The Azusa Weekly

May 3, 2025

Vol. 7, Issue 1 (Summer 2025)

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Prayer is communication with God.

The first time prayer is mentioned in the Bible is Genesis 4:26. It says, “Then men began to call on the name of the Lord.”‬‬

A chapter earlier, prior to the fall, Adam and Eve had perfect communion with God. They walked and talked with Him in the garden of Eden. But, then because sin entered the world, their communication with Him became hindered. God had to throw them out of the garden. And then in Genesis chapter 4, after the first murder, “men began to call on the name of the Lord.”

I want you to understand that prayer is your privilege in Christ. We cannot entirely understand the Old Testament way of prayer. Their access to God was through the Law and the priest. But now we have access to come boldly before the throne of grace. We have Jesus, and we have the Holy Spirit living in us. Our relationship with God is not dependent on a priest or ritualistic sacrifices. Our relationship with Him is personal. We can pray, read our Bibles, and we can hear the Holy Spirit speak to us.

This is our privilege in Christ. Because of Jesus, God hears you when you pray. Every word, every time.

Now, why do we pray? We have already said that it’s communication. It’s also communion and fellowship with God. Prayer is not about us changing God. Instead, prayer changes us. In prayer, we discover God’s ways, and we become familiar with His voice and His character. And then we can align ourselves with Him and His will. 

Prayer also sanctifies us and invites the Holy Spirit to convict us and conform us to the image of God’s Son. That’s why it’s so hard to pray. Because prayer is much more than a physical thing we do. It’s spiritual, and our flesh doesn’t want to pray. 

In Acts 4, Peter and John were arrested and questioned because they had healed a lame man and preached Jesus to the crowds that had gathered. When Peter and John began to answer their accusers, the Bible says that “when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were uneducated and untrained men, they marveled. And they realized that they had been with Jesus.”

Prayer makes us more like Jesus. Jesus said in Matthew 6:6 that when we pray in private, He will move in public. Peter and John had been spending time with Jesus in prayer, and it showed!

The disciples were travelling with Jesus and witnessing Him preaching, healing the sick, and performing many miracles. And then several times in Scripture, the Bible says that Jesus went aside and got alone to pray. After they kept seeing this pattern, the disciples began to correlate Jesus’ public power with His private prayer life. And that led them to ask in Luke 11: “Lord, teach us to pray.”

So, Jesus began to teach them. He said, “In this manner, therefore, pray:…” (Matt 6:9)

Jesus began His model prayer with “Our father in Heaven.”

In Luke 11, when the disciples had asked Jesus to teach them to pray, He said,

“So I say to you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!” (Luke‬ ‭11:9-13‬)

Jesus in Luke 11 is describing the confidence we should have when we pray to our Father in Heaven. Our Father is not a stranger. He is not someone that doesn’t know how we feel or what we need. He is our Father! 

It’s important for us to understand this when we pray. He is almighty God, and He is the creator of the universe. But Jesus said when you pray, remember that it’s personal. You are praying from a relationship.

Jesus said, “ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.”

Then he said that if you ask your Father for the Holy Spirit, He’ll give Him to you.

He’s stressing here the idea of praying to God as our Father in Heaven. He does not withhold anything from His children. 

Many of the psalms is David praying to God. And he is very open about how he feels. One second David will be down and out and then by the end of the psalm he’s praising the Lord.

But David also prays some things sometimes that are questionable. In Psalm 58, David is praying and he starts talking to his Father about his enemies. Then he prays, “Break their teeth in their mouth, O God!” In Psalm 109, David still praying for God to judge his enemies, prayed:

“When he is judged, let him be found guilty,

And let his prayer become sin.

Let his days be few…

Let his children be fatherless,

And his wife a widow.

Let his children continually be vagabonds, and beg…

Let the creditor seize all that he has,…

Let there be none to extend mercy to him.”

Man David was really upset! Before we judge him, we would have to admit we’ve basically thought the same things about certain people. The difference between us and David is David wasn’t afraid to talk to his heavenly Father and tell him how he really felt!

I love that David prayed these raw prayers, because I believe it shows us that we can tell our Father how we feel. He can take it. He already knows our hearts, anyway. Might as well let it out. Here’s the big thing for me: We don’t have to worry about our heavenly Father misunderstanding us. That could never happen.

Why is it hard sometimes to pray to God as we would our Father?

Is it because you can’t forget your past? You don’t feel worthy? Maybe you haven’t had a great relationship with your earthly father and so you associate those same shortcomings to your heavenly Father. Perhaps you’re not really sure that He hears you. If that’s the case, Jesus is trying to fix how you view God. He wants you to know that He is your Father who loves you and sees you and hears you!

I think another part of this is our position in Christ. Understand that when you have been born again, you are now in Christ. When the Father looks at you, He doesn’t see you as a sinner anymore (even if you still see yourself that way). Because of Jesus, the Father only sees the blood of His Son applied to your heart. He sees you as if you were as holy and clean as Jesus. The blood is the only way we have access to God in the first place.

So if He sees you as He sees his Son, we can assume the same thing when we pray. When we pray to the Father, He hears us as if it was Jesus praying. That’s what it means to pray in Jesus’ name. It’s more than just adding that phrase onto the end of our prayers. It’s praying to our Father in Heaven for His glory and with confidence that He hears us.

I heard someone say this: “The only way to fail in prayer is to not show up.”

Too many people are just simply not showing up.

Just show up. And pray to your Father in Heaven.

~ Cooper