What Does the Bible Tell Us about Prayer?

As I pored over the Scriptures, searching for what God has to say about prayer, several things became immediately clear:

• We are called to pray with a clean heart: “If I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear. But certainly God has heard me; He has attended to the voice of my prayer” (Psalm 66:18–19 NKJV).
• We are called to pray, believing: “And whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive” (Matthew 21:22 NKJV).
• We are called to pray in Christ’s name: “And whatever you ask in My name, that I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son” (John 14:13 NKJV).
• We are called to pray according to the Father’s will: “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us” (1 John 5:14 NKJV).

On second thought, even with these “clear” instructions I still had questions. So I took a closer look at these four directives.

A Clean Heart

According to Psalm 66:18, our purity of heart is so essential that if we “regard iniquity in [our] heart, the Lord will not hear” (NKJV). And in Psalm 51:10, David urges God to give him “a clean heart” (NKJV).

What exactly is a “clean heart”? How clean, exactly? Scrubbed-spotless-till-you-can-see-your-reflection clean? Or quick-tidy-up-before-the-guests-arrive clean?

As women, our hormones lead us on a lively dance for most of our lives. So what do we do on those “days of the month” when we don’t feel very holy or sometimes even sane? Does God hear our prayers when our emotions are taking us on a roller coaster ride? What if we want to have a clean heart, but we’re having trouble with it? What if we believe we have a clean heart, but there is some little seed of unforgiveness buried deep inside us we’ve forgotten all about? Are we only responsible for the sins we remember or for every little offense we’ve committed over our entire lifetime?

I received a letter from a woman who had been sexually abused by her father when she was a child. Her concern was that there were months of this devastating time in her childhood she had blocked out. She simply couldn’t remember what had happened. “How can I come to God with a clean heart when I can’t remember so much of that horrible time? Will God hold that against me?” she asked.

My heart ached for this woman who had already suffered so much and was now tormented by the thought that the offenses acted out upon her would hinder her prayers and follow her for the rest of her life. I wanted to tell her that part of the miracle of prayer is that God knows what we need before we even ask him. When it is our earnest desire to be clean, he sees that—whether we can remember every detail of our lives or not. Yes, he wants us to come before him with a pure heart but he also tells us that he hears our honest petitions. Notice what verse 19 of Psalm 66 says:  “Certainly God has heard me.”