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One of the last memories I have of my old church and congregation was a small Bible study.  The topic for this specific class:  Prayer.  What does it do?  Who is it for?  What is the end?

I recently had a similar discussion with a friend while preparing a summer Bible study.  I remembered some things and had to re-learn others, but most of our discussion surrounded the effectiveness of prayer and the contrast between God’s sovereignty and the outcome of prayer.  Here are some things about prayer that I’ve come to realize over the years:

God has no need for our prayers.  He doesn’t need us to tell Him what’s wrong.  We aren’t going to change His mind with them – He can and will do whatever He pleases without them.  He doesn’t feed on prayer like it’s magic spiritual energy.  God is the only self-sufficient, omniscient being, and has no need that could possibly be fulfilled by prayer.  Therefore, since God has no need for prayer, yet He gives us the gift, then we must be the ones in need; we must be the beneficiaries of prayer.

But what does prayer actually do?  What is the purpose?  What are the results?

Here I come to an impasse.  I cannot objectively measure prayer, and don’t fully understand the purpose.  My first instinct was that prayer was the alignment of our hearts with God – that instead of going to God like He’s some sort of genie in a lamp, we come before God in prayer and He molds our hearts to be more like Him – even through our petitions.  James gives a good example of the negative, that we don’t get an answer because we don’t ask, and then sometimes we don’t like the answer because we asked with wrong hearts.  When God does answer our prayers, in the negative or affirmative, it reveals a bit of His character.  In all this we find at least one purpose:  Prayer is a relationship; where God reveals Himself; and where we come to become more like Him.

But then there is the subject of the ordination of prayer in building the Kingdom.  As a friend of mine once stated that God can do whatever He wants, but His purpose can be to have you pray.  It borders on fatalism and a restriction of will.  But think of it this way:  Imagine you prayed for something or interceded for someone and God answered positively.  If you had not prayed, then would God have done it anyway?  He certainly could have, but this way was decidedly better.  In this manner, and perhaps only in hindsight, we can see the growth of the Kingdom through the work God does in our prayers.  He reveals parts of His plan and His will, and we become agents of His salvation.

Which brings up something that could have been said earlier – when you pray, don’t be afraid to be the answer to that prayer.  If you’re praying for someone to come to faith, be ready for God to say, “Sure… you tell him.”  So if you aren’t willing to be an answer and if you aren’t willing to change, I’d almost suggest not praying for that subject at all.  Pray for a better heart.

But still, with all these purposes for prayer, they are incomplete.  One thing I have observed from prayers and answers is that sometimes they are inconsistent.  What God says for one person might not be what God says to another.  If the only purposes are the ones listed above, and God is immutable and unchangeable, then the answers should all follow the same pattern.  They need not be exactly the same, but they should at least follow the same… logic.  And they don’t.  There must, therefore, be another reason God answers prayers the way He does, and it must also cater to our human nature, which is neither immutable nor unchangeable.  I have so far contemplated two such reasons that are very similar to one another.  Simply put, God answers prayers to show His faithfulness to us, and God answers prayers to show His love for us.  When God answers a prayer for seemingly no reason (we can’t figure out how the Kingdom was built, or what it revealed about His character, etc), then it was simply to demonstrate His own perfect faithfulness and love to us.

… I don’t want to write a concluding paragraph.

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