Why Pray?

Why pray?  Great question!  Someone once asked me, “If God is sovereign and already knows everything, what is the purpose of prayer?  Do we think our praying will change God’s mind?”  I’m sure that question was not original, but it provoked me to some serious thought.

To begin with, the Scriptures are full of encouragement, admonitions and commands to pray.  That alone should be enough to convince us that we need to do it and that it is for a good purpose.  Even Jesus prayed when He walked this earth.  But God in His kind desire to treat us as intelligent beings made in His image has given us many unmistakable clues to answer that basic question.  So, as the Bible often says, “He who has ears to hear, let him hear!”

One clue arises from understanding the nature of God.   In His economy nothing is ever wasted or lost.  Remember how Jesus after feeding the five thousand and also the four thousand told His disciples to gather up all the leftovers.  We can be sure that His desire for us is to use the resources He gives us in the same way.  Would He then instruct us to pray if it were a waste of time and energy?

Another clue is God’s chosen way of building His kingdom.  In His love and wisdom He has ordained that the work of reaching the whole world with the Gospel message would be done through His followers.  He is Himself at work 24 x 7 and invites us to join Him.  Of course, He knows in advance what He will do, and in His timeless, eternal perspective it has already been accomplished.  Yet, His design is to entrust us His followers with a role essential to the process, and this encompasses our prayers.  So, even though God acts sovereignly, He does so considering the prayers He knows we will make.  In that way we are able to enter into the joy of seeing Him respond to our requests as He grows His kingdom on earth.

But as important as these and many other purposes of prayer may be, it seems to me that there is one obvious reason for us to pray, and if we understood it, we should need no further explanation. 

Back in the 1960’s a series of books on prayer by popular author, Rosalind Rinker was published.  One of them, “Prayer – Conversing with God,” was an appeal to the church to break with traditional styles of prayer meetings where the long monologue (often more of a speech) and the laundry list of requests were typical and special prayer language was the norm.  This was the only way I knew to be the “correct” way to pray aloud with others.  Understandably, many people shied away from praying in a public or group setting because they felt unable to “make a prayer” that sounded acceptable.

Rinker’s book began to revolutionize my thinking about prayer.  As I visualized Jesus as a person who was actually present in our prayer group, it seemed silly to use special language and to make speeches to Him.  (I know of nowhere in the Bible where are we taught to pray in such as way.)  Why not simply talk to Him naturally as in any normal conversation?  This carried over into my personal prayer life, as well, where I have been learning to move into a more intimate conversation with Him. 

Just imagine this scenario:  Four (and only four) times a day I speak to my wife, saying at each meal something like this:  “My dear wife, I want to thank thee for the food thou hast fixed for me.  That’s all for now.”  Then at bedtime I say, “My dear wife, I want to thank thee for being with me today and for all thou hast done for me.  That’s all for now.”   As ridiculous as this may sound, it is not too far from the way many of us have treated the One who loves us even more deeply than a spouse ever could and desires an intimate relationship with us.

As I have mentioned before, in my Parallel Journey the suffering that I experienced, nearing the end of my passage through that dark pit, somehow brought me inexplicably closer to Jesus than I had ever been before.  I suppose, in part, it happened as a result of receiving just a glimpse of what He had suffered for me.

My conclusion is this: that for someone who loves us that much we ought to cultivate a meaningful, continuing prayer conversation with Him, realizing that although we do not see Him with our eyes, yet through the eye of faith we do.  If we can converse with friends and family members who are close to us, can we not converse with a Friend who knows us even more intimately, the “Friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Prov. 18:24b)?

No longer do I call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all that I have heard from my Father I have made known to you. – John 15:15