— Psalm 19:14

It may be hard to believe, but prayer is a hot topic these days. First, there was The Prayer of Jabez. Then came The Prayer of Jabez — for Women, for Teens, for Little Ones. Somebody else climbed on the bandwagon with Jabez: The Novel. This was followed by a parody, The Mantra of Jabez, and the critique, The Cult of Jabez.

I doubt that there are any “secret formulas” for prayer that have gone undiscovered for thousands of years. But our Christian ancestors, through their lives’ experiences, learned and passed down many helpful suggestions about prayer that are often overlooked.

A few of these “secrets” have been revitalizing my normally stagnant prayer life over the last few years. This article will present a few principles about prayer that I’ve enjoyed meditating upon, and I’ll follow up in a subsequent article with some practical tips that have helped me take action.

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1. Prayer is an activation of divine grace.

God’s grace infuses all of creation — including ourselves. But because we are fallen creatures, our minds, hearts, and bodies are often deadened to the presence of that grace. That inner dullness (what the Bible calls “hardness of heart”) causes us to eat without tasting, sing without praising, and read without understanding. When our soul is unreceptive to grace, we’re hindered from experiencing life to the fullest extent God desires for us.

But we don’t have to despair! Prayer is the antidote to our apathy. It’s one of the main channels God gave us for awakening to his presence in all things. Prayer is to the soul what exercise is to the body: it keeps it humming and alive.

God requests our prayers in order to work in our lives, and in the lives of others. What an honor to be invited and enabled to participate in the work of divine grace! Because of Christ, we are able to help shoulder (albeit in a miniscule way) the weight of other souls. George MacDonald spoke of the concept beautifully. “And why should the good of anyone depend on the prayer of another? I can only answer with the return question, ‘Why should my love be powerless to help another?’”

A warning — at times I’ve gotten pathological about this in the past. It’s easy to start beating yourself up about all the ways you are failing to help God out.

But God is bigger than all our mistakes, and he uses even our sins — lack of prayer, among others — for his glory. He doesn’t need us to pray, but he invites and desires us to. Though it’s hard to believe, he longs to reestablish communion with us more than we can possibly long to reestablish communion with him.

2. God loves and listens to the prayers that flow from a humble and contrite heart.

Often when I start to pray, I do so without even believing that God hears me. My heart feels so hard and cold, because pride has piled up and blocked the communication lines.

Pride is the most damaging of sins. It’s what Christ refers to in the book of Matthew when he says that if we do not forgive the sins of others, our Father in heaven cannot forgive ours. When I cling to my unhappiness, I am refusing to let God’s love heal me and flood my soul with forgiveness. And if I’m not full of grace, then I have none to extend to others. This is what turns prayer into drudgery. God can’t help me — nor can he help others through me — if I’m not letting his love transform my weakness.

Regular self-examination and confession of sins is key to keeping your prayer life vibrant and satisfying. “Create in me a clean heart, and renew a right spirit in me,” it helps to pray and sing regularly. “Against you, and you only, have I sinned and done that which is evil in your sight. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.” The Bible is full of words to help you search your soul.

If God revealed to us just how far we are from him, we would probably want to kill ourselves. Which is why it’s important to specifically ask God to reveal your sins to you. He is gentle and kind, and will only bring them to light at a pace you can handle. (I’ve gotten dangerously masochistic about my failure in the past, so, please, make sure you keep him intricately involved in the process! Ask him repeatedly to help you be as patient with yourself as he is with you.)

In the church I’m a part of, there is a specific structure for periodic self-examinations, which culminates in a verbal confession of sins to Christ in the presence of a kind, gentle church leader. I can’t begin to tell you what a hard but joyful experience this is. The first time I did it, my soul quaked like I was going to be struck by lightening. I cried the whole time. I felt strangled by the weight of my iniquity.

But in the days that followed, my prayers began to feel like songs. I experienced a delight in God and creation that I hadn’t felt since I was little. My soul was clean and full of love.

3. Prayer is uniting your soul with God’s.

I’ve always had a hard time grasping the concept of the Holy Spirit. Sure, God the Father and Jesus the Son weren’t as hard, because I have an earthly father who revealed their meaning by his deep love for me. But “Holy Spirit” just sounds so — well — ethereal.

It eventually dawned on me that I could try thinking of the Holy Spirit metaphorically as God’s “soul” on earth. First Corinthians 2:11 implies this. “For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man’s spirit within him? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.”

When you become a Christian, God gives you his soul to share in. The “old adam” in us is still present, so our prayers aren’t always in communion with God’s desires. But I finally realized this: if I’m praying for something that God wants, of course he’s going to listen! That platitude helped me a lot — I try to remember it whenever I’m asking him something. It convicts me when I realize that what I’m praying for doesn’t sound like something he would like, and it encourages me in those times when it seems my petition might just be something that would please him.

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Ultimately, “successful prayer” can’t be measured by effort, warm fuzzies, or by time quantity and regularity — it’s just a rhythm, a matter of being ushered into the presence of God. Prayer is not complex. It’s the remembrance of God, a matter of tuning the heart to the right channel. Our goal in all things is to draw nearer to him, and it is difficult to do that without ever-deepening communication.

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