Prayer

Prayer is speaking to God: addressing the one who made all things, governs all things, and is personally present with his people by covenant. It is not a technique or a ritual form. It is the natural expression of a relationship with the living God, and the Bible treats it as both a command and a privilege.

The Psalms are the prayer book of Israel: 150 prayers, laments, praises, and confessions that cover the full range of human experience before God. They do not sanitise prayer or reduce it to formal petition. They include raw expressions of grief, anger, confusion, and despair alongside trust, praise, and confidence in God’s faithfulness. The Psalms teach that prayer is not performance before God but honest speech to him.

In the New Testament, Jesus teaches his disciples to pray and models prayer himself throughout his ministry, including the night before his death. The Lord’s Prayer is a pattern, not a formula: it opens with the character and purposes of God before turning to human need. Paul’s letters are saturated with prayer, both his own prayers for the churches and his instructions for them to pray. The articles below trace the theme of prayer through several of its key passages.