Ask the Lord for rain in the spring of the year. It is the Lord who sends rain clouds and showers, making the fields green for everyone. – Zechariah 10:1 GNT

I love the invitation to come and pray and to ask. The call to pray and ask for blessing makes a difference. It touches the real life of my soul. Why do I feel that prayer is the least important or the least glorifying to God? When I come to Him in prayer and asking, I am giving Him glory.

When I pray asking, I am acknowledging that God is the authour of all good things and that I depend on Him for everything in my life. By praying I am acknowledging that I can do nothing of my own and so I come, humbly, asking for God’s grace and mercy. In fact, when I approach God, sometimes the first words out of my mouth, when I pray, is ‘God be merciful to me, a sinner.’

The atheistic philosopher of the present day laughs at such a verse as this, and sneeringly asks, “ What possible connection can there be between men and women praying to God and the showers of rain which fall upon the earth?” “Why!” saith he, “according to the laws of nature, showers fall at such-and-such seasons; and if the atmosphere should not happen to be in such-and-such a state, all the praying in the world cannot produce a single drop of rain.” But faith can clearly see where reason is blind; and the prayer of faith moves the arm of God, and the arm of God controls what the philosopher calls the laws of nature, and so the rain descends. Let us learn, from this precept and promise, the power of believing prayer. Prayer hath the key of nature as well as the key of heaven hanging at her girds. Observe also that, when we have received one mercy from the Lord, we are to go on to pray for another. These people must have had “the former rain”, yet they were to ask for “the latter rain” also; and if you, dear friends, have had “the former rain” of conversion, go on to ask the Lord for “the latter rain” of sanctification. If, in our church-fellowship, we have had “the former rain” of gracious additions to our numbers, we must ask for “the latter rain” by praying that God would continue thus to bless us. When we cease to pray for blessings, God has already ceased to bless us, but when our souls pour out floods of prayer, God is certain temporary floods of mercy. – Spurgeon

So I ask for blessing when I pray for God promises to send it as an answer to such a prayer. I pray passionately and often because I know the blessing of God.

To pray then in the name of Christ is to pray on the ground, not of my credit, but His; to renounce the thought that I have any claims on God whatever, and approach Him on the ground of God’s claims. Praying in the name of Christ is not merely adding the phrase “I ask these things in Jesus’ name” to my prayer. I may put that phrase in my prayer and really be resting in my own merit all the time. But when I really do approach God, not on the ground of my merit, but on the ground of Christ’s merit, not on the ground of my goodness, but on the ground of the atoning blood (Heb. 10:19), God will hear me. Very much of our modern prayer is vain because men approach God imagining that they have some claim upon God whereby He is under obligations to answer their prayers. – R. A. Torrey