Because we are persons made in the image of God in order that we might know God and live with Him, prayer that confesses our dependence on God and begs Him for His blessing is absolutely essential. Prayer is our side of the conversation God calls us to have with Him. God's side of this conversation is His spoken and written Word, now recorded in the Holy Bible, and prayer is our spoken response to God's Word and actions. Prayer is, as the Heidelberg Catechism says, "the chief part of our thankfulness to Him" (Q116).
What Prayer Is Not
It might seem strange; but it will be well for us to understand prayer by listening to the what the Scriptures say prayer is not. Jesus does this in the Sermon on the Mount, in Matthew 6, just before He gives us the Lord's prayer. First, prayer is not a publicity stunt to show how religious we are. Like offerings and other Christian deeds, real prayer is from our hearts directly to God. Do not pray to be seen of men, Jesus says, but go into your closet. Whether it is literally an isolated room, or the closet of our hearts, real prayer is conversation with God and with Him alone. Second, prayer is not a message service to God. Jesus said, "God knows what you need before you ask." We do not need to tell God what time it is, or the Latin name for aunt Nellie's disease; after all, God made all those things. Our prayers can cover a lot of ground with a few words, and they should, as does the Lord's Prayer. Long prayer is not a virtue. Third, prayer is not a means of correcting God's defective will. We are always to pray, "Thy will be done," no matter what we are praying about, or even what we are planning (James 4:15). We may never think of prayer as a means of changing God's mind.
What Prayer Is
The question might arise, "If God knows what we need before we ask, why should we pray." The answer is that prayer is an essential confession that we know that God is the source of all good things. Prayer is our confession of dependence upon God. Just as the Declaration of Independence proclaims who and what we are as a nation, so our confession of dependence upon God declares who and what we are as Christians, not just to the world around us, but to God Himself. The Second Commandment tells us that God is "a jealous God," that is, God is jealous for our acknowledgement of Himself and the devotion of our hearts. God is not an emotionless force, but loves His people unto salvation and has mercy upon those who love Him and keep His commandments. He also punishes those who hate Him. Prayer is our confession that we know who and what God is as a jealous God.
Second, prayer is our confession specifically to God that we know who and what we are as creatures entirely dependent upon Him for everything we have or wish to have. Thus prayer is "the chief part of the thankfulness that God requires of us" (Heidelberg Q125). It is also our confession that those things we ask for as petitions to God can come only from Him. This is why we are exhorted again and again in the Psalms to "sing unto the Lord," to sing directly to God, who hears our prayers. Just as our thanksgiving to God confesses Him as the giver of every gift, so our supplication confesses that the things we hope to gain also come from Him. Prayer is necessary because it confesses that we know who we are before God.
Third, prayer is our side of the conversation with God. As such it should come in response to God's speaking to us, and the two speeches-man's and God's-constitute worship. Prayers are words because words are the only way we can communicate about spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:13; John 4:24). God speaks in words, and we respond in words, thus the idea that worship is a conversation. It is, of course, a specifically covenantal conversation that reflects the fact that God is King, we are the servants; that God is Creator, we are the creatures; and that God is the Savior and we are the saved. Thus God speaks first, most and sovereignly; we don't speak until we are spoken to, and we respond submissively and with praise to God. Now the apostle Paul in 1 Tim. 4:5 tells us that worship, "the word of God and prayer," sanctifies, or dedicates our lives as belonging to and glorifying God. Worship is essential to God's purpose of glorifying Himself through the universe.
Fourth, prayer is part of God's way of carrying out His will on earth. God ordains our prayers no less than He ordains every other part of "whatever comes to pass." When it comes to prayer, God "works in us to will and to do (say) what pleases Him," and He then answers those prayers according to His will. For those who worry about our being puppets, or those rationalists like Arminians and hyper-Calvinists who try to set God's will over against man's will as though they were equally ultimate, that is, in competition on the same level, nothing could be farther from the truth. Man's tiny will and actions are not only far below God's will and actions, "as the heavens are higher than the earth (Isa. 55:9), man's will and actions are always within God's will and actions. That this does not make us puppets is stated clearly by the apostle Peter in Acts 2:23. "Him (Christ) being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain." In the same event God is doing good, sacrificing His Son for our sins, while the Jews and Pontius Pilate were murdering an innocent man. God can and does act righteously in the same event where man sins. How God accomplishes this is a mystery that our minds cannot penetrate, but this is exactly what He does. This is why our creeds recognize that God predestinates the fall of man while emphasizing that God is "not the author of sin."
Fifth, God hears and answers prayer. Not only does the Bible guarantee that in its words (see James 5:16-19, etc.), we need to recognize that there is no such thing as "unanswered prayer" for real Christians. God may say, "No," or "Wait," or "Partly yes," or "Yes," but He always answers with what is good for us. Jesus Himself teaches this in Luke 11:9-13. Our prayers are genuinely ours, and God genuinely hears and answers our prayers. Just because we live inside of God's sovereign will does not mean that our words and prayers are not genuinely ours; they are real and important. This then brings us back to "God knows what you need before you ask." So while God commends united prayer (Matt 18:19-20), we need to be careful not to gang up on God with "prayer chains" or "all night prayer vigils" unless we are very careful to keep "thy will be done" in our hearts.
Now, all of this could be said from several different approaches, as has often been done. Q125 in the Heidelberg Catechism is very biblical and pointed in its brief statement. "What is the fourth petition? ‘Give us this day our daily bread,' that is, be pleased to provide for all our bodily need, that we may thereby acknowledge Thee to be the only fountain of all good, and that without Thy blessing neither our care and labor, nor Thy gifts, can profit us. That we may therefore withdraw our trust from all creatures, and place it alone in Thee."
The Catechism makes several fundamental points. First, the purpose in our own hearts of our prayer for material blessings is centered in the glorification of God as the giver of all good, and not in the provision of material things so that we can "consume them on our lusts" (James 4:3).
The second point is that nothing, whether a direct gift of God, or a product of our own labor with God's gifts, can really do us any good without God's blessing. Material things and labor in itself can be self-directed to serve and glorify ourselves, or it can be directed toward glorifying God, which is of course the right attitude. Our spiritual attitude of dependence upon God is then of great importance in our prayer for and use of material things.
Finally, the Catechism directs its teaching toward our spiritual attitude as the result of God's provision of material things, and that is, that we will "withdraw our trust from all creatures and place it alone in Thee (God)." All prayer is an act of faith, because it is an act of entrusting God with our need and thanking Him for His blessing. Prayer for material things when approached with a faith instructed by the Bible, will also increase our faith because it will raise our consciousness of how little we can trust ourselves and the things of this world to care for us, and on the other hand how magnificent is the God who does indeed provide us with all things "necessary for body and soul" (Q26). Above all, may our prayers truly glorify God.