True prayer is not about how to call out, how many words to say, or how nicely one speaks, but depends on whether we can speak from the heart with God sincerely. Because the Lord Jesus said, “God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24). In our life, everyday we’ll encounter something to pray for. When something happy happens, we pray to offer our thanks to God from our heart. When we have troubles or difficulties and don’t know how to solve them, we seek God’s will and pray for God’s inspiration and guidance. Since we pray to God with our heart, we feel that our relationship with God is very close. When God hears our prayer and solves our problem, we feel that God is so faithful, and it’s so good to rely on God. Thus it even more inspires our resolution to spend for God. This is the result achieved by truly praying. Just as God’s word says, “What is true prayer? It is telling God what is in your heart, communing with God as you grasp His will, communicating with God through His words, feeling especially close to God, sensing He is there before you, and believing you have something to say to Him. Your heart feels filled with light and you feel how lovable God is. You feel especially inspired, and listening to you brings gratification to your brothers and sisters. They will feel that the words you speak are the words within their hearts, the words they wish to say, as though your words were a substitute for their own. This is what true prayer is. After you have engaged in true prayer, your heart will be at peace and will know gratification. The strength to love God can rise up, and you will feel that there is nothing of greater value or significance in life than loving God. All this proves that your prayers have been effective.” “The minimum that God requires of man is that man be able to open his heart to Him. If man gives his true heart to God and speaks what is truly in his heart, then God is willing to work in him. What God desires is not the twisted heart of man, but a pure and honest heart. If man does not speak from his heart to God, then God will not move his heart or work in him. Therefore, the crux of prayer is to speak to God from your heart, telling Him your shortcomings or rebellious disposition, laying yourself completely open before Him; only then will God be interested in your prayers, or else He will hide His face from you.”
This shows that the best prayer is to say what is in our heart to God. If we don’t truly pray from our heart, even though we call out to God every day, it’s just clinging to regulations and going through the motions, and it’s for others to see and hear, not for God. Such prayer will achieve no result. The Lord Jesus said, “And when you pray, you shall not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Truly I say to you, They have their reward” (Matthew 6:5). We can see that the Lord Jesus despised the hypocritical prayer of the Pharisees. They said many nice words in their prayer, and often stood in the corners of the streets to pray. But their praying was to cling to regulations, to show off their “godliness” before others so that others could praise them. This is purely hypocritical. No matter how many such prayers they have, they can’t gain the Lord’s approval, but are despised by the Lord. God says, “Prayer is not a case of just going through the motions, following procedure, or reciting the words of God. That is to say, praying is not parroting certain words and it is not imitating others. In prayer, one must reach the state where one’s heart can be given to God, laying open one’s heart so that it may be moved by God.” Thus, if we just go through the formalities to pray but show no sincerity, then no matter how we pray, we won’t feel the presence of the Lord, not to say the enjoyment brought by the work of the Holy Spirit. And we won’t truly know God and our love for God won’t increase, but we will stray further and further away from God. Therefore, only by sharing the words in your heart with God with a sincere attitude, can we gain the work of and be touched by the Holy Spirit.
