Excerpted from The Reality of Prayer, by E.M. Bounds, chapter "Prayer - A Privilege, Princely, Sacred"

What is God's will about prayer? First of all, it is God's will that we pray. "Jesus Christ spake a parable unto them to this end, that all men ought always to pray, and not to faint."
    Paul writes to young Timothy about the first things which God's people are to do, and first among the first he puts prayer: "I exhort therefore that, first of all, supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men" (I Tim 2: 1 KJV).
    Note how frequently prayer is brought forward in the New Testament: "Continuing instant in prayer"; "Pray without ceasing"; "Continue in prayer, and watch in the same with thanksgiving"; "Be ye sober and watch unto prayer"; Christ's clarion call was "watch and pray". What are all these and others, if it is not the will of God that men should pray?
    But how do I know that I am praying the will of God? Every true attempt to pray is in response to the will of God. Bungling it may be and untutored by human teachers, but it acceptable to God, because it is in obedience to his will. If I will give myself up to the inspiration of the Spirit of God, who commands me to pray, the details and the petitions of that praying will fall into harmony with the will of him who wills that I should pray.
    Prayer is no little thing, no selfish and small matter. It does not concern the petty interests of one person. The littlest prayer broadens out by the will of God till it touches all words, conserves all interests, and enhances man's greatest wealth, and God's greatest good. God is so concerned that we pray that he has promised to answer prayer. He has not promised to do something general if we pray, but he has promised to do the very thing for which we have prayed.
    Non-praying is lawlessness, discord, anarchy. Prayer, in the moral government of God, is as strong and far-reaching as the law of gravitation in the material world, and it is as necessary as gravitation to hold things in their proper sphere and in life.
    One of the great purposes of God in his holy book is to impress on us indelibly the great importance, the priceless value, and the absolute necessity of asking God for the things which we need for time and eternity. He urges us by every consideration, and presses and warns us by every interest. He points us to his own son, turned over to us for our good, as his pledge that prayer will be answered, teaching us that God is our Father, able to do all things for us and to give all things to us, much more than earthly parents are able or willing to do for their children.
    Let us thoroughly understand ourselves and understand, also, this great business of pray. Our one great business is prayer and we will never do it well unless we fasten it by all binding force. We will never do it well without arranging the best conditions of doing it well. Satan has suffered so much by good praying that all his wily, shrewd, and ensnaring devices will be used to cripple its performance.
    Prayer is a privilege, a sacred, princely privilege. Prayer is a duty, an obligation most binding, and most imperative, which should hold us to it. Prayer is the appointed condition of getting God's aid. This aid is as manifold and illimitable as God's ability, and as varied and exhaustless is this aid as man's need. Prayer is the channel through which all good flows from God to man, and all good from men to men. God is the Christian's father. Asking and giving are in that relation.
    Prayer is not a picture to handle, to admire, to look at. It is not beauty, colouring, shape, attitude, imagination or genius. These things do not pertain to its character or conduct. It is not poetry nor music. Its inspiration and melody come from heaven. Prayer belongs to the spirit, and at times it possesses the spirit and stirs the spirit with high and holy purposes and resolves.