Prayer is a great privilege for the Christian. It is a sad reality that many of us don’t avail ourselves more frequently and for longer periods of our time of this great honor to stand before the Lord in humble worship. As Calvin has written, “To know God as the sovereign disposer of all good, inviting us to present our requests, and yet not to approach or ask of him, were so far from availing us, that it were just as if one told of a treasure were to allow it to remain buried in the ground.”[1]

To remind us once again of this “buried treasure” that we have been invited to unearth, I would like to review four types of prayer that are frequently spoken of in Scripture: 1) Adoration; 2) Thanksgiving; 3) Confession; and 4) Supplication and Petition. I will group some of them together at times to show their similarities and ways that some of these prayer types overlap.

 

Prayers of Adoration and Thanksgiving

The first two prayer types are prayers of response. When we pray with thanksgiving and adoration, we are responding to the acts of God which reflect his power to redeem, provide, create, and sustain.

An example of a prayer of adoration and worship can be found in Exodus 15 in what is known as the Song of Moses. In this beautiful chapter of Hebrew poetry, Moses led the people of Israel in a song that magnified the Lord for his salvation of His people from slavery through the plagues and the parting of the Red Sea.

It was in these mighty acts of salvation that the Lord was shown to be almighty and invincible, even as He faced Egypt, the greatest power on earth at the time. “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods? Who is like you, majestic in holiness, awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders? You stretched out your right hand; the earth swallowed them” (Ex 15:11-12). By making this comparison between Yahweh and all other gods, Moses demonstrated the uniqueness of God and His worthiness to be worshipped and adored.

Although there are many excellent prayers of thanksgiving that can be examined, David’s Psalm 138 is a favorite of many. In this psalm, David wrote about his worship and exaltation of the Lord not only for what the Lord had done for him, but he also gives thanks for who God is. It is a natural and common practice among many Christians to thank the Lord for those blessings that they have received from God personally, but David demonstrated in this psalm the need for God’s people to thank God simply for being who He is.

These two types of prayer should lead us to ask ourselves whether or not in our life God has shown us His mighty power, whether it has been through salvation, provision, guidance, providential care, healing or some other way. If He has, then we should ask ourselves, does our prayer life reflect this?

 

Prayers of Confession

Perhaps it is due to the unbiblical practice in the Roman Catholic system that some Christians are put off by the idea of confession, but we must never forget that confession is a biblical idea and should be practiced as a part of our time of prayer to the Lord.

Confession is made with the belief that we have an omniscient God who knows our sin and we agree with him that we have transgressed his law (Pro 5:21; Ps 51:3). Since the Lord already knows the deepest and most hidden recesses of our heart, we are fooling ourselves when we forsake confession in our time of prayer. We are like the little child that believes that when they cover their eyes nobody else can see them. But God sees.

Confession also recognizes that we have sinned against our holy God who cannot look upon sin and is just in punishing our iniquity (Ps 51:4, 11). While Christians must always remember that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Ro 8:1), this does not give us license to sin. In Romans 6:1-2, the apostle Paul wrote, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Ro 6:1 2). When we live and pray as if we are in the presence of a holy God, we will also recognize the need to keep short accounts with Him and seek to go to our heavenly Father frequently so that we can be washed afresh from our sins. We will not need total cleansing, but as we walk in this filthy world, we will need to periodically have our feet cleansed by the Lord (Jn 13:10).

Confession also reminds us that we have a merciful God who can remove the dark stain of sin through the blood of Christ’s substitutionary death upon the cross (Ps 51:7-10). In Revelation 12:10, Satan is called “the accuser of our brothers” because of his delight in bringing our sin before the Father. As David allowed his adultery and murder to befoul his soul, the remorse and guilt ate away at his body and soul (Ps 32:3 4). Satan, like a prowling lion, seeks out those that suffer from self-inflicted wounds and loves to whisper his lie that God would never forgive such sin. His lies matched with our own guilty con science invite doubt and begin to gnaw at our faith. But confession reminds us that our God is merciful. His cleansing power washes away the deepest stains of crimson guilt so that nothing remains. Prayers of confession puts our faith into action as we call out to God to forgive and cleanse, placing our trust in Christ’s finished work.

Some people, even Christians, live with the awful burden of past sins that they believe are unforgiven and unforgivable, even by God. First Corinthians 6:9-11 is the hope of Christ and the power of God demonstrated to the worst of sinners. It says, “Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” If you struggle with past sins, take your eyes off of your sin and put them on Christ! He has promised to wash away your sins and make your heart white like snow (Isa 1:18).

 

Prayers of Supplication and Petition

Supplications and petitions can be placed roughly into two categories: personal prayer needs (for self and others) and prayer for the work and advancement of the Church. Biblical examples of prayers of petition for needs include for food (Mt 6:11), healing and trials (2 Co 12:7), relief from persecution (Ac 12:6-19), for pain and suffering (many psalms, Job’s prayers), for wisdom (Jas 1:5)

Prayers for the work and advancement of the Church can be found in the Scriptures in various places, such as for open doors of opportunity (Col 4:3), for strength in times of persecution (Ac 4:29), and for boldness in the face of opposition (Ac 4:29).

If you have ever experienced a time when you have prayed for a need or for someone else’s need, and it seems that you are not getting an answer from God, you can understand how people can be reluctant to spend time praying when it would seem better just to go out and do your best to make it happen yourself. To get over this feeling that God does not hear or answer our prayers of petition and supplication, it would be helpful to answer the questions, “Can He answer and will He answer?”

First, consider the words of Jesus himself: “And Jesus answered them, “Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mk 11:22-24). Again, in Mark 9:23 when a man asked Jesus to heal his son, but he did not have great faith, “And Jesus said to him, “‘If you can’! All things are possible for one who believes.”” Do we use, “If the Lord wills” as an excuse for our lack of faith and our unwillingness to go to God in prayerful dependence? Has our prayerlessness been excused by blaming God for not being willing to act when in fact we often fail to ask? Remember what James says, sometimes we have not because we ask not (Jas 4:2)!

Additionally, consider these verses: “And without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him” (Heb 11:6). “And whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith” (Mt 21:22). I’m not advocating for a Word of Faith, Name-it-Claim-it idea of prayer. I am simply saying that prayer requires us to be dependent upon God, as much as Israel was dependent upon Him in the wilderness for their daily bread and water. And since most of us don’t think that way, since we have plenty of bread and water, we somehow think of petitioning God as only necessary when we have failed to attain what we want in our own strength and power. We need to see that prayer is directly connected to faith and dependence.

Again, James reminds us of this and how the prophet Elijah was powerful in prayer, but not because he was anything other than an ordinary man like all of us. “Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit” (Jas 5:17-18). Elijah was different. But the difference wasn’t in himself. It was in his fervency and his faith. He prayed and God responded.

Do these verses cause you to imagine what God could do? Do they set your heart racing? Or do you find yourself doubting, thinking that prayer never works for you, as if you are different? The power of your prayers is not so much about who you are, as much as it is about who you believe God is!

One of my favorite quotes from E. M. Bounds on prayer demonstrates perfectly our need for prayer. He writes, “What the Church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men.”[2]

We need more men and women of God who are people of deep, God centered, powerful prayer. May we be encouraged to march boldly into the throne room of the Most High God to lift up prayers of all types to the God who can and does answer His people.

 

---

ENDNOTES

[1] John Calvin and Henry Beveridge, Institutes of the Christian Religion, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: The Calvin Translation Society, 1845), 451.

[2] E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, paperback ed. 1972), 7.