Three Types of Prayer
As you go deeper in personal and corporate worship, you will find that your spirit needs a deeper revelation of prayer. There will come a point when confessing your sins, asking the Lord for what you want, and praying for others will fall short. And you will find yourself saying, “There has to be more. There has to be something deeper in prayer.”
How do you think Jesus prayed? Many times the Scripture records that He would spend all night on the mountain praying. What did He do? Most of us would be tired after a half hour of supplication and intercession. Yes, Jesus is God, but He is also fully human. How did He leave that time of prayer refreshed when most of us would have been exhausted? How did He leave so radiant and full of life that the disciples saw it day after day and said, “Teach us to pray”? They didn’t say, “Teach us to heal the sick. Teach us to multiply bread.” They said, “Teach us to pray.” What was it about His prayer life that was so inspiring, so otherworldly?
We will come back to that question, but first I want to introduce you to three types of prayer. The first is verbal prayer, or the prayer of the mouth. This is how most people are taught to pray. We speak our prayers aloud, or we put them into words and pray them in our minds. This is certainly a Biblical way to pray and includes many forms of prayer, such as thanksgiving, praise, confession, supplication, and intercession. The problem is that most people stop here, with verbal prayer, and never experience the deeper levels. And that’s why they think prayer is boring – because all of us get tired after an hour of talking, or hearing ourselves think. We weren’t made to stay here in this first realm. We were made to go deeper.
The second type of prayer is meditative prayer, or the prayer of the mind. In meditative prayer, we reflect on Scripture or on an aspect of the Lord and revisit it over and over in our minds. Christian meditation isn’t about emptying the mind but about filling it with the presence and promises of Jesus. Some people journal as they meditate on the Lord. Some people sing. And this meditation naturally leads us into prayer as we make the words of Scripture our own. That’s the second type of prayer. Meditative prayer is rewarding and fulfilling and draws us into a deeper relationship with the Lord. But there is a third realm.
The third type of prayer is contemplative prayer, or the prayer of the heart. The simplest definition of contemplative prayer is simply being with the Lord. If you have ever had a close friend or spouse, you know that there are times when words are not needed, when all you want to do is just be in the presence of the other person, without saying or doing anything. This is one of the deepest levels of friendship – to know and be with the other person in that place where words are unnecessary. Contemplative prayer is the stillness and rest of simply being with God. Psalm 46:10 says, “Be still, and know that I am God.” We aren’t verbalizing our prayers or even meditating on Scripture, although that is important. We are simply coming to Him and saying, “In this moment, You are all I want – just to be here with You.” And even if He doesn’t give us an amazing revelation, or if we don’t sing Him a song, or if nothing “amazing” happens, His presence is all we want because His presence is Him. He fills every empty space of our hearts and satisfies us completely.
This is contemplative prayer. We were made to live in constant communion with God, to live every moment in love, to set Him always before the eyes of our hearts, to fix our gaze on Him and never turn away. Theologians speak of something called the Beatific Vision. Revelation 22 says, “They shall see His face.” The Beatific Vision is seeing the face of God. Job 19 says, “For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth: And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another, how my heart years within me!”
Yes, we will see God in heaven someday. But the soul can see God every moment. Our hearts can live in heaven, where we behold the face of the Father forever. This is the true Beatific Vision – this is true contemplative prayer – to see Him with the eyes of our hearts and never look away.
So back to the question – how did Jesus pray? Did He climb the mountain to pray aloud all hours of the night? I’m sure He did pray aloud. Did He meditate on Scripture? Of course. The Scripture speaks of Him, so I’m sure He meditated on what was written concerning Himself. But the heart of God has always been to be with us – He walked with Adam in the cool of the day, He knew Enoch and took him home early, He walked with Noah, He called Abraham His friend, He spoke face to face with Moses. So Jesus climbed the mountain to be with the One He loved most – to behold the face of the Father.
And this is contemplative prayer. We need all three realms of prayer – the verbal prayer, the meditative prayer, and the contemplative prayer. But it is in contemplative prayer that we are truly changed. Because the realm of contemplative prayer isn’t a place we enter and then leave. It’s a place where our hearts can abide even when our bodies and minds are doing something else. That’s why Jesus said, “Abide in me.” That’s why the Psalmist wrote in Psalm 91, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” And in Psalm 23: “I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” And in Psalm 27: “The one thing I ask of the Lord – the thing I seek most – is to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.”
How do we dwell in His house forever? By living there in our hearts. By beholding His face and never looking away. By living in love every moment of every day.
This worship teaching is taken from the video course called Cultivating a Heart of Worship.
Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright ©1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.