Just as we need to be taught what food is good for us (and what is not), so too we need to learn what prayer is and is not. Prayer is an essential element of our sanctification (the Spirit’s gradual, gracious work of conforming believers to the image of Christ). Just as we are learning daily what it means to die to sin and to live to Christ, so too we daily learn how imperfect and inconsistent our prayers are and what it means to pray as our Lord taught—in the Spirit, to the Father.

No act is more basic to the Christian life, to Christian worship, to piety, and to growth than prayer and yet also so uniquely and strangely difficult. My experience and reading tell me that the struggle to pray is common to believers. I have not often heard or read people to say, “I just could not bring myself to eat for weeks at a time.” Yet, I have heard and read Christians to say such things about prayer. Nevertheless, prayer is as basic to the Christian life as eating is to bodily life.

Just as we need to be taught what food is good for us (and what is not), so too we need to learn what prayer is and is not. Prayer is an essential element of our sanctification (the Spirit’s gradual, gracious work of conforming believers to the image of Christ). Just as we are learning daily what it means to die to sin and to live to Christ, so too we daily learn how imperfect and inconsistent our prayers are and what it means to pray as our Lord taught—in the Spirit, to the Father.

In the Heidelberg Catechism, believers confess:

116. Q. Why is prayer necessary for Christians?

A. Because it is the chief part of thankfulness which God requires of us; and because God will give His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who earnestly and without ceasing beg them of Him, and render thanks unto Him for them.

Prayer is the chief means, the principal instrument through which we express our gratitude to God for his favor (grace) merited for us by Christ and given freely to us, for his mercy so that we do not experience the consequences of sin generally and of our sins in particular, and for his general mercy and kindness to his creation and to his image bearers.

It is believers who pray.

That the catechism assigns prayer to thankfulness reminds us again of where we are in the Heidelberg Catechism (to learn more about the Heidelberg Catechism, click here), that we have, as it were, confessed the greatness of our sin and misery, we have confessed the faith, we have been received into Christ’s church, and that we gather weekly with the Christ-confessing covenant community (the visible church) to receive the ministry of Word and sacrament. It is believers who have received God’s free grace in Christ. It is believers who have been saved. It is believers who have been justified. It is believers who are being gradually, graciously conformed to Christ (sanctification). It is believers who are thankful. Therefore, it is believers who pray.

Almost as soon as the story of sin and redemption begins, we find a record of prayer. Genesis 4 begins and ends with worship. Abel brought an acceptable offering, and Cain did not. The latter’s jealousy led him to murder—the first worship wars. At the end of the chapter (v. 26), with the announcement of the birth of Seth, Scripture reports: “At that time people began to call upon the name of Yahweh.” This seems like a reference to public worship, but it is interesting that worship is characterized by the act of calling upon the name of the God of the covenant, Yahweh. Prayer begins with calling upon the name of God. The Lord’s Prayer begins by invoking the name of the Father. We often begin “O Lord…” Prayer is in the vocative mood.

Repeatedly in the history of Israel, the people sin, Moses prays for them and intercedes on their behalf with Yahweh, and God relents (e.g., Num. 11:2; 21:7,8; Deut. 9:26–29). The entire Psalter (Psalms 1–150) is a collection of the prayers of God’s people. Every sort of prayer one might pray is given to us in the Psalms. One thinks of Solomon’s great prayer in 1 Kings 8 or of Daniel’s confession of sin on behalf of the exiled covenant community in Daniel 9.

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