When it comes to our Christian walk, four foundational matters must be in place: 

• The person of Christ as our cornerstone, 
• The pages of Scripture (the Bible),
• The people of God (that is, the church), and
• Lastly but not leastly, prayer.  

James and Joel Beeke rightly define prayer as:

Prayer is the act of forging a connection between two specific points: our human needs and the resources of God offered us in Christ.  You can start at either point, and reach to the other in prayer. 

Another said that prayer should be like breathing. As breathing is the response of physical life to the presence of air, so prayer should be the response of spiritual life to the presence of God.  

Sadly, many in the Western Church (by that, I mean, those in Europe, the US, and in Canada) where so many advances and conveniences come in abundance, prayer comes all too infrequently. There’s a story of a brother of a seminary student who came to visit him one day.  Unsure of directions, he turned to the first person who passed by and asked, “Is this Davidson Hall?” On hearing the man described later, the seminary student asked his brother if he had realized that he had been talking to a world-famous theologian. The brother couldn’t believe it. He had the opportunity to ask *any* question—and he asked only where a building was.

Isn’t that how we pray? We talk to God for matters that are really small and insignificant.

As we go through 1 and 2 Timothy to look at rebooting our church and our lives, Paul is getting to the brass tacks of what a church should look like. In order for a church to reboot, then, churches need to reconnect with their designer.  Jesus is the Designer of this machine. He told His disciples, “I will build my church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.” Jesus’ life and teaching was filled with prayer. Yes, the Son of God, God the Son, devoted much of his personal time to prayer. If Jesus did, then what about us?