The question is sometimes framed like this: “If God already knows what will happen, if he has a plan and he is in charge, then why pray at all? Whatever will be, will be.” This expresses the age-old tension between divine sovereignty and human responsibility. Thinking about this for too long makes my brain tired.
Tired, or just plain lazy? Is my sinful self just looking for an excuse not to pray? In a startling confession, C.S. Lewis admitted, “Well, let’s now at least come clean. Prayer is irksome. An excuse to omit it is never unwelcome. When it is over, this casts a feeling of relief and holiday over the rest of the day. We are reluctant to begin. We are delighted to finish. While we are at prayer, but not while reading a novel or solving a crossword puzzle, any trifle is enough to distract us” (Letters to Malcomb: Chiefly on Prayer).
He wrote these words while contemplating human selfishness and spiritual weakness. He said, “The truth is, I haven’t any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life.” This brazen acknowledgment of his sinfulness seemed shocking until I came around to admitting my own sinful inadequacy in prayer.
The stark truth is that prayer is a battleground and the enemy doesn’t readily yield territory to us mortals. This gets me back to my opening question: why pray? One reason is, in the words of Timothy Keller, prayer is “rebellion against the world’s status quo. Indeed, it is listed as a weapon in spiritual warfare against the forces of darkness (Ephesians 6:12).” We live in a world that is organized against the will of God. Prayer, then, brings our orientation back where it belongs: to God himself.
We pray because of who God is. Prayer forces our minds, and yes, even the posture of our bodies, to come before our Creator in praise, humble confession, thanks and asking for what we need. E.P. Clowney put it this way, “The Bible does not present an art of prayer, it presents the God of prayer.” The more we see and know God for who he is, the more prayer will follow. Our understanding of God shapes our praying.
Then there is the way prayer changes us. Prayer positions us as persons who act as those who are known by and have value to God. Lewis wrote, “The passive changes to active. Instead of merely being known, we show, we tell, we offer ourselves to view. To thus put ourselves on a personal footing with God … we assume the high rank of persons before him.” And by the agency of the Holy Spirit, we are permitted to call God “Abba, Father,” in the most intimate way.
Such awareness, of God, of ourselves, of the world, of the powers of evil and of the nature of prayer itself, all prompt us to pray, and to pray boldly. Jesus illustrated this in a parable. He asked his hearers to imagine a man banging on the door of his neighbor at midnight. He has unexpected guests and no food to offer them.
The neighbor tells him to stop bothering him or he’ll wake up the whole household. He tells him to go away. Then Jesus asks, “Is that really how the neighbor is going to react?” His implied answer is no.
Because the man at the door is bold and persistent, he will indeed get up and give him the bread that he asked for, as much as he needs (Luke 11:5-10). Jesus says this illustrates how we should pray with “shameless audacity.” It is not that God is reluctant to hear and to help. It is that he values the kind of bold desperation described in the story. That is a lesson for me when my prayers are tentative and my faith is weak.
“Ask,” Jesus said. Asking implies a need and a recognition of God’s willingness to meet the need. Ask with audacious persistence. Ask, expecting an answer.
“Seek,” Jesus went on to say. Seek the Father’s will above all else, as Jesus taught us to pray. “Your will be done on earth” is a way of praying as the Lord Jesus prayed. Seeking also means pursuing the will of God in everything else we do.
“Knock,” implies persistence. It is not wrong to keep knocking on the door of heaven. In the language of the New Testament, the present tense of these three verbs implies continuous asking, seeking and knocking. The first verse of Luke 18 says, “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”
Why pray? If we pray for no other reason, the fact that Jesus said it is normal behavior for his followers, makes it a priority. We may not understand fully how our praying fits into the accomplishment of the sovereign will of God. But the fact that he commands us to pray says that it does. Reason enough.
