The mystery of prayer

   Prayer is a great mystery.  The communion between the human and divine always is.  And in a matter of prayer, which is a deeply human action, and yet one in which everything depends upon the supply of divine grace, this mystery is especially acute.

   E.M. Bounds reminds us,

The value of prayer does not lie in the number of prayers, or the length of prayers, but its value is found in the great truth that we are privileged by our relations to God to unburden our desires and make our requests known to God, and He will relieve by granting our petitions.  The child asks because the parent is in the habit of granting the child's requests.  As the children of God we need something and we need it badly, and we go to God for it.  Neither the Bible nor the child of God knows anything of that half-infidel declaration, that we are to answer our own prayers.  God answers prayer.  The true Christian does not pray to stir himself up, but his prayer is the stirring up of himself to take hold of God.  The heart of faith knows nothing of that specious skepticism which stays [hinders] the steps of prayer and chills its ardour by whispering that prayer does not affect God.”   — The Purpose of Prayer (emphasis added)

Who is really praying?  Is it me, or is it God the Spirit?  Truly, it is both.  Effective prayer is a matter of the Spirit’s work within us, both to intercede for us (Rom. 8:26f) and to enable our own intercessions.  As J. Stuart Holden put it:

   The great subject of prayer, that comprehensive need of the Christian's life, is intimately bound up in the personal fulness of the Holy Spirit.  It is “by the One Spirit we have access unto the Father” (Eph. 2:18), and by the same Spirit, having entered the audience chamber through the “new and living way,” we are enabled to pray in the will of God (Rom. 8:15, 26-27; Gal. 4:6; Eph. 6:18; Jude 20-21).

   Here is the secret of prevailing prayer, to pray under a direct inspiration [perhaps we would prefer to say “leading” or “direction” — RW] of the Holy Spirit, whose petitions for us and through us are always according to the Divine purpose, and hence certain of answer.  “Praying in the Holy Ghost” is but co-operating with the will of God, and such prayer is always victorious.  How many Christians there are who cannot pray, and who seek by effort, resolve, joining prayer circles, etc., to cultivate in themselves the “holy art of intercession,” and all to no purpose.  Here for them and for all is the only secret of a real prayer life — “Be filled with the Spirit,” who is “the Spirit of grace and supplication.” (emphasis added)

I have long admired one of C.S. Lewis’ poems, entitled simply "Prayer," that expresses this profoundly mysterious aspect of prayer simply and so aptly:

Master, they say that when I seem 

To be in speech with you, 

Since you make no replies, it's all a dream 

—One talker aping two. 

They are half right, but not as they 

Imagine; rather, I 

Seek in myself the things I meant to say, 

And lo! the wells are dry. 

Then, seeing me empty, you forsake 

The Listener's role, and through 

My dead lips breathe and into utterance wake 

The thoughts I never knew. 

And thus you neither need reply 

Nor can; thus, while we seem 

Two talking, thou art One forever, and I 

No dreamer, but thy dream.