Tag Archives: the necessity of prayer

Why Prayer is Necessary: #9 – To Carry Out God’s Work

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God is at work in heaven and on earth. He works in heaven through Christ who sits at His Father’s right hand, and He works on earth through the Holy Spirit in us. 

God’s work in heaven.  The work of Christ in heaven is His intercession, of which, according to L. Berkhof, the following elements are found: (1) the offering of Himself as the perfect sacrifice having been completed;  (2) the appearing of Himself now before God as a representative of his people (Hebrews 9:24);  (3) the perpetual presence of the completed sacrifice of Christ before God—being a constant reminder of His perfect atonement;  (4) Christ’s appearing before God now as our Justifier—and He is constantly reminding God that we are justified in Him;  (5) Christ’s appearing before God now as the sanctifier of our prayers and our services;  (6) Christ’s loving care for His people, helping them in their difficulties, trials and temptations (Hebrews 4:15); and finally (7) it is prayer for all believers: for all our spiritual needs, for protection against dangers and against the enemy who constantly threatens and accuses us, that our faith will not cease, and that we will be victorious in the end.4

The prayers and intercession of Christ is absolutely necessary, both for our help on this earth and for our completed salvation; for though His atoning work on earth has been completed, He now and forever must remind God of that former work and be our Representative and our Justifier.  This of course is no problem for Christ, because He is God—He is perfect and lives forever.  As Hebrews 7:24-25 states, He abides forever, holding His priesthood permanently.  Hence, also, he is able to save forever those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.

God’s work on earth.  On the whole, God’s work is to get people to believe in Jesus so that they might live forever with Him; for as Jesus said, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent” (Jn. 6:29). 

Now if we were to briefly describe the work of God on earth, we would start with the work of His Son Jesus Christ.  The work of Christ while on this earth was to die for our sins in order that He might bring us to God (1 Pet. 3:18).  That work has already been accomplished.  And so, having completed His work on earth, He returned to His Father in heaven.  And there, He is working as our advocate to complete our salvation through His intercession. 

But God sent another advocate to help us here on the earth—the Holy Spirit, who abides with us forever (Jn. 14:16).  He is the one who continues God’s work on this earth—that of helping people to believe in Jesus (John 16:8-9), guiding them into all truth (Jn. 16:13), and dispensing grace to them whenever they need it.  For He being the Spirit of Christ is full of grace and truth (Jn.1:14).

Now, one of the ways in which the Holy Spirit helps us is by interceding for us as we pray—since we do not know how to pray as we should.  He tells us what to pray for and how to pray for those things.  He shows us the will of God and how to pray according to His will (Rom. 8:27).  He also makes us believe how necessary it is for us to pray for certain things, and then urges us on in prevailing prayer.

Here are three elements of God’s work, in terms of prayer, that we should be involved in:

1. Prayer for workers.  Jesus said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.  Therefore beseech the lord of the harvest to send out workers into his harvest” (Matt. 9:37-38).

2. Prayer for Faith. When Jesus came into His own town, among His own people, the Bible says, “He did not do many miracles there because of their unbelief” (Matt. 13:57-58).  We must conclude by this that the reverse is also true—that where there is faith many works of God will be done. 

In order for the works of God to be done in your town you must pray for faith.  In fact I suggest that you saturate your town with believing prayer. Then, as God begins to work, you will see the power of God become unleashed causing many to believe.     

3. Prayer for deliverance and victory.  Satan will do everything he can to discourage us.  Prayer is necessary for our deliverance and victory.  When Peter was arrested and put in prison, while he was held there to be mistreated and killed, the church of God was fervently praying for his deliverance.  And on that very night when prayers were made, an angel miraculously delivered him (Acts 12:6-17). 

4 L. Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand rapids, Michigan:  WM. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1979), pp. 400-404.

Why Prayer is Necessary: #7 – To Obtain Freedom from Anxiety

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Anxiety is a terrible thing.  It is a state of uneasiness and worry, of fearfulness and dread.  But prayer can make it all go away; when you pray God will help you to see that He is in control and that He loves you and cares for you.

When we are anxious, we think only of ourselves and of all the things we think we need.  Prayer, however, will take us to God and draw us away from ourselves so that we are more concerned for His kingdom and His righteousness. The practice of prayer will help us to see that life is more than food and clothing, and that we have no need to worry about those things—since God cares for us just as he cares for little birds and flowers (Matt. 6:25-29).          

If you are prone to anxiety, try to develop the habit of praying about everything.  And when you pray, instead of lingering in your anxiety, focus instead on God, honoring Him with thanksgiving and praise (Rom. 1:21).  As you pray with thanksgiving, taking all of your concerns to God, He will fill you with an incredible peace.  Here is the promise from Philippians 4:6-7:

Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.  And the peace of God, which surpasses all comprehension, shall guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

Why Prayer is Necessary: #6 – To Obtain Mercy and Grace

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Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, is fully human and fully God.  The human side of Him makes Him able to be sympathetic and merciful toward us, and the God side of Him makes Him able to help us at any time with any of our needs.  What this means to us of course is that when we pray to Him we are assured of His sympathy for our needs and also of His ability to help us.  Thus we can pray with great confidence, even boldness.   Hebrews 4:16 says, “Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

This mercy and grace is God’s gift to us—it is free for our taking!  But unless we choose to go to Him in prayer, and unless we confidently pray and ask for help, His mercy will not be obtained and His grace will not be found.

We all are aware of countless individuals (perhaps you) who are badly in need of help.  Some are in spiritual, mental, and sometimes physical misery.  Some grope around not knowing what to do or who to turn to.  Many go from doctor to doctor seeking help, all to no avail.  If they only knew Jesus and knew how to approach Him in prayer they would no longer be without peace.     

He is the Great Physician, the greatest one of all.  All we need to do is call out to Him in prayer and He will quickly come to our aid.  But if we fail to pray in our desperate hour of need then His mercy and His grace will remain on the shelves of heaven.  Pray, my friend, and God will hear you.  Yes, you who are in desperate need, need to pray.  It is the only way, God’s appointed way, that you will receive mercy and find grace.  

Why Prayer is Necessary: #5 – To Obtain Fullness of Joy

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Jesus said in John 16:24, “Until now you have asked for nothing in My name; ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be made full.” 

The teaching here is that when we ask in His name and receive the things we ask for, the result, after receiving those things, will be a fullness of joy.  And I suppose you could say that our joy will come in degrees.  To the degree that we recognize that God has answered our prayers, to that degree we will receive joy. The person who doesn’t realize that God has answered his prayer may have a certain amount of joy just because he has received what he wanted.  But the real and full joy is a joy that comes from knowing absolutely that God has answered our prayers.

R. A. Torrey has said, “When we ask something definite of God, and He gives it, how real God becomes!  He is right there!  It is blessed to have a God who is real, and not merely an idea.”3  Yes, it is a joyful and real experience when God reaches down in love, and gives us what we ask for.  It is the joy of experiencing His presence.

In Psalm 16:11 David wrote, “In Thy presence is fullness of joy; in thy right hand there are pleasures forever.”  Though David here is mainly speaking of the joy that comes after this life, we can know that same joy now whenever we experience His presence—which will surely come to us with the realization that He has answered our prayers.

This I think is the whole point of prayer—to have the joyful realization of His presence.  It is what God intended for us.  Jesus said, “I came that they might have life, and might have it abundantly” (Jn. 10:10b).  He said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life” (Jn. 14:6).  It is God’s purpose for us to have this abundant life, which is found in Jesus, and can only be gained when we call out to Him in prayer.  Prayer then is the key to obtain this life—life that produces for us a fullness of joy.

3 R. A. Torrey, How to Pray (Chicago: Moody Press, n. d.), p. 16.

Why Prayer is Necessary: #4 – To Obtain Good Things

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God really wants us to have things—many things.  But He wants us to have only those things that are good for us. 

Sometimes we will desire something, and it really does seems to be a good thing; but then later, after we have prayed about it and sought God’s Word about it, He shows us that He isn’t pleased with what we desire.

Whatever we pray for we should ask ourselves these two questions:

1. Are these things going to bring me closer to the Lord or further away?

2. Will these things I desire help me to be a friend of the world, or a friend of God (James 4:3-4)?

There are many good things that God wants us to have, but if we don’t ask for them we will not receive them (James 4:2).  And when we do ask, perhaps we don’t ask correctly—with the right motives (v. 3).

It may be that when we do ask for things we don’t really believe that God will give them to us, so that’s why we aren’t persistent in our asking.  In other words, we may treat prayer as sort of a religious duty, or a ritualistic thing—something that we just do but we don’t really expect an answer.

My friend, God is real and personal.  He is your Father.  How do you ask your earthly father for things?  You ask and keep asking until you get it, don’t you?  And you ask that way because you know that sooner or later He will give it to you, because you know He loves you.  Will not God who loves you far more give to you as much?

Sometimes, instead of believing and asking God for the things we want, we sit and worry, and we lust and envy and fight and even wage war over those things (Ja. 4:2).  But if you want certain things, and if you know you need them, why not just ask God for them. He will give them to you as a gift.  Everything you desire in life, if it pleases God for you to have it, He will give it to you if you just ask.

Do you need a job?  Then ask.  Yes, make your rounds to employment agencies and apply at various places, but you must also ask God.  He will give you the job you really need, in quick time. 

Are you worried about your friend who is lost?   Then ask God for his or her soul.  Who else will save your friend?

In all the things we desire but aren’t receiving, take these words to heart: “You do not have because you do not ask” (Ja. 4:2).  Prayer is indeed necessary for obtaining things. 

Why Prayer Is Necessary: #2 – For Spiritual Growth 

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Prayer helps in these four areas of spiritual growth:

1. Growth in understanding God’s ways.   In James 1:5 it says, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally…”  It seems from this verse (and the previous verses), that wisdom, which is really an understanding of God’s ways, is gained through prayer as well as through experience; for as we encounter various trials (verse 2), we pray and ask God for an understanding of what to do (verse 5).  Therefore, both experience and prayer are needed. 

Experience (including all the trials we go through) keeps us in touch with reality, and prayer keeps us in touch with God, who in turn helps us understand all that we experience—which is wisdom. 

Experience allows us to grow in endurance as we encounter various trials, and prayer keeps us trusting and in touch with God—who is really the source of all our help.  As we encounter various trials through our experience, they will serve to move us toward prayer.  But unless we pray, all the experience and all the trials will do us no good; that is, they will not produce in us true wisdom.  The old person, who says, “I am wise because of my many years of experience,” is nothing but an old fool if he has rejected God.  True wisdom, no matter how much experience one has, comes only to those who pray and ask for it.    

2. Growth in understanding God’s Word.  In Psalms 119:18 we read, “Open my eyes, that I may see wondrous things from Your law.”  Here the Psalmist prays to God that He would open his eyes and cause him to understand wonderful things from His Word.  As we may observe in this verse, there is nothing said about any personal effort of study to gain understanding.  The Psalmist expects all his understanding of the Word to come directly from God through prayer.

Now we know that the Bible tells us to study and meditate on the scriptures (2 Tim. 2:15, Ps. 1); therefore, our effort should not be disregarded.  All our effort in study, however, will prove vain and worthless without prayer.   But by prayer all that we have studied and pondered will make sense.

3.  Growth in developing a hatred for sin and a love for righteousness.  This time we will turn to Psalms 51.  Here we see that David was intensely grieved over his sin. In verse four he prays, “Against You, You only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight…”  Then in verse 10, he prays, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

As we see in this chapter, David believed in prayer; he counted on God in prayer to clean up his heart and restore his relationship with Him. 

We can count on God in prayer just as David did.  And the more we pray for purity in our life, the more God will give it to us, and thus the more we will grow to hate sin and love righteousness.           

4.  Growth in becoming more like God’s Son. In Romans 8:29 it says, “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son.”  At first glance we may think that we don’t need do anything to bring about our transformation, that since it is already predestined to happen, God will make it happen without our effort.  Well, ultimately, I suppose that is true. But, along the way, God chooses to involve us in the process.

No, we cannot idly stand by and think that God will handle it all.  Transformation comes with the hard work of renewing our mind (Rom. 12:2)—which includes Bible study, meditation, and prayer.         

And the more we give ourselves to the work of study and prayer, the more we will behold Him as He really is.  Hence, in our beholding Him we are being transformed from one degree of glory to another (2 Cor. 3:18).

Why Prayer is Necessary: #1 – To Obtain Personal Salvation

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Is prayer really necessary? Some people say that prayer is just a type of meditation to make us feel better and to lull us into a false sense of security.  Others say that since God is loving and good, He will give us all the things we need and will accomplish His good will whether we pray or not.  I suppose most of us who are Christians say, “Yes I believe that prayer is absolutely necessary.” But, by our lack of prayer, don’t we demonstrate that we believe it is not necessary?  If we Christians really believed that prayer was necessary there would be prayer groups popping up all over.  If we really believed that prayer was necessary people would be eager to go to church; our churches would be packed full, not only on Sunday morning but also at the Wednesday night prayer meeting!

Prayer is indeed necessary, and in the next nine blogs I will give you nine reasons why. Here is the first one.

1.  Prayer Is Necessary to Obtain Personal Salvation

The Bible says, “Whosoever will call upon the name of the Lord will be saved” (Romans 10:13). We know that prayer does not save; God saves.  But we see from this verse that God has made prayer the avenue through which salvation is granted.  He decided that we must call upon Him before He will save us.

Paul tells us in Romans 10:10 that man believes with the heart, but then with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.  So believing with the heart is only part of faith—or, I would say, it is only the first step in receiving the gift of true faith from God.  To have complete faith, a saving faith, we must believe with the heart and also confess with the mouth.  This confession of the mouth, which is prayer, is what activates faith—or brings to life the faith of God He gives us in His Son (Heb. 12:2).  Without this confession of prayer our faith would be dead and worthless.  But with prayer our faith becomes alive, which results in our salvation.  Therefore, prayer is essential for salvation.      

What a great privilege God has given us.  He has given us the privilege of having a part in our own salvation.  That part comes with the decision we must make as to whether we will receive His Son Jesus Christ through prayer or not.  If we should choose not to receive Him that is our God given choice, and He will not force us to receive Him.  But if we choose to receive Him we can do it through prayer. 

Your prayer should sound something like this: 

Lord Jesus, I know that I am a sinner.  I believe that you died and paid the penalty for my sins.  Right now I repent of my sins and I invite you to come into my life.  Please come into my life and give me a new life.  Lord, help me to get to know you and to trust you.  Amen.

Believing prayer then is absolutely necessary.  It is what we must engage in to bring us from spiritual death to life in Christ.