By Karen Patrick
Prayer as a First Response
We open our devices each day and see one tragedy after another marching its way through our news feeds. Even those who don’t consume digital content can’t help but notice the brokenness of the world around them. We face daily decisions regarding how we will respond to this brokenness. Will we become online social justice warriors and reflexively share the latest ten-second viral clip? Will we put boots on the ground and physically serve those in need? Or perhaps we’ll lobby for change in the halls of government. If we come from the biblical worldview, our first response needs to be prayer.
It’s this last response that has been mocked in recent days. Those who don’t see through the lens of a biblical worldview may protest, “All you Christians want to do is pray! Why don’t you do something that makes a real difference?” This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of prayer from the biblical worldview. What statements like this fail to consider is that Christian prayer in response to tragedy, as a source of comfort, or even as a daily discipline, does make a real difference in the lives of real people relating to their real God. And prayer is often only the first response, but certainly not the last, as Christians are conformed into the image of Christ through conversation with their Father in heaven.
A Tale of Two (or Three) Worldviews
Before we discuss prayer, it’s essential to understand some basic differences between the predominant secular worldview and the biblical worldview. Let’s start with secularism. Natasha Crain paints a clear picture of how secularism practically works itself out in her book Faithfully Different. She sums it up in the following four statements: “Feelings are the ultimate guide, happiness is the ultimate goal, judging is the ultimate sin, and God is the ultimate guess.”1 The common link among all these statements is that they rely on a personal, ever-changing, and subjective compass.
The biblical worldview, as defined by researcher George Barna, is “a means of experiencing, interpreting, and responding to reality in light of biblical perspectives. This view provides a personal understanding of every idea, opportunity, and experience based on the identification and application of relevant biblical principles so that each choice we make may be consistent with God’s principles and commands.”2 So in contrast to the above summary statements of the secular worldview, we could state the biblical worldview as follows: the Bible is the ultimate guide, knowing God is the ultimate goal, any sin is ultimately against the Creator, and the objectively verifiable answer to every question is rooted in him. The common link among all these statements is that they rely on an external, eternal, and objective compass.
One additional worldview is worth considering. According to Barna’s research, syncretism is currently the dominant worldview in the United States. It represents 92% of adults and is “a worldview that combines core beliefs and behaviors from a variety of well-defined worldviews, such as Marxism, Secular Humanism, Eastern Mysticism, and Postmodernism, into an individualized, customized blend.”3 Even many professing Christians have adopted a syncretistic worldview and have simply selected “buffet style” from a variety of other worldviews that, upon examination, conflict with the biblical worldview in many areas, including prayer.
These worldviews—secular, biblical, and syncretic—are at odds on two basic points: where they center authority and the purpose of life. Ultimately, prayer is an expression of what it means to be human. It is the recognition that we are created beings who answer to our Creator and rely on him to assign meaning to our lives. Carl Trueman puts it this way, “Human beings are created by God with a given set of dependencies and obligations, limits, and ends. We are rational, dependent, limited, and teleological beings.”4 When we understand this critical difference, we see why the practice of Christian prayer is so confusing to those who have not placed their faith in Christ. Experiencing something from the inside is much different than looking at it from the outside.
Looking Along Lewis’s Beam
In his essay, “Meditation in a Toolshed,” C.S. Lewis helps us understand the difference between an outside perspective and an inside perspective. He describes stepping into a dark toolshed and noticing a sunbeam shining in from a crack at the top of the door. At first, all he notices is the sunbeam with specks of dust floating in it. A moment later he steps into the beam and follows it to its source. When he does, he notices the beauty of the leaves illuminated by the sun outside the shed. He contrasts two different ways of looking at something—looking at or looking along.
About religious experiences, Lewis says that, “It has been assumed without discussion that if you want the true account of religion you must go, not to religious people, but to anthropologists. . . It has even come to be taken for granted that the external account of a thing somehow refutes or ‘debunks’ the account given from inside.”5 As we will soon see, prayer involves a personal experience—from the inside—with our God who desires relationship with us. It’s impossible to completely understand that experience looking from the outside in. Let’s move now to a definition of prayer.
Defining Prayer
One definition of prayer from the biblical worldview is found in The Westminster Shorter Catechism. This summary of basic biblical doctrine describes prayer as “an offering up of our desires unto God, for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ, with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgment of his mercies.”6 This definition flips on its head the way those outside the Christian faith think about prayer. Remember that from the secular worldview, authority is centered in the self, and if this is the case, then why would we care to submit our wills to God, confess our sins, or thank him for anything? It’s all a matter of what we want and not what God wills, requires, or provides for us; however, Jesus himself provided a model prayer during his time on earth that reflects God-centered priorities (Matthew 6:9–13 and Luke 11:2–4) rather than man-centered desires.
Created for Relationship
Because Christianity is relational at its core, we believe in a personal God who desires to be intimately involved in our lives. He created us for relationship primarily with him and secondarily with others. Christian apologist Francis Schaeffer says it this way: “The reason why we can speak to God is that He exists, He is personal, and we are made in His image. Since we are made in His image, it shouldn’t be surprising that we can be in communication with Him, even though He is infinite and we are finite. When our guilt is removed through the finished work of Christ, communication with God is to be expected.”7
The Christian must pray to truly know God in the same way we would converse with another person to truly know them. Since we are made in God’s image, we also pray to know ourselves better. According to Timothy Keller, “Prayer is the only entryway into genuine self-knowledge. It is also the main way we experience deep change—the reordering of our loves. . . the way we finally treat God as God. Prayer is simply the key to everything we need to do and be in life.”8
Responding to God
The innate desire for even those who don’t believe in God to reach out to a “higher power” points to his existence. Keller explains that “many who are otherwise skeptical or nonreligious are shocked to find themselves praying despite not even formally believing in God. . . There is something in us from God that knows we are not alone in the universe, and that we were not meant to go it alone. Prayer is a natural human instinct.”9
Not only is prayer a human instinct, but God intentionally reveals himself in the natural world. Romans 1:19–20 says, “For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.” God has taken the initiative in what some have called the “book of nature” to reach out to humans. Even without the Bible, anyone can see things about God that prompt a response.
Closing Thoughts
Prayer is not merely a way to persuade God to fulfill our desires or meet our needs in the way we think best. Prayer is one vital way we are shaped into the kind of image bearers who carry out our Creator’s plans in his world. Warren Wiersbe writes, “The important thing about prayer is not simply getting an answer, but being the kind of person whom God can trust with an answer.”10 A Christian is obligated first to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and then to love their neighbors as themselves (Mark 12:30–31). Prayer is the starting point for a life lived first for God and then for the benefit of a desperately broken world that needs him.
Notes
- Natasha Crain, Faithfully Different: Regaining Biblical Clarity in a Secular Culture (Harvest House Publishers, 2022), 52.
- George Barna, American Worldview Inventory 2023–25: The Annual Report on the State of Worldview in the United States (Arizona Christian University Press, 2025), 146.
- Barna, 30.
- Carl Trueman, Desecration of Man: How the Rejection of God Degrades Our Humanity (Penguin Random House, 2026), 12.
- C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (HarperCollins Publishers, 2014), 213, Kindle.
- “Shorter Catechism: Texts and Scripture Proofs,” The Westminster Standard, accessed April 27, 2026, https://thewestminsterstandard.org/westminster-shorter-catechism/.
- Francis Schaeffer, The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer: A Christian Worldview Vol. 4 (Crossway Books, 1982), 295–296.
- Timothy Keller, Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God (Penguin Books, 2016), 18.
- Keller, 29.
- Warren Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary Vol. 1 (Victor Books, 1996), 26.