Have you noticed how often prayer is a part of Paul’s winning attitude? Prayer anticipates success, it accompanies success, and it crowns success. This is because prayer is a supreme form of dependence on God. In prayer the heart intentionally turns toward God. In prayer the mind sends specific thoughts and words into the Holy of Holies in heaven,1 there to come before the eternal King of glory.
What a welcome your prayers receive in His presence! As your loving Father, God already wants to hear every thought, whether positive or negative,2 whether thankful or worried, whether big or small. Indeed, He commands you to cast anything that concerns you – “all your anxiety” – into His caring hands.
…casting all your anxieties on him, because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). M
… do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God (Philippians 4:6). M
The Father does more than invite our prayers. He assigns His Son to deliver them to Him safely. Jesus is the “one Mediator between God and men” (1 Timothy 2:5), both perfectly righteous and perfectly sympathetic with our needs.3 He speaks most effectively on our behalf, for “He cleanses us from all sin,” using His own blood! (1 John 1:7)
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:1-2). M
Adding assurance upon assurance, the Father gives His own Spirit as the interpreter for our prayers.
Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words (Romans 8:26). M
For through [Christ] we both have access in one Spirit to the Father (Ephesians 2:18).
…remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world (Ephesians 2:12).
1. Hebrews 10:19-22 cf. Hebrews 9:24-25
2. Many people have questions and complaints for God, but they keep them to themselves. They think of such thoughts as disrespectful and unfit for prayer. While meaning well, they should listen to Scripture in such matters as these: (1) God commands us to give everything to him in prayer, especially all that troubles us, Philippians 4:6; 1 Peter 5:7. (2) God shows many devout examples who shared their hardest feelings and complaints with Him. Read Job, Exodus 32, Psalms 10, 38, 55, 60, 74, 77, 88, Jeremiah 12, Amos 7, Habakkuk 1, and Psalm 22:1 with Matthew 27:46. (3) God already knows all our thoughts, Psalm 139. Bringing them to Him honestly and openly is far better than pretending they can be kept from Him.