📚 Prayer Is Spiritual Connection

A reflection on Pastor Choi Sang-hoon’s Prayer Never Disappears

[This essay won first prize at the 10th World Korean Christian Media Association Faith Book Review Competition. Hallelujah!]

This past summer, my father encouraged our whole family to enter the 10th Faith Book Review Competition. From the seven recommended titles, I chose the one whose name alone arrested me: Prayer Never Disappears by Pastor Choi Sang-hoon. What exactly does that mean—prayer that doesn’t disappear?

The moment I opened the book, I had my answer. The prologue contained what I can only describe as the clearest definition of prayer I have ever encountered. Pastor Choi draws a sharp contrast between Christian prayer and the prayers of other religions. A Muslim or Buddhist practitioner might spend years, hours each day, petitioning for something they want. Christian prayer is categorically different: it is not a technique for getting things, not a vehicle for blessing-seeking. It is spiritual connection—a deepening intimacy with our Father in heaven. First Corinthians 6:17 came to mind: “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” The testimonies woven through this book—from Africa, Alaska, and across the world—along with the picture of Pastor Choi and his wife simply sitting in God’s presence, treasuring the encounter itself above any outcome, brought that definition to life.

Before I read this book, I had been quietly developing a conviction: human beings are fundamentally wired for connection.

When I read a book, something happens beyond the transfer of information. I’m reaching toward the mind of the person who wrote it—trying to feel the texture of their thought, to encounter them. The same with film and even video games. The pleasure isn’t purely in the mechanics; it’s in sensing the creator on the other side of the experience.

Why do I love Nintendo games? I’ve thought about this. It isn’t simply that they’re fun. It’s that I can feel the designers’ meticulous care in every detail—the way they anticipated how I would feel, what would make me laugh, what would surprise me. Playing WarioWare or Rhythm Heaven is, in a strange way, a conversation. I’m connecting with the people who made it.

Apple products give me the same sensation. When hardware and software integrate seamlessly—when the whole experience coheres around a single philosophy—I’m not just using a device. I’m encountering the people who designed it. There’s a kind of communion in good design.

All of this, I think, reflects something deep about how we were made. We don’t merely consume products or experiences. We reach through them toward their makers. We are incurably relational creatures, hungry for connection.

Which brings me to the most staggering implication of all.

“For every house is built by someone, but He who built all things is God.”

Hebrews 3:4 (NKJV)

If I feel connection with a Nintendo designer through a game, or with an Apple engineer through a beautifully crafted piece of hardware—what must it mean to connect with the One who designed everything? The early Christian scientists felt exactly this. As they mapped the cosmos, they were overwhelmed by the intelligence embedded in creation, and they wrote hymns of praise (doxology) about it. The universe itself was a communication from God. A message to be read.

Prayer, then, is not a religious duty. It is the most natural thing in the world—the creature responding to the Creator who has been communicating all along. Opening our hearts to God in prayer, partnering with Him, receiving and obeying what He speaks: this is the apex of connection. As Pastor Choi writes, the deepening relationship itself is the reward of prayer.

The central thesis of Prayer Never Disappears can be summarised in Pastor Choi’s own words: “God has poured out the prayers I accumulated from childhood—at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right place, as grace.” He demonstrates this through his own life: the prayers of his youth bearing fruit decades later in his ministry. The principle is real and verifiable.

One section particularly struck me on the subject of tong-seong prayer—Korean-style audible communal prayer, voices raised together before God. I had experienced the power of it firsthand and made a habit of seeking it out wherever I could. But I had never been able to articulate why it mattered so much. Pastor Choi gave me the language: “The voice must first be opened—so that earnestness can be poured out—before contemplative prayer can reach its true depth.” That’s exactly it. And he also draws a crucial distinction: genuine tong-seong prayer is not “a strained and solemn shouting born of human resolve.” It is “a crying out filled with joy, faith, and conviction”—fuelled by the Spirit, not by willpower.

Another image from the book stayed with me: we file documents in filing cabinets and throw rubbish in the bin, but our prayers are placed on the golden altar before God. He holds them. He doesn’t lose them. That image gave me a renewed resolve to pray more—and to pray with less anxiety about whether anything is “happening.”

At the start of this year, by God’s grace, I began leading early morning prayer. Three mornings a week—Monday, Wednesday, Friday—at 6 a.m., I gather with 8–10 believers here in the UK: church members and missionaries. We sing hymns, meditate on the M’Cheyne Bible reading plan, and pray tong-seong together for national and church revival. It is one of the richest hours of my week.

Reading this book deepened my understanding of what I’m actually doing in those hours. I’m not performing a religious exercise. I’m connecting—to the Father who built all things, who hears everything, and who holds every prayer like gold.

Like the title says: prayer never disappears. I intend to keep praying until Jesus comes back.