The Three Fundamental Prayers

Prayer at the most fundamental level is speaking with God, and it is an activity that occurs throughout the Bible. Jesus Himself spent a great deal of time speaking with God in prayer, once even engaging in prayer for an entire night (Luke 6.12). Once, Jesus was even asked by His disciples to teach them how to pray (Luke 11.1), after which He provided them an example that is commonly called the “Lord’s Prayer” (Luke 11.1-4, cf. Matt. 6.9-15).

Often, our issue with prayer is knowing what to say. That’s understandable on several levels. Sometimes the best way to learn something is to observe someone who is doing that thing well and then emulate what you see. In the same fashion, learning to pray is often best done by examining the principles within a good example of prayer and then applying those principles to our own prayers. Let’s do that together, and then what will follow in this article is a discussion of the three main elements of quality prayer that you’ll see in our example, as well as a good New Testament example of each element.

Take a few minutes to read the following prayer a couple of times: Daniel 9.1-19.

Did you read it? How many times? What did you think?

Before we dive in, here’s what’s going on in Daniel 9.
In Daniel 1, we learn that Daniel and many other Israelites were taken into captivity by the Babylonians. He currently serves in the court of the Medo-Persian king Darius, after the Medes/Persians conquered the Babylonians (Dan. 5). In chapter 9, Daniel comes to an understanding concerning a prophecy made by Jeremiah concerning how long Jerusalem had to remain destroyed as punishment for the unfaithfulness of Judah. In short, Jerusalem would remain desolate for 70 years (cf. Jer. 25.11-12; 29.10). Upon this realization, Daniel turns to God in “prayer and pleas for mercy” (9.3), and we know this was intense, mournful prayer because “fasting and sackcloth and ashes” are mentioned also.

So, how do we see Daniel praying in Daniel 9?

Adoration

One thing Daniel does repeatedly in this prayer is express who God is and what God has done:

This might catch us off-guard, because we commonly think of prayer as either asking God for something or confessing before God that we have done something wrong. Although Daniel does plenty of those two things in this prayer, notice how often Daniel does neither one! Instead, as you can see above, Daniel repeatedly references who God is and what God has done. This first fundamental aspect of prayer can be called adoration, or simply expressing God’s nature and deeds. We can see from these verses that Daniel expresses God’s nature, referencing His greatness, faithfulness, love, righteousness, mercifulness, and power. In addition, Daniel notes a specific reference to something that God did: delivering the Israelites from the Egyptians, what we commonly call The Exodus.

Adoring God in prayer is as simple as describing who He is and what He has done, and we do so because these things glorify God and remind us of our place before Him. Consider the address of those gathered around the throne of God in John’s vision, recorded in Revelation 4.9-11:

“And whenever the living creatures give glory and honor and thanks to him who is sea ed on the throne, who lives forever and ever, the twenty-four elders fall down before him who is seated on the throne and worship him who lives forever and ever. They cast their crowns before the throne, saying,
“Worthy are you, our Lord and God, to receive glory and honor and power, for you created all things, and by your will they existed and were created.”

Did you see that? The living creatures give God “glory, honor, and thanks”, which is exactly what adoration is all about. Also, notice what the 24 elders had to say: God is worthy of glory, honor, and power because He created all things! When we praise God for who He is and what He has done, we adore Him in prayer. When the infant Jesus was presented in the Temple in Luke 2, Simeon (a priest) takes the Child in his arms and blesses God with a most beautiful example of adoration:

“Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace, according to your word;
for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples, a light for revelation to the Gentiles, and for glory to your people Israel.” (Luke 2.29-32)

This first aspect of a healthy prayer life is regular, passionate expression of who God is and what He has done. In fact, try to make it a regular practice to adore God in prayer w/out making any requests or confessions. Check out the Psalms and just how often they are written from this perspective.

Confession

Coming back to Daniel 9, hopefully you noticed what Daniel did most often in the prayer, which was express the sinfulness of his people, the Israelites:

The core of this specific prayer is confession (9.4), or the expression of what we have done and who we have become as a result. When we come to God in prayer for the purpose of confession, we do so because we have committed sin against Him and desire His mercy and grace. Sin results in punishment and death, and we beg for mercy from those things that we deserve. We beg God for His forgiveness, kindness and salvation, gifts that we do not deserve, which is grace. (In short, mercy is when you are spared from what you deserve, and grace is when you are given something that you don’t deserve. They often go together.)

We all have done what Daniel describes here. We have all sinned, done wrong, acted wickedly, rebelled, refused to listen, and done wickedly. Even Christians. The difference between God’s people and the rest of the world isn’t that we’re sinless and the world is sinful. The difference is that God’s people seek forgiveness from Him by confessing what they’ve done wrong before Him. Consider an important New Testament passage on this very subject:

“If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1.8-10)

That last passage was written to Christians, folks who have been baptized in obedience to the Gospel and had their sins forgiven! John writes to us and tells us that God is faithful and just to forgive our sins if we confess them before Him.

Couple things before we move to the last element of prayer. In prayer, you are addressing the Creator of the universe, the one who knows LITERALLY every detail of everything ever done in all of existence. Nothing escapes His notice or memory (cf. Ps. 139.1-4). BE SPECIFIC when you confess your sins before God and don’t resort to generalities. Describe to God your shortfalls, weaknesses, temptations, and how you have failed Him. Don’t be afraid that He’s going to forsake you when He “finds out” about you. HE ALREADY KNOWS.
The real question is whether we truly understand our brokenness, and our desperate need for His healing, mercy, and grace. Don’t be afraid that He’s going to forsake you: He gave Jesus to die for you on your behalf before you obeyed the Gospel (Rom. 5.6-11). He paid the ultimate price to remove your burden of sin!
Confess your sins before Him and be free of those things:
“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8.36)

Supplication

Finally, did you notice that Daniel included a request of God? Several of them, in fact:

In short, Daniel was asking God for the desolation of Jerusalem to be ended, and for Israel be given opportunity to go home. These requests are known as supplication or expressing our requests humbly and earnestly to God.

Making requests of God is typically what people think of first when they think of prayer. This is the most common aspect of prayer we see early in the Bible. Abraham prays to God in Gen. 20.17 for Abimelech to be healed, Isaac prays in Gen. 25.21 for his wife Rachel to have children, and we see Moses praying for various things throughout Exodus and Numbers. You might remember that Hannah in great distress and bitterness begs God for a child in 1 Sam. 1, a petition which God grants.

We must remember that God answers prayer according to His nature, knowledge, wisdom, and power, not ours. God is not to be treated in prayer as the “Great Vending Machine in the Sky”, wherein if we pray the right prayer (or enough of them), then He’ll dispense what we’ve prayed for. Nor are we addressing someone who does not know what we need: “…your Father knows what you need before you ask Him.” (Matt. 6.8). Consider the requests of the “Lord’s Prayer” (Matt. 6.10-13) we mentioned near the beginning of this article:

From these we can glean valuable information about making requests of God in prayer. Note that Jesus taught His disciples to be prayerful for spiritual things: the coming of the Kingdom, accomplishing God’s will, forgiveness of sins, avoidance of temptation. See also that Jesus does not exclude the physical needs of our life from our requests. Thirdly, note the position that making supplication (or making requests) puts the offerer of the prayer in: if we’re asking God for these things, then we are recognizing our status before Him as servants and His status as Master and Provider! Bear this in mind as we make our requests of Him: would we dare ask God for something that would contradict His nature? We must also remember that since God answers according to His nature, the answer may not be “yes”.
Sometimes the answer is “no”, or “not yet”.

Conclusion

I know that’s a lot, so let’s summarize what we’ve found in Daniel 9.

We saw in Daniel’s prayer three main aspects of prayer:

Adoration: expressing who God is and what He has done.

Confession: expressing who we are and what we have done.

Supplication: expressing our requests humbly and earnestly before God.

Do not fret: Not every prayer will include all three of these. But every prayer should include at least one of these aspects.

Final thought: Thankfully, we are told in scripture that even when we do not know exactly what we should say, we have an advocate in the Holy Spirit: “For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words.” (Rom. 8.26).
Trust in God and open your heart to Him in prayer! -K.S.

Appendix: Here’s a few more prayers for your consideration, in no particular order.

• • The Book of Psalms is LOADED with incredible prayers:
• Psalm 17
• Psalm 51
• Psalm 55
• Psalm 61
• Psalm 86
• Psalm 88
• Psalm 90
• Psalm 102
• Psalm 142
• Psalm 143
  • 2 Samuel 7.18-29 (David’s prayer of gratitude)
  • Exodus 32.11-14 (Moses’ intercession on Israel’s behalf on Sinai)
  • Matthew 6.9-15 (The Lord’s Prayer)
  • John 17 (Jesus’ prayer with His disciples before His arrest)
  • 1 Samuel 2.1-10 (Hannah’s prayer following Samuel’s birth)
  • 2 Kings 19.14-19 (Hezekiah’s prayer of deliverance
  • Ezra 9 (Ezra’s prayer on behalf of the faithless exiles)
  • Jeremiah 32.16-25 (Jeremiah prays for understanding)
  • 1 Chronicles 6.12-42 (Solomon’s prayer dedicating the Temple, also in 1 Kings 8.22-53)