Prayer is perhaps the easiest and at the same time the most difficult aspect of our walk with the King. It is very natural for the child of God to run to his or her Father and speak their heart. You need not teach an infant how to cry. Crying to God is as native to the spiritual infant as it is to the physical infant crying to its mother.

The new heart finds itself erupting with thoughts of praise and words of worship. When the Christian’s heart is wounded, there is something innate that lifts the voice to the Lord. Prayer is practicing relationship with Christ.

Yet, it is a struggle to maintain prayer consistently. Pride resists depending on another. Hell attacks the mind and heart to prevent prayer and then fights to interrupt once the Christian does pray. Alexander Whyte, a Scottish divine preached a message titled, “It Is Sometimes So With Me That I Will Rather Die Than Pray.”

John Newton, the writer of the Christian anthem Amazing Grace, wrote these words concerning prayer, “I find in my own case an unaccountable backwardness to pray. I can read, I can write, I can converse with a ready will, but secret prayer is far more spiritual than any of these. And the more spiritual any duty is the more my carnal heart is apt to start away from it.” Prayer can be so exacting, so labor intensive that we can become greatly discouraged.