No matter what your aspirations are in life, the fundamentals related to that endeavor are important. Some people, too many people, like to skip the “boring” fundamentals and get into the meat of what they want to do. But I have learned that when you fail to properly learn the governing fundamentals, you limit how far you can ultimately go.
When we talk about the fundamentals of effective prayer, we are talking about the basic principles upon which we are to build our prayer life. If we fail to properly learn those fundamentals, we will limit how effective we can be in prayer.
One day, Jesus was praying and after He had finished, the disciples said to Him we want you to teach us how to pray (Luke 11:1). Who better to teach them how to pray than Jesus? He came from heaven. He was a man of prayer. Sometimes, He prayed all night long. His commitment to prayer impacted the disciples’ life such that they wanted to know how to pray.
Three Fundamentals of Effective Prayer
Jesus responded by giving them what I regard as three fundamentals of effective prayer that I want to briefly touch on.
One, pray as Jesus taught His disciples to pray. He said, “When you pray, say: ‘Father, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come…” (verses 2-4, NASB).
We sometimes refer to this as a model prayer. When Jesus spoke these words, here is what He was not saying. He was not saying for the disciples to learn these words, commit them to memory, say them to God each day and call it prayer. But He was giving them an example of how to pray.
For instance, He was saying when you pray, I want you to acknowledge God as your Father and the sanctity of His name.
Think about it this way. All of us have different needs and things we need to pray to God about. Those are the things we should talk to God about when you pray. But also, Jesus is saying when you pray, say… You see, the things found in verses 2-4 reflect the heart of God. This is great because there is no way for us to intuitively know to pray these kinds of things to God. The Lord wants our prayer to be about something that’s bigger than we are.
The second fundamental of effective prayer is to be persistent. Jesus uses the example of a man knocking on the door of his friend’s house at midnight for some bread. “I tell you, even though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will get up and give him as much as he needs,” Jesus says (verse 8).
Then He says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock and it will be opened to you” (verse 9). These verbs in the Greek denote actions that are to be done repeatedly.
The point is that when we pray to God, we must be persistent. But to be persistent does not mean we have to say the same words to God each time about the same thing. This I say because there are some who argue that if you pray for the same thing more than once, it is a lack of faith.
The third fundamental of effective prayer is to trust God our Heavenly Father. “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give a snake instead of a fish, will he? Jesus asked” (verse 11).
Here, Jesus compares our earthly father to God our heavenly Father. No matter how good a father your earthly father may be to you or may have been to you, he is or was inherently evil. But still, most of us trusted our dad. If we were to ask him for a fish, we did not fear that he would give us a serpent instead.
How much more then should we trust our heavenly Father? Jesus asks.
If we are praying to God for something good and we believe He is going to give us something bad instead, that means we don’t trust Him as our heavenly Father. If you believe that when you ask God for forgiveness for something you have done, He will instead punish you more, you don’t trust God. And prayer won’t work for you if you don’t trust the One you are praying to.
Now let’s think again about the disciples’ initial request. It was, “Lord, teach us to pray.” So, it would seem as if all Jesus needed to do was to give them the example of how to pray, as He did in verses 2-4. But then, Jesus went on to talk about persistence and trusting God. You see, it’s not enough just to pray the right things to God. If we are not persistent in prayer or if we don’t trust God, we will not be effective in prayer.
Some may argue that prayer is just talking to or with God. In simplest terms, that is true. But there is prayer and then there is effective prayer. In order to be effective in prayer, we need to pray as Jesus taught us AND we need to be persistent AND we need to trust God.
Copyright © 2021 by Frank King. All rights reserved.