3 Different Kinds of Prayer to Fight Anxiety

Paul uses different terms for the different aspects of conversing with God: prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and requests. The Greek word προσευχῇ that is translated prayer is the most general and the most frequently used term for prayer in the New Testament. Prayer can be both personal and corporate and is a real, genuine conversation with God, marked by reverence and a worshipful attitude, as well as submission and trust. But in order to understand this verse, we must also explore the different facets of prayer.

1. Supplication

Supplication is prayer that expresses our need before God. To be human is to be needy. We are finite and limited. We do not know everything, and we are not all-wise. All of us need the Lord. The only one who exists without need is God. But we need Him desperately! Supplication is the means by which we express our need of Him, and our need of His power, presence, and wisdom.

In the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey becomes desperate when Uncle Billy misplaces a huge sum of the business’s money. George is so worried that he begins to contemplate suicide. He makes his way to a restaurant and takes a seat at the bar. Lines of despair twist his face, his hair is uncombed, and he prays, “Dear Father in heaven, I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God.”

We won’t fully understand how much we owe God until we set foot on the shores of glory.

We come to God, or we are driven to Him, forced to our knees by the burden of life’s circumstances, and in desperation we cry out to Him, expressing our need. This is supplication.

2. Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving means gratitude. Thanksgiving is the grateful acknowledgment that God exists, that He is good, and that He is sovereign. It is the thankful recognition of God for everything He has done, is doing, and will do on our behalf.

Thanksgiving will last forever, carrying on into eternity (Rev. 4:9; 7:12; 11:17). We won’t fully understand how much we owe God until we set foot on the shores of glory. But in the meantime, thankfulness should always accompany prayer and should be our posture in all life circumstances (Col. 3:17; 1 Thess. 5:18). In giving God thanks, we are already moving out of the dark forest of worry and into the meadow of peace.

3. Requests

Requests are specific needs or things we ask God to grant us. Our requests are specific and contextual, arising out of real needs with the expectation of receiving real and definite help from God. When we are in anxiety-inducing circumstances, we should figure out what we need and take those needs to God in prayer.

In the Bible, Daniel and his three friends were in danger of losing their lives. The king had determined to kill off the wise men of Babylon, including Daniel and his three friends. The situation was charged with anxiety. But what did Daniel and his friends do?

Then Daniel went to his house and informed his friends, Hananiah, Mishael and Azariah, about the matter, so that they might request compassion from the God of heaven concerning this mystery, so that Daniel and his friends would not be destroyed with the rest of the wise men of Babylon. (Dan. 2:17–18)

The Lord granted them their request, and the interpretation of the dream was revealed to Daniel. Daniel responds by giving God thanks and praise for granting his specific request: “To You, O God of my fathers, I give thanks and praise, for You have given me wisdom and power; even now You have made known to me what we requested of You, for You have made known to us the king’s matter” (Dan. 2:23).

In the book of 1 Chronicles, we are reminded of this aspect of prayer in the middle of a genealogy list. We are told that Jabez specifically asked God to do several things in his life: “Now Jabez called on the God of Israel, saying, ‘Oh that You would bless me indeed and enlarge my border, and that Your hand might be with me, and that You would keep me from harm that it might not pain me!’” (4:10). The chronicler then adds, “And God granted him what he requested” (4:10c).

In David’s messianic psalm, the Lord says to us as coheirs with Christ: “Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession” (Ps. 2:8). When we lack wisdom in life’s trials, we are told to ask Him for wisdom. He also commands us to ask in faith with the promise that wisdom will be granted to us ( James 1:5–8). Similarly, the Lord Jesus encourages us to ask God for what we need. He says:

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man is there among you who, when his son asks for a loaf, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, he will not give him a snake, will he? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him! (Matt. 7:7–11, emphasis added)

In the above passage, asking is compared to seeking and knocking. At first glance, it seems that the imperatives to “ask,” “seek,” and “knock” are actions that we do once before leaving the matter with the Lord. But all these verbs are present imperatives and therefore convey the idea of continuous action: keep on asking, keep on seeking, and keep on knocking. The continuous action of the verbs grows in intensity and focus.

In a sermon on Luke 11:9–10, the British preacher Charles Spurgeon talked about asking, seeking, and knocking as three levels of depth in prayer:

The Ascending Scale of Prayers

Now observe that these varieties of prayer are put on an ascending scale. It is said first that we ask—I suppose that refers to the prayer which is a mere statement of our needs in which we tell the Lord that we need this and that and ask Him to grant it to us. But as we learn the art of prayer we go on further to seek—which signifies that we marshal our arguments and plead reasons for the granting of our desires—and we begin to wrestle with God for the mercies needed. And if the blessings come not, we then rise to the third degree which is knocking—we become importunate—we are not content with asking and giving reasons, but we throw the whole earnestness of our being into our requests and practice the text which says, “the kingdom of Heaven suffers violence and the violent take it by force.”

The Lord Jesus stresses the need for our persistence, perseverance, and earnestness in asking. In addition, we are told in Matthew 7:7 that those who habitually ask will receive; those who habitually seek will find; and to those who habitually knock, it shall be opened. Our heavenly Father is the request-granting God. God answers prayer.

The Lord Jesus stresses the need for our persistence, perseverance, and earnestness in asking.

It’s important to add that there is a danger of misusing this promise as carte blanche for selfish requests (James 4:3). Jesus is talking about making our requests with God-honoring motives. Perhaps one of the reasons we do not make specific requests in the midst of our anxiety is that we are not expecting our heavenly Father to actually answer prayer. In With Christ in the School of Prayer, Andrew Murray points out one of the symptoms of a deep illness of practical atheism in the church. He writes:

One of the terrible marks of the diseased state of Christian life these days is that there are so many who are content without distinct the experience of answer to prayer. They pray daily, they ask many things, and they trust that some of them will be heard. But they know little of direct definite answer to prayer as the rule of daily life. . . . Prayer is supposed to have an answer.[1] (emphasis added)

Therefore, expecting answers from God in the midst of anxiety, we let our requests be made known to Him when we need wisdom for facing a particular issue. In the various scenarios of our lives, we are to intentionally think through what we want God to provide, and then ask Him—humbly, fervently, expectantly, and persistently.

These are requests. They are specific and arise out of real needs and concerns. God’s children expect their Father to answer. True prayer is not just getting on our knees, uttering pious platitudes, or engaging in therapeutic mystical babbling. Rather, it is expecting God to do something, looking for His answers. By the means of prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, we make our requests known to God.

[1] Andrew Murray, With Christ in the School of Prayer (New Kensington, PA: Whitaker House, 1981), 41–42.