Blake Long

What is prayer? This is a question worth asking if we desire to have genuine and beneficial communion with God.

“Prayer is both conversation and encounter with God,” Timothy Keller wrote in his book on prayer. “We must know the awe of praising his glory, the intimacy of finding his grace, and the struggle of asking his help, all of which can lead us to know the spiritual reality of his presence.”

It’s easy for us to treat prayer frivolously, though that’s certainly not our intentions. However, when we pray, we aren’t intentional. It’s almost as if we forget what we’re doing and, more importantly, who we’re speaking to.

To understand the reality and brevity of prayer, it’s imperative to talk about who is involved in prayer.

The Father. As elementary as it sounds, when we pray, we pray to God the Father (Matthew 6:6). We are praying to our Heavenly Father who cares for us (1 Peter 5:7) and loves us (1 John 3:1-3). Though this is the normative structure of our prayers, that doesn’t mean we can’t specifically address the Son or the Spirit in our prayers. After all, Stephen prayed “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit” (Acts 7:59) as he was being stoned to death.

The Son. When we pray, we pray through God the Son, or in His name (Ephesians 5:20). Although some have distorted this into a magical incantation to suit their own purposes, saying “in Jesus’ name” is not only a phrase of dependence, humility, and submission, but it shows we are acknowledging that we only come to the Father through the merits of Christ and Christ alone (John 14:6).

The Spirit. When we pray, we pray empowered by the God the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 6:18) and are told to pray “in the Spirit” (Jude 20). Being in Christ, all our prayers are guided by the Holy Spirit. We are never left to ourselves. The Holy Spirit even helps us in our weakness when we don’t know what or how to pray (Romans 8:26).

Our prayers are always Trinitarian prayers. When we call out to the Lord, each person of the Godhead is intimately involved.

John Piper write:

Pray to the Father in the power of the Spirit, in the name or by the authority and the merit of the Son. That is the Bible’s trinitarian prayer structure.

This reality of the Trinity being involved when we pray ought to drastically improve our prayer lives. When our prayers seem dull, when the words don’t come out, when it feels like nobody is listening and we’re just blabbering to the wind—we must remember the Father is listening, the Son is interceding, and the Spirit is empowering.

Truly, this should change how you understand prayer and how you do pray. Be intentional. Make your prayers intentionally Trinitarian; not as a show but as a display of your belief that the Godhead is with you in your prayers.

You might pray something like this:

“Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. First and foremost, I come to you through the merits of Christ and Christ alone. It is only through the blood of Christ that you listen and are pleased with me. And I thank you that your Holy Spirit is helping me pray—even when I can’t muster any words. [Insert petitions, praises, etc.] In Jesus’ name, amen.”