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The Primary Purpose of
Prayer
By Dedrick
Minor
"But when you pray,
go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is
unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will
reward you. 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 6:6-8 NIV).
Just in passing, notice how structured the Lord's Prayer is. Throughout
the New Testament and especially in the Pauline epistles we see
that prayer is a learned discipline. No one, no matter how anointed
he or she may be, is born knowing how to pray properly. I recently
read "Theology of Hope" in which Jurgen Moltmann says, "We have
no other means of knowing God except that He reveals Himself to
us ourselves by acting upon us." After pondering that thought, I
have come to the realization that there is really no way we can
know God unless God takes the initiative of revealing Himself to
us. In essence, the day God stops talking, we are doomed. The writer
of this Proverb understood that concept very well because he wrote,
"Where there is no revelation, the people cast off restraint" (Prov.
29:18 NIV).
Scientists have declared that out of all the knowledge there is
to be attained, only three percent is known by man. That means 97
percent of all there is to be known remains to be discovered. I
would argue, believing that God is infinite and man is finite, that
man knows considerably less than three percent. Nevertheless, this
fact is interesting given the peculiar connection Christians have
with an omniscient God. In other words, even though we do not know
everything, we know the One who does.
I want to pay particular attention to this peculiar connection we
have with God. Undoubtedly, this connection is only attained through
prayer. The way we can know things that only God knows is through
prayer. Furthermore, prayer is our communication with God. In prayer
we have the opportunity to speak to God and, most importantly, He
has the "opportunity" to speak to us. Perhaps, to put it another
way, in prayer we create an opportunity for us to listen.
God knows what we need before we ask Him. The primary purpose of
prayer, then, cannot be to inform God of anything. He knows all
things. Perhaps the primary purpose of prayer is for God to inform
us of things that concern us.
Do not misunderstand me. God instructs us to ask Him for things,
but we should not spend our whole time in prayer babbling on and
on to God about our problems. Sometimes we should just wait in His
presence expecting Him to speak.
Classes, money and the future are just some of the things we as
students worry about. It is essential that we hear the voice of
God regarding these issues. Spending quality time in prayer is a
part of the Christian life that we cannot afford to neglect.
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