Why pray?

Read Luke 18:1

One day Jesus told his disciples a story to show that they should always pray and never give up. (NLT)

There are times when we pray fervently for a certain outcome and we are confronted with a rather different and even undesired outcome. There are times when we fail to pray or perhaps pray half-heartedly for a certain thing and that thing becomes wonderfully evident. It makes us wonder if prayer actually achieves anything. Does it matter whether I pray or not given that prayer doesn’t seem to alter outcomes? Don’t things just happen anyway?

Here we face one of the common misunderstandings of prayer. That it is mainly about getting something from God. Certainly God is able to give us just what we ask for and more,but we know there are times when our prayers don’t work out that way. Prayer is fundamentally about sharing our hearts with God not about presenting a shopping list of requests to him.

And as for things happening irrespective of prayer,this is undeniable. Prayer is not the means by which I manage or manipulate circumstances. It is the means by which I surrender all circumstances to God. I share my heart’s desires with him and leave him to deal with them as he so wishes.

Ultimately I pray because Jesus says I am to go on doing so. If I prayed mainly in order to get what I want I would have given it all up long ago. I would conclude it doesn’t have a good success rate. I pray because it is in my spiritual DNA,because it sustains relationship,because God says to do so. And that is enough.

Blessings
David Reay