Why Pray?
"Rejoice
always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks;
for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you."
(1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NKJV)
Someone from
Australia recently asked the
following question: “Why do we have to pray? God is the
Lord of the universe and He will do what He chooses so,
how can our prayers really make any difference?” That is
an excellent question and so I thought that others may
also be interested in the answer.
The question is
asked from the perspective of someone who understands
that God is sovereign, meaning that He is not subject to
us and that He does whatever He wills. Not everyone
understands this and many feel they can manipulate God
into doing what they want. We cannot make, force
or manipulate God in any way. No amount of our praying,
fasting, pleading or threatening can make Him do what is
not in His sovereign will. Look for instance at David "David
therefore pleaded with God for the child, and David
fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground. So
the elders of his house arose and went to him, to raise
him up from the ground. But he would not, nor did he eat
food with them. Then on the seventh day it came to pass
that the child died" (2 Samuel 12:16-18). David was
King of Israel, a man after God’s own heart and yet
seven days of the most intense prayer could not change
God’s mind. There are many other examples like this. God
is not in our control, no matter how much faith
preachers tell you that God has to obey certain rules,
and so if we do certain things, God has to respond. God
“has to” and “must” do nothing if it is not His will to
do so.
Why then do we
have so many commands to pray? Both the testaments are
filled with instructions and examples of people praying.
Jesus prayed as did His disciples. Also Paul and every
other godly man prayed often and much. To make it even
more confusing, Jesus teaches about the need for
persistent prayer! (Matthew 7 & Luke 11) The answer to
this apparent paradox lies in a better understanding of
the purpose of prayer. Tradition has brainwashed us to
believe that the purpose of prayer is to get God to
answer our prayers. That sounds quite good until I
rephrase it to reflect what we really mean by getting
“God to answer out prayers”. What we really mean is we
pray in order to get God to do what we want. However
that is not the purpose of prayer. There are many other
dimensions of prayer like fellowship, communion,
worship, thanksgiving etc that are equally important but
we will not discuss today. Today we are concentrating on
that aspect that has to do with receiving things from
God or God doing things for us. These are what the
learned people call supplication and intercession.
If we cannot
make God do anything then why do we pray then? Here’s
the key; we do not pray to get God to line up with
our wants and needs – we pray so we may line up with
God’s desire and His will! If we can grasp that, it
will change not only our attitude to prayer but the way
we pray. Let’s look at the model prayer that Jesus left
us in Matthew 6 to see how this works.
You will notice
that Jesus taught us to ask for a few things like
forgiveness, our daily bread and deliverance from evil.
These things are decidedly in His will for all His
children. He wants to forgive, feed and deliver those
that are His, so we can ask for those things with
confidence because what we want and what He wants are
exactly the same. So the first thing we need to know is
what His will is. This is clearly revealed in His word
and so we know He wants to save the lost, keep His own,
make us like His Son etc. For example to ask for the
salvation of someone is good and right. By doing that we
are joining with Him in His redemptive ministry. The
problem is we cannot pray passively, thinking all we
have to do is ask and the rest is up to Him. We have to
pray, watching for His direction as He may very well
want to use us in the process of leading that person to
Him.
Also if we pray
for our daily cake, He will probably not answer as His
express will is to provide us with bread, not cake.
There is nothing wrong with placing our wants before Him
and sometimes He may even give us the extras, but He is
under no obligation to give us what we want.
The first
things Jesus teaches us to ask for is: "Your kingdom
come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
" (Matthew 6:10). Notice that it is His will that needs
to be done on earth. Not like we pray; “let our
will be done in heaven”. No, it is His will that
matters and the prayer is not a general one, it is very
specific as in “may I do your will on earth with the
same diligence and perfect obedience as the angels do
Your will in heaven” This places a very different
perspective on prayer. How much do we pray for Him to do
our will and how often do we pray for Him to just help
us be obedient to His will? Matthew 6 is not an isolated
scripture. We can see how Jesus applies this in His own
life in Gethsemane. He
tells the father what He, personally, would like but
emphasizes “not My will, but Yours, be done.”
(Luke 22:42). Paul prayed three times for the thorn to
be removed but was satisfied with the reply which
basically said “My will is not to remove the thorn, but
to give you grace”
So why should
we pray? Firstly, the more we pray, the better we
understand the will of God. "Teach me Your way, O
Lord; I will walk in Your truth; Unite my heart to fear
Your name." (Psalm 86:11). Secondly we should pray
for grace to do His will. Paul says "(pray) for me,
that utterance may be given to me, that I may open my
mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel,"
(Ephesians 6:19) Finally we pray in order to remind
ourselves that we need Him and are not sufficient in and
of ourselves. If God just did what He was going to do
without our prayers we could very easily become
self-sufficient, so he waits for us to ask Him to do
what was in His will to begin with.
"Now this is
the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask
anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we
know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we
have the petitions that we have asked of Him." (1
John 5:14-15)
Anton
Bosch
antonbosch@sbcglobal.net
www.abcd.co.za/offi
www.abcd.co.za/plumbline
Tel 818 846 5520
Fax 818 846 4357
3310 West
Magnolia Blvd
Burbank, California
91505-2907
USA