Two of Webster’s definitions for prayer are:
- To ask or beg earnestly, to entreat, to supplicate as in the guilty rebel begging for mercy, and
- To make or address petitions to the Divine being.
Now, I like this one. An old pagan definition was: the chanting of secret incantations with the hope of receiving a magical result!
These are pretty limited meanings compared to the Hebrew and Greek meanings in the concordance.
According to Strong’s concordance, there are several Hebrew and Greek words that mean pray or prayer. In the Old Testament these words in various contexts mean: entreat, burn incense, be grieved, grace, sigh, whisper, meet, ask, ask another to intervene, commune, meditate, complain, song of praise, to request, bow, petition, and judge oneself.
In the New Testament these words mean: want, beseech, ask, interrogate, pray, wish, call for.
So we can see that the words for prayer are rich in meaning and encompass much more than what people today consider prayer to be.
How often do you pray?
At Bible school I asked several people, “How many times a day do you pray?” I wanted to see if there was any pattern by age, time in the truth, etc.? Did young people pray less because they were younger and less experienced? Did older, retired people pray more because they had more time and experience? And did working parents fall in between?
The answer is, No. The most common answer was:
- ‘Five times per day: morning, evening and for the three meals a day.’ Other answers were:
- ‘Three times a day.’
- ‘I have so much turmoil in my life lately that I just don’t take time to pray.’
- ‘I hardly pray at all.’
- ‘Many times a day.’
- ‘I talk to God when I go to bed, and pour out all my problems in a conversation.’ Many said something like:
- ‘When I have a “storm” in my life, I pray more.’
Likewise, when others felt blessed, they recognized the blessing was from God and gave thanks in prayer. When life was running smoothly, people admitted to getting lax in prayer or not praying at all.
When we put that all together, it is clear that it becomes a circular pattern: when things are good, we don’t pray as much. Then when storms come, we start to pray until things are better again. Then we get lax, and so on and so on. Just like the Israelites: when things were good, they ignored God and relied on self. Then, when they were punished by God, they repented, and God forgave them and they returned to Him. But later, they forgot their blessings, and thought they could rely on their own wisdom — and the cycle repeated itself.
Why pray?
Why pray? Do we suppose that God puts storms in our lives to get us to commune with Him more often? One brother said “Yes” to that question. Why does God want us to pray? In praying, we demonstrate our love for Him and our desire to be close to Him. What is the first commandment?
“The first of all the commandments is, Hear, O Israel; The Lord our God is one Lord: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment” (Mark 12:29,30).
That includes praying continually. God also wants us to pray so that we will search our hearts, judge ourselves, ask for forgiveness, and tell the Lord what we are thinking and what we really desire.
In the beginning, Adam had two-way communication with God. This was a form of prayer. After Adam, men continued to speak with God in a two-way fashion. Because of sin, however, the intimate fellowship with the Creator had changed.
Abraham also communed directly with God. For example, “The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision, saying, ‘Fear not, I am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward’ ” — and Abraham answered Him — “Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?” (Gen. 15:1,2).
Here we have two-way communication.
God chose Moses to mediate His covenant with the children of Israel. Moses did this in a very literal way, coming down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments. The people begged Moses, “Speak thou with us, and we will hear: but let not God speak with us, lest we die” (Exod. 20:19). The people wanted a mediator — they saw the power of God and were afraid to talk to God or hear from Him directly. They did not want two-way communication with God.
Kinds of prayers
Under the Mosaic Law, incense represented prayer. On the Day of Atonement, the high priest was to take a censer full of sweet-smelling incense with coals from the altar and go into the Most Holy Place beyond the veil, so that a cloud of incense would cover the mercy seat. In praying for help, David said, “Let my prayer be set forth as incense” (Psa. 141:2).
Prayer can also be in the form of psalms and music. The house of Asaph prayed in song continually before the ark for more than 500 years. David gave his psalms to Asaph so that they might “give thanks unto the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the people, sing unto him, sing psalms unto him” (1 Chr. 16:8,9). In the Bible, there are psalms as petitions, praise, thanksgiving, meditation, confession, lament, and the like. When we read a psalm — any psalm! — in our Bibles, then we should be thinking of it as a prayer!
So far, we have sought to define what prayer is, and how prayer has evolved from direct communication to incense to song and psalms and meditation.
Now let’s jump forward to… The Lord’s prayer
This is a relatively short prayer, but it is given as an example of how to pray. Nowhere is it recorded that the disciples prayed this exact prayer. It wasn’t intended to be the prayer, to be recited precisely week after week, as is done in many churches. Instead, it was to be a guide, giving the essential elements of a prayer. Prayers don’t have to be long, drawn out affairs to be effective.
In our service, brothers say prayers at different times for different purposes. There is the opening prayer, the prayer preceding the exhortation, the prayers for the emblems, and the closing prayer. As brothers, when we are called on to give a prayer, we are representing the whole ecclesia. We must keep our minds focused and give the asked for prayer — this doesn’t mean including everything we can possibly pray for.
The “long” and the “short” of it
The longest prayer isn’t always the most appropriate prayer. If the prayer is for the bread or wine and we mention all the elements of a general prayer, we may forget to give thanks for the bread or wine.
The longest prayer isn’t always the best prayer. A sister once said that, at mealtime, when all the food was warm and she was especially hungry, that would be the time when the praying brother would go on and on, giving his own exhortation instead of just giving thanks for the food.
The longest prayer isn’t always the most effective prayer. Occasionally, at a gathering for example, each brother seems to outdo the previous brother by praying longer! I have heard some very eloquent prayers. But we need to beware lest we become like the Pharisees, saying long prayers and losing the attention of the people. There is a time and place for short prayers such as at meals, and a time for more all-encompassing prayers like our morning and evening devotions.
“Mini-prayers”
I don’t intend really to tell you how to pray, but to encourage you to pray more often and commune with God on a regular basis. Even very short prayers like the Lord’s Prayer can be quite effective. What I suggest is to find triggers to instigate “mini-prayers”. For example, we’ve looked at other less “conventional” types of prayer such as singing of psalms or hymns. So when you’re driving to work, try singing a hymn — that is a way of communing with God. When you stop at a red light or get caught in a traffic jam — use that as a trigger for communication with God. Maybe a “mini-prayer” for patience would be appropriate at times like that, especially if you are worried about being late to work.
Here is my favorite: every time I take a shower, I “wash my sins away”. That is, I pray that my sins be washed away as I wash the dirt from my body. David prayed, “Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin” (Psa. 51:2).
Another suggestion: every time you open a door, think of the door that Christ opened for us, as Gentiles, so that we might be saved and so that we can now go directly to God in prayer. Or, when you walk out the door in the morning to confront the world, pray to be kept from temptation.
Here’s one we do every day: every time you take a drink of water, think of your baptism and thank God for the precious gift of having learned the Truth. Or think forward to the living waters that will flow forth from Jerusalem to heal the nations.
Pray continually throughout the day in little mini-prayers; they are as good as any long prayer. Each day before you do the Bible readings, say a mini-prayer for wisdom and understanding, just like we do before Bible class. By the way, just doing the readings every day is meditating on God’s word.
Whenever you see or hear an ad for some new drug, or whenever you drive by a hospital or your doctor’s office, say a mini-prayer for those who are physically or spiritually sick.
Every time you pass a church, pray for those who are spiritually sick.
What we all need to do is to figure out our own triggers that will remind us to commune, meditate, sing praise and pray to God, our Father.
When you look up at the moon and stars on a beautiful night, thank God for creating this universe some 16 billion years ago (according to the Science channel). He knew us before the foundations of the earth were laid and has been waiting for us to talk to Him for some 16 billion years — that is how long He has been thinking about us. Isn’t it about time we think about Him?
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One