Prayer: Ministry Director's Retreat - September 2026
Prayer: Ministry Director Retreat 9/26/2026
Prayer Is Communication with God
Prayer, in its simplest form, is communicating with God. Two examples show this. One example is from the Old Testament and one from the New Testament.
1 Samuel 1:10–15 (ESV) 10 She was deeply distressed and prayed to the LORD and wept bitterly. 11 And she vowed a vow and said, “O LORD of hosts, if you will indeed look on the affliction of your servant and remember me and not forget your servant, but will give to your servant a son, then I will give him to the LORD all the days of his life, and no razor shall touch his head.” 12 As she continued praying before the LORD, Eli observed her mouth. 13 Hannah was speaking in her heart; only her lips moved, and her voice was not heard. Therefore Eli took her to be a drunken woman. 14 And Eli said to her, “How long will you go on being drunk? Put your wine away from you.” 15 But Hannah answered, “No, my lord, I am a woman troubled in spirit. I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the LORD.”
Philippians 4:5–6 (ESV) 5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; 6 do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.
Prayer fundamentally involves praise, thanksgiving, confession, intercession, and petitioning the LORD for our desires and needs. It is a direct address to the LORD while we actively, by faith, depend on his power and goodness.
(NOTE: Prayer, supplication, and thanksgiving are different dimensions of the same act. Prayer more formal in praise, thanksgiving, worship. Supplication is prayer where we bring out needs and desires to the LORD.)
Prayer acknowledges (presupposes) God’s sufficiency and your own need. It is the expression of an indigent creature seeking relief from the source of mercy, where desire itself forms the very heart of prayer.[1]
Yet biblical faith consistently regards petition as fundamental, even when prayer takes the form of praise and thanksgiving. We make our requests known to God through prayer and supplication, accompanied by thanksgiving. (See Philippians 4:6–7)
The essence of prayer is relationship. Sin separates us from God, but God’s grace brings us to him, to be in Christ and in the Father by and with the Spirit. We are brought near to the Triune God.
We address God in prayer because he invites us to do so, and he promises to hear us.
In this relationship, when we are weak, the Spirit helps us by interceding for us with groanings too deep for words, and he intercedes according to God’s will. (See Romans 8:26–27)
Prayer is not merely human effort. Prayer is a collaborative work, a spiritual exercise done acceptably only through the assistance of the Holy Spirit, without whose help there is no acceptable prayer.[2]
- Jim is going to speak about the presence of the Lord in prayer, connecting with the Lord.
- I’m going to talk about gratitude/thanksgiving in prayer.
- Jon is going to talk about praying in alignment with the Lord.
We are going to finish our sharing with you by practicing prayer with the emphasis on what we just shared with you.
GRATITUDE/THANKSGIVING
(My opinion – Connecting with the Lord by knowing, enjoying, experiencing the Lord’s presence, regulates us and stabilizes our connected experience with the Lord. Gratitude/Thanksgiving stabilize our connection as it signals trust, faith, particularly when we have gratitude/thanksgiving in circumstances others would not. Alignment with the Lord ensures us we have what we have asked for. These three parts may be the quantum physics of prayer.)
I’m putting gratitude/thanksgiving together because I understand these two to be different sides of the same coin.
Gratitude is the inner posture of the heart that reflects on, that is it notices, receives, and values what is good. What God has done is ultimately good.
Thanksgiving is the external expression of the internal attitude that is the result of the reflection on God’s good work.
Example: We experience good/God’s providential good (the good that is not so good now but will work out for his glory and our good ultimately). Or we experience the anticipation of future good. Then this experience of the good or the anticipation of the good expresses itself from us in a word “thank you” or an expressive holy grunt “ungh” or a “my goodness”.
Gratitude works itself out to the external expression.
The Bible is clear that gratitude/thanksgiving are part of our worship, and I believe that gratitude/thanksgiving are part of the expression of our faith in the Lord, and we know that Jesus was clear that faith is integral to prayer.
Let me say it this way: Faith has as part of its expression, gratitude/thanksgiving.
Listen to Colossians 2:6-7 (ESV) 6 Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 7 rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.
Let me say it another way: Faith is not faith if it does not have gratitude/thanksgiving as part it.
Faith is the assurance of things hoped for; the conviction of things not seen.
Assurance. Hypostasis – realty, ground of reality, essence, confidence.
Conviction. Elegchos – manifestation of the truth and the results of the truth.
Faith is an internal ground of reality rooted in the truth of who God is as good and holy and that truth produces external results in the actions of the one who has faith.
Faith must have an object. Faith can’t exist without the ground, essence that produces it in order for it to be expressed. That object is none other than the God of the Bible who gives faith for salvation, sustains faith for our good, and thus generates in faith an assurance that works itself out into a conviction.
What does gratitude/thanksgiving signal? That either good has come or is certain to come.
Gratitude/thanksgiving signals certainty. It signals a deep assurance. These are evidence that we are assured of the goodness of God.
So, if we are to pray in faith, we can’t pray in faith if we are not assured in our whole being of the goodness of God and his desire to do only good to me.
So, in order to pray in faith, I have to do some work on how I see the Lord and interpret my experience with him in life so that I will default to gratitude/thanksgiving rather than bitterness/anger.
How do we have gratitude/thanksgiving that expresses assurance which is part of faith?
My experience can’t be my only interpretive lens. I must have the lens of the Bible as my first lens of interpretation.
So, I choose to see all things in my life (normative not a result of sin) through the lens of God’s good providence to me allowing me to have assurance from which I act out of conviction, and that first and primary action is to have an inner gratitude as a response of how I see the Lord’s work in me that results in the external expression of thanksgiving for that work.
[1]Richard Watson, “Prayer,” in A Biblical and Theological Dictionary (New York: Lane & Scott, 1851), 761.
[2]Richard Watson, “Prayer,” in A Biblical and Theological Dictionary (New York: Lane & Scott, 1851), 761.