What Is Prayer? Asking, Listening and Trusting

Prayer is as natural as breathing. That is where Pastor Linda Reese started this message from October 19, 2025, opening a series on prayer with the plainest possible question: what actually is it?

Her answer began with relationship rather than technique. God made us for a love relationship with Him, and if you love somebody you want to spend time with them. Prayer tends to spring up when a need arrives that is bigger than we are, but it was never meant to wait for the emergency.

Prayer is asking and receiving

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.

Matthew 7:7 (KJV)

Jesus then asks what kind of father hands his son a stone when he asked for bread, or a snake when he asked for a fish (Matthew 7:7–11). Pastor Linda turned that around into the most useful sentence in the message: sometimes what we are asking for is a snake, and a good Father does not hand it over, however long we persist.

That is not God being tight-fisted. She was emphatic: He is not selfish, not begrudging, not stingy, and we do not have to beg Him. As we come to know Him better we start asking for better things, and those He gives gladly.

Prayer is asking for His will, not announcing ours

“And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us” (1 John 5:14). Her distinction was simple. We do not demand what we want. We discuss it with Him, and part of the discussion is finding out what He wants.

How do you learn His will? Read the Bible and sit with it long enough to apply it. Listen as well as talk. And expect direction: “Thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it” (Isaiah 30:21).

Prayer is making your requests known

Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.

Philippians 4:6 (KJV)

“Be careful for nothing” means stop carrying the anxiety. Pastor Linda put it in one line worth keeping: if it concerns you, it concerns God. No item is too small to bring.

Then the sentence the room repeated back to her: the more we pray, the less we worry. Start with thanks, for what He has already done and for what He is going to do, and the peace that follows is the kind that does not make logical sense (Philippians 4:7).

It does not take much faith to start

If you think your faith is too small to bother Him with, she had an answer for that too. Jesus said faith the size of a mustard seed could move a mountain (Matthew 17:20). She pointed out how small that actually is: drop a mustard seed on the floor and you will struggle to find it again.

Her practical turn on it was about where you are looking. When you are discouraged and do not know what to do, stop staring at the mountain. Pray about it, then start praising God, because praise brings joy and joy brings strength.

Seek Him with your whole heart

“And ye shall seek me, and find me, when ye shall search for me with all your heart” (Jeremiah 29:13). Not half a heart, she said. The whole thing.

She told a story from a missionary trip to Haiti in 1980. The congregation was singing “How Great Thou Art” in Creole, and she was singing along in English. She asked God to let her sing it in their language, and it came out in their language. The little boys near her lit up at hearing an American sing their words. “I didn’t do it on my own,” she said. “It was God.”

She was equally direct that nothing breaks the line. Not strange surroundings, not sorrow, not frustration, not physical problems. God was present through every grief she has walked through, and He understands them. When Lazarus died, Jesus wept (John 11:35).

Prayer is simply talking with God, and it always was

She went back to the beginning for the picture of it. God came down and walked in the garden in the cool of the day, and talked with Adam and Eve, and they were not afraid. After they disobeyed, they heard the same voice and hid themselves among the trees (Genesis 3:8).

Nothing had changed about God. Guilt had changed how they felt about being near Him. You cannot hide from God, and He was not hunting them; He wanted their company. Sin broke the fellowship then, and it is what interrupts ours now. He still longs to talk with us.

Something to do this week

Do not wait for a need big enough to justify praying. Take five minutes tomorrow, start with thank you, and say the small thing out loud.

Related messages: Reasons to Pray, Bold Prayer, Persistent Faith and The Prayer of Jabez.

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