Why Prayer Matters
Prayer is required of Christians. It is, in fact, a sin not to pray, because if it is a command of the Lord, it is a sin not to obey that command. Look carefully at that verse from Philippians — in every thing, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God. There is the vital necessity of prayer: we are to come to the Lord, to make our requests known, and never to leave that out.
Again, a commandment. To be sober is not only to abstain from wine, but to be sober-minded — not so light-headed that others cannot take us seriously — and to watch unto prayer, for prayer is indeed something in which we watch.
Always to pray, and not to faint — not to grow disheartened, weary, or tired of it. Why does the Lord attach so much importance to believers spending time with Him in prayer? One answer is found in the temptation of Christ: “Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve” (Matthew 4:10). God is to be worshipped and served, and one of the primary ways that is done is through prayer. In prayer you speak with God, and He speaks with you. You worship Him, and He receives the glory due His name. And in prayer you serve Him too — not only bringing your own requests, but praying for other believers, other circumstances, other needs, doing His work even as you pray.
Worship, Service, and Communion with a Friend
We are to pray because we are to trust God — to go to Him with every need and affliction, first and foremost, before even our closest friends, committing our trials to Him that He would answer, lead, guide, and make known the way we should go, as Proverbs 3 teaches: “In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths… Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.”
The Lord’s Prayer, though never to be recited as a vain repetition, teaches us what to pray for — worship in “hallowed be thy name,” submission in “thy will be done,” provision in “give us this day our daily bread,” and more. Prayer is communion with God — talking with Him, confiding in Him, seeking His help.
In prayer you enter the very holy of holies, the throne room of God — not disrespectfully, but boldly, for you have access there by the blood of Jesus Christ. Your body is on earth, but you are communing with the God who dwells in heaven. You are speaking with the Creator of all things and your Redeemer, as a man speaks with his friend — recognizing the distance between the creature and the Creator, and yet knowing you have been made His friend (John 15:14). Moses spoke with the Lord “face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend” (Exodus 33:11). Prayer is the natural desire of a child to commune with his father, bringing praise, requests for guidance, and specific needs before Him, just as a child would with his own father.
Private Prayer: Just as Important as Congregational Prayer
Now to the specific subject: daily prayer and Bible study. Prayer is not solely a congregational activity, confined to the assemblies of God’s people. That is a vitally important time for prayer — but private prayer is just as important, not less, not more — just as important, and its neglect is a sin.
The hypocrites prayed publicly only to be seen — and that is all the reward they will ever get, for it has no eternal value. This is not a condemnation of praying publicly in the gathering of the saints; it is a condemnation of making a show of prayer in the streets. Notice the Lord’s words in verse 6: “when thou prayest,” not “if.” He takes it for granted that prayer is something every Christian does. And what He describes there is unmistakably private — “enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door.” Go somewhere private, somewhere you will be alone with God, where no one but God will hear you and nothing will disturb you.
In private prayer you are not impressing anyone — there is no one there but God, who sees straight to the heart. There you are laid bare; there you must be who you actually are.
Why We Must Pray Alone
This does not mean husbands and wives should never pray together, or that families should not gather for daily worship — there is a place for all of that. But in addition, even between husbands and wives, there must be time set apart to pray each one alone. Why? First, because it is commanded — Matthew 6:6 does not say to bring your spouse, your child, or your best friend into the closet with you; it says go alone. Second, it makes perfect sense: husbands and wives spend time together because that is part of knowing one another; friends spend time together because the more time spent with a person, the better he is known. A Christian needs to spend time with God, his heavenly Father, to know Him more intimately and hear His voice through His Word — not an audible voice, but the Lord impressing the answers to your requests upon your heart, and making known through His Word the direction you are to go.
In all things we have the Lord Jesus Christ as our great example. He departed to a solitary place, leaving even His disciples behind. If the very Son of God needed to withdraw and pray to His Father, how much more do we — sinful, weak people — need to do the same?
Prayer and the Study of God’s Word
In prayer we speak to God; He speaks to us primarily through His Word. Where His Word is readily available — on our own shelves, in our own homes — it is not to be left only to the preacher on Sunday, but studied, meditated on, and fed upon by every believer. There is no clergy-laity divide in the true church; the weakest believer can turn to the pages of Scripture, and the Holy Spirit can teach him there just as surely.
How Often, at the Very Least?
“Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) refers to a constant frame of mind, not literal unbroken prayer — we have work, sleep, and the business of life to attend to. But Scripture shows plainly that private prayer should, at the very least, be a daily duty and privilege. Who among all the people of the earth may approach the very throne room of God? The believer, and no one else. When Abraham approached the Lord before the destruction of Sodom, he said, “Behold now, I have taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and ashes” (Genesis 18:27) — and yet he still approached, boldly, recognizing the privilege it was. If God has granted us that same privilege, how are we using it?
This is not always easy. It requires sacrifice — something else must not be done while you are praying — and it requires discipline, for it is easy to say “I’ll leave it till tomorrow” and find a week or two has gone by. That is a great sin.
The “No Time” Excuse
No Christian can honestly say, “I don’t have the time.” That is not merely a weak excuse; it is a lie, and every believer knows it, because every believer wastes time somewhere in the day — too long in the bath, too long on the phone, too long reading even a good Christian book instead of praying, too long with the newspaper. Twenty-four hours is a long time when used correctly. We live in an undisciplined age — “do your own thing” — and Christians are not exempt from that spirit.
Look at the context: the evening before, when most people wind down for the night, the whole city was gathered at Christ’s door bringing the sick and the demon-possessed, and He healed and delivered long into the night. Yet He rose the next morning — a great while before day, cutting into His own sleep — because He knew the crowds would return early, and He knew He must pray. He did not say, “I don’t have time.” He made time, even sacrificing sleep, which is itself good and necessary, in order to pray. Sometimes sacrifices must be made.
Finding Your Time
Settle on a time of day that allows you to commune privately with the Lord, every day. It may be morning, evening, or both — whatever is best for you — but find a time and keep it. Christ withdrew in the early morning (Mark 1:35) and also prayed in the evening, alone on a mountain after sending the multitude away (Matthew 14:23). David declared, “My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee” (Psalm 5:3) — a king, with the affairs of a nation on his hands, still set the morning apart. Elsewhere he prayed evening, morning, and at noon (Psalm 55:17).
Daniel prayed three times a day even under a royal decree making it a capital offense to pray to anyone but the king — and simply continued exactly as before, windows open toward Jerusalem, kneeling and giving thanks as he always had (Daniel 6:10). Morning is quiet, you are fresh, and there are few interruptions; evening is quiet too, as the day’s business comes to an end. The important thing is to pray daily, and to find and keep the time that works for you.
The Word of God in That Time
“Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11) is a daily request — not weekly, not one that clears a whole week’s worth of need at once. It teaches daily morning prayer plainly. Set aside a daily, sacred time, and guard it jealously against interruption.
A suggestion that often works well: spend half your time in reading and meditating on God’s Word, and half in prayer. Starting with the Scriptures focuses your scattered thoughts — whether you have just risen from bed or are carrying the events of the whole day — onto God and spiritual things, so that when you turn to prayer your mind is already cleared and ready to worship.
Read the Bible systematically, from cover to cover, book by book — that is why it was written in book form. As New Testament believers, spend more time in the New Testament, but never neglect the Old. There is a place for reading rapidly through the whole of Scripture, and a separate place for slow, careful study, particularly in the New Testament, where a single verse often carries great weight. Daily reading schemes at the back of some Bibles have their use, but should never be the only way you read, since they force you onward past a passage the Lord might want you to linger over. The same caution applies to daily devotional books — even those written by men worth admiring, such as C.H. Spurgeon. Read such a book from cover to cover over a few days if you find it profitable, but do not bring it into your daily prayer time in place of Scripture itself. You are already learning from Sunday preaching, from fellow believers, and from Christian books; your private prayer time should be the one place where you ask what the Lord says to you directly through His own Word, rather than continuing to lean on what other men have written about it.
Closing
Set aside then a daily time, and let it be sacred to you. Draw aside from your daily business, pour out your heart to the Lord, and let Him speak to you through His Word. This is not a small thing, or an optional extra for the especially devoted — it is the daily duty and daily privilege of every believer, and there is much to pray about.