What is prayer?
Simplest I can say; prayer is communicating with God. Prayer is the most ancient spiritual experience on record. I'm sure that statement holds up to scrutiny. Prayer is the intercultural, trans-chronologic, universal spiritual experience of every human. I don't think I have ever met a person who had never prayed.
Because of it's universal nature, prayer is the bedrock of human spiritual experience. By it, the ancients called for relief from plague, honored their gods (or God), and called forward rain. Though I am no sociologist, I have a dollar-to-doughnuts bet that every culture (which has been scientifically studied) has stories of prayer.
For the Judeo-Christian worldview; there is no deeper or more abiding connection with God than prayer. Prayer is the most personal of all the spiritual disciplines. And, I think by standards subjective and objective, we can know for certain that prayer; and God's response to it, has been the largest shaper of human history. More than the gun. More than democratic republics. More than antibiotics.
Prayer is the touching of the most inconsequential (like a dude with a theology blog) with the most Divine (the Great I AM) in the most intimate way (sharing thoughts without filter).
We Should Pray
I believe that prayer is the most important discipline a Christian can develop in their spiritual lives. The practice of regular communication with God is the only way a believer can be tapped into the heart of God. Prayer is the only way that God can hear what we have to say, and respond. This is why the Bible is full of commands to pray. For some reason, the Lord of the universe-- Creator and Sustainer of all that was, is, and will be-- chooses to work through the prayers of people.
Though it is mind-blowing, certainly we can all agree to the truth. The Truth. God commands His people to pray, so that He can be doing the things they pray about. Don't get ontologically twisted; there is much here that I am not saying. I am saying that through prayer, we learn what God wants us to pray about; and through prayer we express what now God has caused us to care about; and through prayer God assures us that He is listening, and that He will move. And, through prayer God does what He intends.
Crazy. What kinds of things are we missing out on by not communicating and communing with God? How much have we not been a part of that we could have been? How much more are we willing to lose out on? If every believer in the world began a serious season of prayer; even the unbelieving world would be in shock at the result. For prayer results in the will of God. What loving person would not want to have the complete will of God done here on earth, as it is in heaven?
I adjure you with this command: people of God, pray.
