5700 Rudnick Ave. Woodland Hills, CA 91367 (818) 346-6968 Home > Resources > Prayer Resources > It's Natural To Pray PRAYER RESOURCES   IT IS NATURAL TO PRAY You may or may not have had a meal today. But before the day is past you will have eaten something, probably three meals, and maybe a snack between. Eating is natural and necessary.   If you haven’t eaten today, chances are you have had a cup of coffee or tea, or a glass of water or milk. Drinking is natural and necessary.   Like eating and drinking, prayer is not something foreign to our human nature. Prayer is perhaps the deepest impulse of the human soul.   Samuel Johnson was asked what was the strongest argument for prayer. He replied, “There is no argument for prayer.” He did not mean that prayer is irrational or that there are not convincing arguments for the practice of it, but that prayer is natural and universal. We all pray, and we pray because it is part of our native endowment.   Prayer is related to our search for meaning, our longing for relationship, our need to grow. Prayer, however practiced, is an expression of our hunger for God.   This hunger is part of who we are. Augustine’s word is more than pious cliché’: “For thee were we made, O God, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee.” Again and again the psalmist reminds us of the naturalness and universality of our hunger for God.   (Psalm 63:1): O God, you are my God, I seek you, my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there I no water.   In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus recognizes this natural hungering after God. More than that, he claims this hungering we be satisfied. (Matt. 5:6) “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled”