“We have been instructed by faith to recognize that whatever we need and whatever we lack is in God, and in our Lord Jesus Christ, in whom the Father has willed all the fullness of his bounty to abide so that we may all draw from it as from an overflowing spring. It remains for us to seek in him, and in prayers to ask of him, what we have learned to be in him. Otherwise, to know God as the master and bestower of all good things, who invites us to request them of him, and still not go to him and not ask of him—this would be of as little profit as for a man to neglect a treasure, buried and hidden in the earth, after it had been pointed out to him...It is therefore, by the benefit of prayer that we reach those riches which are laid up for us with the Heavenly Father. For there is a communion of men with God by which, having entered the heavenly sanctuary, they appeal to him in person concerning his promises in order to experience, if necessity so demands, that what they believed was not vain, although he had promised it in word alone. Therefore we see that to us nothing is promised to be expected from the Lord which we are not also bidden to ask of him in prayers. We dig up by prayer the treasures that were pointed out by the Lord’s gospel, and which our faith has gazed upon.”
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion (1559 A.D.)
