray and seek to imitate Jesus’ example in prayer, we need to be realistic that cultivating a life of prayer is challenging. It is important to recognize and anticipate these challenges if we want to overcome them and become faithfully Christlike in our prayer.


[1] Richard Foster, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth (New York: Harper and Row, 1988), 33.

[2] E.M. Bounds, E. M. Bounds on Prayer (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1990), 256–257.

[3] Tim Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 27.


Excerpted from David Roadcup and Michael Eagle’s book Prayer and Fasting: Moving with the Spirit to Renew Our Minds, Bodies, and Churches.

Get Renew.org Weekly Emails

Want fresh teachings and disciple making content? Sign up to receive a weekly newsletters highlighting our resources and new content to help equip you in your disciple making journey. We’ll also send you emails with other equipping resources from time to time.

You Might Also Like

Ten Common Characteristics of a Healthy Church Regardless of Size or Location

Ten Common Characteristics of a Healthy Church Regardless of Size or Location

Over the past 20 years, I’ve had the privilege of visiting hundreds of churches across the country. Recently, I’ve highlighted several exceptional examples on my website. While there are many more I could have named, these congregations serve as reminders of what it means to be a healthy church. Below are ten characteristics these churches […]

More