Greater Purpose in Prayer

July 27, 2021

But Jesus often withdrew to the wilderness for prayer. Luke 5:16 NLT

Why do we pray? What’s the purpose? I struggled with prayer for years. Perhaps I think about things that the average person doesn’t think about. Or maybe, just maybe, you have thought about these things but didn’t think they were questions a sincere Jesus-follower would ask. I thought (and was taught by many awesome people) that prayer is primarily the way we move the heart of God to do things He wouldn’t otherwise have done. I even attended conferences on learning to pray that taught me that. That idea presented several problems for me.

For instance, was I wise enough to tell God what to do as if He wouldn’t have already done it on His own if it was the right thing? I prayed many prayers that I eventually was relieved God didn’t answer in the way I asked. And then, if it were true that if I loved God, lived right, and prayed diligently that God would answer the prayer of faith and give me a miracle, why was it that equally “deserving” people could pray the same prayer in the same kind of situation and NOT get a miracle? Why would a God of love let innocent people suffer and only relieve them if I pray? Didn’t God create the world in such a way that some things are just the natural way of life? There IS cause and effect. We do reap what we sow AND what others sow. Placebos have dramatic effects in patients a high percentage of the time. The idea that they are being helped actually helps them even though it’s just a sugar pill. Is it possible that prayer is often the same way? Does God actually want to decide and take credit for who won the Super Bowl or the Olympic gold?

Are my questions blasphemous? I think not. Actually, asking these kinds of questions and disrupting the normal thought as my lever with God to shift situations, I allowed myself to ask why Jesus prayed. Perhaps there I would find the true purpose of prayer. Jesus chose to limit the choices He made as God when He put on flesh to become human, but He never discarded His godhood. He didn’t need to pray and ask the Father to do miracles because He Himself could do them. He didn’t need to pray and ask the Father to help Him grow or provide for His needs. He didn’t need the Father to do most of the things for which we use prayer. So why did He over and over again slip away to pray? Because He wanted to be close to the Father’s heart and nourish the relationship. His times with the Father were not to “move the world” or change a situation. His prayers were all about getting and staying close to His Father.

Oswald Chambers said, “When a person is born again from above, the life of the Son of God is born in him, and he can either starve or nourish that life. Prayer is the way that the life of God in us is nourished. Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God Himself.” It’s not that prayer changes THINGS; it’s that prayer changes ME, and then God uses me to change things in tune with His heart because now things that matter to me are the things that matter to Him.

• Prayer, an ongoing conversation with God, is my path to knowing Him deeply and fulfilling His purpose in me. That’s what prayer is for. It’s our greater purpose.