Prayer isn’t part of natural human life. It’s often said that those who don’t pray will suffer; I question it. What suffers is the life of Christ inside them, because the life of the Son of God is nourished not by food but by prayer.

When we are born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born inside us. Whether we starve this life or nourish it through prayer is up to us. Our ordinary views of prayer—as a way of getting blessings for ourselves from God or of having an emotional experience—are not found in the Bible. The Bible views prayer as a way of getting to know God himself.

“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7). We grumble before God; we are apologetic or apathetic, but we ask very few things. Our Lord says, “Unless you change and become like little children” (18:3). What wonderful audacity a child has! The child of God goes to God with every concern and desire, ready to lay it all out before him and ask. We don’t do this unless we are at our wits’ end. Before then, we think asking is cowardly or weak. Praying in our moment of need isn’t cowardly; it’s the only way we can get in touch with the reality of God. Be yourself before God. Lay before him what you’re at your wits’ end about, the issue you know you can’t deal with yourself. As long as you are self-sufficient, you don’t need to ask him for anything.

It isn’t so much that prayer changes things as that prayer changes me, and then I change things. Prayer isn’t a question of altering external circumstances but of working wonders in our disposition. One of God’s amazing gifts is that prayer on the basis of the redemption has the power to entirely transform a person’s perspective.