There are two types of prayer in the Baháʼí Faith: obligatory prayer and general or devotional prayer. Both types of prayer are composed of reverent words which are addressed to God, and the act of prayer is one of the most important Baháʼí laws for individual discipline. The purpose of prayer in the Baháʼí Faith is to grow closer to God and his Manifestation and to help better one's own conduct and to request divine assistance.

The Baháʼí conception of God is of an "unknowable essence" who is the source of all existence and known through the perception of human virtues. The Baháʼí Faith follows the tradition of monotheism and dispensationalism, believing that God has no physical form, but periodically provides divine messengers in human form that are the sources of spiritual education. In another sense, Baháʼí teachings on God are also panentheistic, seeing signs of God in all things, but the reality of God being exalted and above the physical world.