Oh, for the heart of Jesus in prayer to be our own! He prays at length, not that His Father would be persuaded by many words, or that His Father would be impressed by such lengthy converse. For our Lord Jesus Himself forbids us to attack God's throne of grace with long, drawn out petitions (Mt 6:7). Why then, does He pray at length (Lk 6:12), indeed all night? It is purely that He should be conformed to the will of His heavenly Father (Lk 22:42). Our heavenly Father cannot be overcome with all the babbling and bawling as used to happen in the Pentecostal churches, because He knows what we need even before we ask. We are asking that we might be clear what we need, to confess our dependence on the One who sees and knows our need even before we do, and to give thanks to the "Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change" (Jm 1:17). Our Father gives us the privilege of asking in our prayer.

If our Father is not impressed by long, windy prayers, such as the pagans pray, how then should we pray? With simplicity and directness. Often people are baffled by the short, powerful prayers that have come down to us through the church in the collects. As a child, I found them obtuse and stuffy. Of course, this is the judgment of a child and children should not be left in charge of the church's faith or her prayer. A more mature judgment has led me to love and treasure the church's collects, which are broad in meaning and compressed in words. They literally "collect" together all the church's needs in two or three simple, eloquent phrases. I am deeply grateful that mature believers before me preserved for my use these deep and abidingly significant prayers and taught me them, even before I could see and understand their depth and significance. Morning prayer, consisting of a reading and a collect, is a summary of a whole day of faith at the rising of the sun. Our Father, who sees in secret, listens. No whole one-hundred-boxcar train of petitions will ever be better.

When we pray in faith, we draw into our petitions the fullness of all the heavenly gifts. Our simple petitions are never simple; for all heavenly things come with them. If we are praying with Jesus as He prays, then with Him comes all that He delivers to us in His Word. Of course, we will want to say that prayer is not a means of grace. However, this statement has limits. Prayer is never meritorious in the sight of God. Now we are just speaking to our Father asking for our needs, that He should fulfill them. What child thinks that his honest appeals are to be fulfilled because of the power of his requests? What child thinks that his parent is bound to answer his petition because of the value of the very plea? No Christian thinks God is bound to answer His prayer because of its own value. No, the petition of the believer never merits anything with the God who knows our need before we ask and is more eager to answer our prayers than we are to pray! So while prayer is not a means of grace, the faith that gives birth to prayer is the same faith trusts in the means of grace. Therefore, prayer in faith brings with it the whole of the gospel, because faith is never disconnected from Christ. Our little prayers are an expansive epitome of the whole gospel.