We complicate things we enjoy. The longer we do a thing, the more sophisticated we get with it — and somewhere along the way, we can lose the fundamentals that got us started.

Take fishing. I love it, but it’s not just a rod, a reel, and a hook. Oh, no. You can chase all the sophistication you want — different reels, lines, lures, or flies for different fish and different waters. Mastering the gear, the techniques, and it can be easy to lose sight of basics.

My wife knits, and the same thing happens with her. The longer she knits, the more she discovers new techniques, patterns, or tools. But every so often, she likes to come back to basics. Musicians know this: the better they master fundamentals — the scales of their instrument — means getting better at everything built on top of them.

I think we do the same thing with our Bible study. We go deeper (and that’s good) but we can lose sight of foundations along the way. And when we share what we’ve learned with people who don’t have that same depth, they often can’t easily follow us. It’s good to come back to fundamentals and remember where we begin.

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Prayer works this way. We can make it more complicated that it needs to be. At its core, we communicate with God the Father, who is approachable and wants us to come to Him. He invites us to call upon Him — because He is not some distant, cold-hearted, angry figure like the wizard in Oz. No. No. Our Heavenly Father is good and glad-hearted, and He longs to hear from His children when they come to Him in prayer. He tells us, plainly, to call upon Him.

Psalm 50:15 says it directly: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me.” Psalm 91:15 promises the same: “When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.” And Psalm 145:18: “The Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth.” This is a call we make, a crying out to Him, because He invites us to do it.

The original Biblical word means: to call out to; cry out; invite. Think of it like dialing a phone — reaching out to a Father who actually picks up, hears, and responds.

We see this cry throughout Scripture, in people who called out to God in moments of need. Take Bartimaeus, the blind man along the road to Jericho. As Jesus passed by, he cried out, “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” He would not be silenced, because he knew that if anyone could help him, it was Jesus. He called, and Jesus stopped and answered him.

Consider Hagar, alone in the wilderness in Genesis 21, weeping over her dying son. Scripture tells us that God heard the voice of the boy, and the angel of the Lord called to her from heaven. She cried out in her desperation, and He heard.

Or Stephen, in Acts 7, being stoned to death for his faith. In his final moments, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Even facing death, his instinct was to call upon the Lord.

Bartimaeus, Hagar, Stephen — each called out in their moment of deepest need, and in each case, God heard and answered.

The principle holds throughout Scripture. In the Psalms, we call and He answers. Bartimaeus called, and Jesus stopped for him. Hagar called, and God heard her. Stephen called, and Christ received him. So we call. We cry out aloud. We make our voice heard before the throne of grace — as a whisper, as a groan, as a shout, as a lament. However we bring it, we call to our Heavenly Father, and He hears us.

Remember: At its most basic, we call on God because He invites us to. The core of prayer is making a call to God — from our heart, through our lips, to His ear.

Call to Me, and I will answer and show you great and unsearchable things you do not know.

Jeremiah 33:3

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