Prayer mattered to Jesus. It was a chief feature of his daily life. And it matters to Christians (and many others) still. But those outside of the Christian faith, or new to the faith, may ask, “Does prayer really work?” This is one of life’s big questions.
An initial response might start with something like this: we were made by God to have conversational communion with God. Jesus talked to God the Father and taught his disciples how to talk to God in a new way. And they saw and heard him pray often. What was new was the confidence he urged upon his disciples to go to God in prayer, and which he displayed himself. There was an immediacy in what he displayed and taught--the kind of immediacy of a child calling out to his or her father: "Dad!" The word Jesus used in addressing God was Abba, which is best translated as Papa, Dad, or even Daddy.
What this feature of his own prayers and his teaching shows us is that prayer here emphatically is not a magic wand, a lever, or a formula for getting what we want. It’s a relational matter, a way of relating to our Creator who is actively relating to us. A God who is personal, by which we mean, a reality that has desires and a will, intelligence, and a set of characteristics or attributes (love, mercy, kindness, and the like).
The conviction here is that the universe is not empty of God. Reality at its deepest level is personal. In freedom, God created the world, and in freedom God loves the world. We are to use our freedom to align ourselves with all that is good and praiseworthy, and with God’s purposes. And we are to relate to God in freedom. Prayer is part of this drama of freedoms between God and humanity.
Yes, this is big picture stuff. But without this our understanding of prayer will not be properly focused or grounded. And we may lapse into magical thinking about prayer.
Jesus kept the personhood of God in view. He didn’t think primarily of fate or destiny. He thanked God in prayer. And in action. He lived to please God and part of that – a really big part – was opening himself up to God the Father, placing himself in God’s hands. Offering himself to God (‘I’m here at your disposal’) in disposition and in words (“Thy will be done.”).
A long tradition of prayer preceded him, which he endorsed and developed. The Psalms of Israel display the kind of conversation I’m talking about. Israel addressed, enjoyed, complained to, pleaded with, acknowledge, praised, and confessed her sins to God. That’s all part of it. What we see, uniquely in Jesus, again, is this new intimacy in his teaching about prayer and in his example. Conversational communion with God is an astonishing miracle, really. We don’t have to use the words of others, though they can help get us started. And, above all, we shouldn’t delay in praying, daily and even multiple times throughout each day.