Written by Skye Jethani, a contemporary author, speaker, and pastor. This is an excerpt from his book “What if Jesus Was Serious about Prayer?”
If God already knows all things, why do we speak to Him in prayer? And if our heavenly Father already knows what we need before we ask Him…then why do we ask Him for anything at all? In other religious traditions with fallible and capricious gods, it makes sense to pray. In superstitious religions, proclaiming the right words, in the right order and at the right time, is how one controls deities or provokes them to act. The God of Scripture, however, is not fallible, ignorant, or manipulated by any human device, and our prayers do not add to His knowledge in any way. Christian prayer, therefore, is not a means of controlling or informing God, because nothing is hidden from His sight and no one possesses more power. Still, He invites us to make ourselves and our requests known to Him in prayer, because He desires to relate to us. Through prayer we participate with God and cooperate as persons rather than mere objects of His knowledge…Our Lord sees our needs and He can meet them without our prayers, but He longs to give us something more. He wants to give us Himself…In prayer we lift our eyes to look upon the face of God and He bestows upon us the unimaginable dignity of looking back.
And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. [Matthew 6:7-8]
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