It was a strange sight - a blind boy flying a kite with his father's help. A friend of the family watching dared to ask him a question: 'What do you get out of this when you can't see the kite?' The answer was simple enough, the boy replied: 'I can't see it, but I can feel the pull.'
Christians might make a similar reply to the questions, 'Why pray to a God you can't see? Why put so much effort into an exercise so unquantifiable?' The answer might be: 'I can't see what is happening, but I can feel the pull.' It's true, I know, that often in the matter of a steady, faithful, disciplined prayer-life we think more in terms of 'push' than 'pull'! And so the question suggests itself: 'Why pray?'
God's command
The first and sufficient reason why we should pray is because God commands it.
God would not tell us to do a meaningless act. He puts meaning into life, not futility. He would not tell us to do something which would waste our time and make a mockery of faith and obedience. If God tells us to pray then prayer has its value and point from him. His promise is its rationale and his power is its potential.
God repeatedly encourages us to pray, to honour his dominion, to seek his face, to discover his will and to enlist his help. He has made us for himself and prayer is an essential expression of that. We were made to pray. In prayer we assert the uniqueness of our humanity which is made to relate to God. We became a fallen race, and futility entered our world(1) but prayer, believing prayer, prayer in response to the call of God, is a step away from futility towards fulfilment. Prayer always brings me a little closer to God, whether I feel it so or not. If my prayer isn't answered, I am. Even if I do not feel anything has been achieved, God does.
Jesus says not 'If you pray' but 'When you pray'(2), and later, with characteristic understanding that 'the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak', tells his followers a parable 'to show them that they should always pray and not give up'.(3) Above all else in prayer they were to 'keep on asking . . . seeking . . . knocking'(4) the present continuous sense is repeatedly used for the Holy Spirit whose presence and power would characterise life in the kingdom of God.
God's glory
Second, we should pray because God is glorified in it.
Nothing glorifies God quite like prayer. No one shares the glory with him in this. Prayer begins as it ends, recognising that his is 'the kingdom, the power and the glory'. Prayer gives God the glory of all his attributes or characteristics. It gives him the glory of his omniscience (the word means all-knowing, all-seeing) in addressing him. It gives him the glory of his omnipotence (all-powerfulness) and his goodness in seeking his help. It gives him the glory of his holiness in making confession, of his wisdom is seeking guidance and of his mercy, grace and love in praise and thanksgiving. Nothing substitutes for prayer, it has its own unique part to play in honouring God.
Intercession for others
Third, we should pray because people need our prayers.
'More things are wrought by prayer
Than this world dreams of. Wherefore let thy voice
Rise like a fountain for me night and day
For what are men better than sheep or goats
That nourish a blind life within the brain,
If knowing God they lift not hand of prayer
Both for themselves and those who call them friend?
For so the whole round earth is every way
Bound by gold chains about the feet of God.'
Tennyson
Prayer is an activity of care, a sign of love when we take it upon ourselves to pray regularly for someone. It involves us in their life as a partner and friend. The self-contained life knows little of love, but love opens us up to share other people's burdens and minister to others' needs; to become vulnerable, yes, but also to become an open channel for God through which he can pour his grace into needy lives.(5)
It is a striking fact that the apostle Paul who know Christ's presence in his ministry with much unction and power, notwithstanding, pleads again and again for the prayers of his young churches: 'Pray also for me, that whenever I open my mouth, words may be given so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. Pray that I may declare it fearlessly, as I should.'(6)
If Paul needed prayer from people like ourselves in those early churches, surely there are others that we know in ministry at home or abroad, sometimes in the hard places of the earth, with few securities and even fewer comforts, who need the defence of our prayers,(7) the assistance of our prayers(8) and quite simply the love of our prayers.(9)
Our awareness and dependence
The fourth reason we should pray is because we change as we pray.
As we pray, we become more aware of God as central to everything, the key to everything and concerned about everything. This perception changes our attitude and approach in subtle ways. We become more dependent upon God, realising our weakness, our inadequacy and the danger of our own unchecked wisdom and wilfulness.(10) As we struggle with these things, we become more conformed to God: to his nature, his will and his ways. Richard Foster, in his Celebration of Discipline writes: 'To pray is to change us. Prayer is the central avenue God uses to transform us.'
We may often struggle to pray, to submit to its disciplines, to respond to its calls; we may consequently feel we are no better after than before, no nearer our goals or God's. But that is just not true. The promises given to prayer were not given to extraordinary practitioners but to very ordinary believers. Prayer changes things and the first thing it changes is us! Though we do not see it, we grow as we pray.
Coincidences?
Fifth, we should pray because things change as we pray.
Archbishop William Temple used to say: 'People tell me that answers to prayer are merely coincidences. I can only reply that when I pray coincidences happen and when I stop praying they stop happening.'
One of the most dramatic answers to prayer was given to a church I know in Dunstable, Bedfordshire. A series of brutal attacks and rapes were carried out in the area by a criminal who became known as 'The Fox' in the popular press because of his skill in evading the police. Eventually this local church held special meetings for the capture of the criminal; they prayed specifically, forcefully, persistently. Soon after 'The Fox ' was captured and a picture appeared in the papers of the criminal handcuffed between two policemen. Both policemen were members of the same praying church. Was that God's comment on 'coincidence'?
Greatest work of all
The greatest demonstration of the importance of prayer is the prayer-life of Christ.
If he needed to pray, do not we? And he did need to pray, for though he was the Son, yet on earth he was the Son of God in weakness and utter dependence for direction and power (John 5.19,30). So he prays: at his baptism (Luke 3.21,22); before choosing the Twelve (Luke 6.12,13); before the transfiguration (Luke 9.28,29); before Peter's fall (Luke 22.31,32); before his passion (Luke 22. 41,44). Even now in the glory of heaven and at the right hand of God he is still the praying Christ: 'he always lives to intercede for them' (Heb. 7.25).
Is Jesus praying? Then we should pray. Are Jesus' prayers effective? So can ours be through him (John 16.24). Is Jesus praying for us? Then we ought to pray for others. We are called to join him in the greatest work that will ever be done in this world: the growth of the kingdom of God. Therefore, let us pray.
Notes
1. Ecclesiastes 1.2
2. Matthew 6.5-7,9
3. Luke 18.1
4. Luke 11.9
5. Galatians 6.2, Ephesians 6.19-20
6. Ephesians 6.19,20
7. Romans 15.31
8. Colossians 4.3
9. 1 Thessalonians 5.25,26
10. Proverbs 3.5,6
This article is expanded from Peter's book on The Lord's Prayer, published by Hodder Headline, and is used by permission of the author, the pastor of Cornerstone Church, Nottingham.
