Why bother to pray?

Its one of those questions which usually comes up within a Christian community rather than with those on the outside. As we learn more about God’s omniscience, His capacity to know everything, from the Scriptures at some point each Christian will spend a moment wondering why we bother to pray. If a loving God knows everything, so the question will go, then He really doesn’t need us to pray as He knows what we need and desire before we do. This came up last night, at my Bible study group, as we looked through Psalm 12 together. Psalm 12 begins with:

Help, LORD, for the godly are no more;

the faithful have vanished from among men.

A cry for help, a prayer really for God to act, as King David looks around Him to find nothing but ungodly people. No surprise really that on looking at his neighbours, particularly if at this point King David is in Israel supposedly the country of the people of God, that on finding they are all wicked David should ask God for help. However, further on down in verse 5 we get this:

“Because of the oppression of the weak

and the groaning of the needy,

I will now arise,” says the LORD.

“I will protect them from those who malign them.”

Here we find God saying that He has seen what is going on, the weak oppressed, the needy being ignored, and He will act. The question then which arose last night then was ‘why if God sees what is happening does He not act before we even pray’? I thought this was a good question given that God sees deeper than we can ever see. If we see sin no doubt God sees that sin as darker and more repulsive than we do, and if we have finally been led to pray about a situation we can be sure that God has been aware of it for far longer. So why the need to pray?

The answer lies in the type of God who rules the universe, the character of the God of David and of you and me. At His heart, God is a God of relationships, something which His very nature as a trinity makes clear. Even before anything was created God was in a relationship, a relationship between the three persons of the Trinity of complete love and acceptance. In creating the universe, this Triune God creates merely to share this loving relationship with other beings who can appreciate and freely choose to opt in and take such a relationship seriously. God then is looking to engage in meaningful relationships with those He has made in His image, rather than command robots who will follow His every will. God wants to be part of our lives by invitation, He wants us to want to include Him, to rely on Him, to speak to Him and to worship Him. Not because He needs such a relationship, after all he had a more perfect relationship before in Himself, but because we do!

Here then is why we are called to pray, why God waits to answer rather than jumping in and why He works with us to solve the problems which we’ve prayed about rather than magically making it all right. Through the process of praying our relationship with God is strengthened, our trust in Him is deepened and in the end such a trusting relationship with the all-powerful maker of the Universe is the one thing which will see us through any adversity even our own death!

I would love your comments on how you have come closer to God through prayer!