Why Pray At All?

Listen, I'm not trying to get you on the defensive about prayer by asking the question "why pray at all". I'm not trying to insult your intelligence or accuse anybody of anything. Maybe here's a better question. If someone were to look at your daily walk with the Lord, would it be crystal clear to them that prayer is important to you? There have been times in my life when someone looking in might have wondered if prayer was even on my radar.

According to The Pew Research Center, about 44% of American adults pray every day. That number drops to 27% for teens age 13 to 17. The good news is that number is much higher, about 55%, for teens who profess to be Christians. So, maybe half of you as believers are convinced that prayer is important. That could be because that half has seen God answer prayers, or because they've grown up in a culture where prayer was important, or some other motivation.

Regardless, that's only half. Makes you wonder what is the other half doing? Or if you're in that other half, maybe you wonder what am I doing! Or not doing. And why?

The main reason we should pray is that Scripture commands us to pray.

• Matthew 6:9-13 - This is what we affectionately call "The Lord's Prayer". It's more of a "how-to" rather than a "why". But if you look at the components of prayer that Jesus covers, you can see that prayer is an important discipline Jesus wants to make sure the disciples know. It's clearly not optional.
• Luke 18:1 - Jesus tells his disciples they ought to pray, then shares the parable of the persistent widow. The parable paints the picture of a widow who continuously pesters an unfair judge until the judge grants her the justice she is looking for. Jesus contrasts the bad judge with the good Heavenly Father. If the selfish judge answers a persistent person, how much more would a loving Heavenly Father answer persistent requests.
• Ephesians 6:18-19 - These verses appear at the conclusion of Paul listing the components of the whole armor of God. Paul says to pray at all times in the Spirit with all prayer and supplication or petition. And he asks specifically for prayer for his critical ministry of spreading the Gospel to a lost world. If Paul needed it to spread the Good News, it's not something we could consider optional.
• 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 - Verse 17 is the commonly quoted "pray without ceasing". As a former pastor of mine used to say, when you see "always" in Scripture, it means "always". We will consider what praying without ceasing looks like in part 2 of this devotional challenge. So, not just praying, but praying continuously doesn't sound like it's optional.
• 1 Timothy 2:1 - Paul talks about praying for those in charge. Then characterizes it as good and pleasing to God. Good and pleasing to God, so not an option.

CHALLENGE: How do you really feel about the importance of prayer? What do you believe about prayer? Do your actions regarding prayer back up what you believe or what Scripture says about prayer?

Prayer Takes It Next Level

In our rapid fire culture where we have gotten accustomed to being able to get an answer to a question in a matter of nano-seconds, it makes the idea of prayer seem outdated. And if you've ever prayed for something big and gotten an answer of "no", or something you prayed for never happened, or that person you prayed for to be healed wasn't, it can be easy to just write prayer off as something that is at best unpredictable in the results.

There are people who say, God is going to do what He's going to do anyway. So, why do I have to pray?

What if prayer isn't entirely about results for things we already see and know. Prayer can also build your relationship with your Heavenly Father? David beautifully expresses this idea of intimacy with God in Psalm 116:1-2:

There are two things that were at the very center of King David's heart and being:  1) God's Word and 2) having an intimate, loving relationship with Him.

Jeremiah 33:3 is one of my favorite Bible verses. This is Jeremiah quoting the Lord's request: "Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know."

"Call to me" is just another way to saying "pray to me". Prayer produces answers that cannot be gotten any other way. Answers about things we didn't even know we had questions about. Answers that go beyond what we already know and see. We can look around us and find people and situations to pray for. There's enough that we already know and see to contribute to a long prayer. But here, we see that we can pray to God without even knowing what we are praying for. It brings a level of knowledge and wisdom that cannot be obtained any other way. God says that he will tell us "great" things. The Hebrew word used there ia "gadol" which means:

• Large in magnitude and extent
• Of a high level of intensity
• Of significant importance
• Distinguishable from common things
• Important things about God Himself

If you think about the things you face in life, challenges, struggles, uncertainty, fear. How amazing would it be if in the face of all those things, the Lord would have significant things to share with you that would help you stand up and would strengthen you in your daily walk? Yes, that would be amazing. And the Lord Himself here is saying that those things are available to those who call on Him.

The other word that's used to describe what God tells those who have an intimate relationship with Him is "unsearchable". This Hebrew word is "basar". It literally is used to describe something that is otherwise cut off from being accessible. The picture is a closed off, secret, fortified and inaccessible place. I think of it as you're looking at a building. You know there are probably amazing, incredible things inside this building, but you have no idea what they are. Furthermore, you can't gain access to the building to see what's inside. Someone would have to let you in. And what if they let you in and you still didn't know what you were looking at. But someone was there to enlighten you. That is God. And that house contains the "unsearchable" things of God.

In the business world, I've often heard business owners says something like, "we don't know what we don't know". You have to really think about that statement for a while for it to sink in. Best I can dicipher it: There are things about running this business that we don't know. But we don't even know what those things are. There are things that God can share with us. And those things aren't just about subjects or areas we're already aware of. He has things to share about things we had no clue were even things!

In John 15:15, Jesus speaks of the intimate relationship he has built with his disciples, saying that everything He has learned from the Father he has passed onto the disciples.

CHALLENGE: How do you think a more disciplined prayer life might bring you closer to your Heavenly Father? How would it impact the struggles, challenges, uncertainties and fears you face? How would the idea of coming to know "unsearchable" things impact how you live and serve in God's Kingdom? How much do you think God knows that you don't yet know?

Appropriating Power

Now there's a big word--well at least it's a big word for me: appropriating. It is often used to talk about money. You may have heard of congressional appropriations committees. They decide how tax money gets set aside for certain purposes or projects, and they give permission for those funds to be used that way. So, what does appropriation look like when it comes to your Spiritual life? If the concept is taking something and setting it aside for a specific purpose, then if we think about all the things that God offers us from his infinite attributes and characteristics, you can think of appropriating as asking God to set aside something that belongs to Him for a specific purpose that will help you.

One of the things prayer can do is to appropriate God's power into your life. Acts 4:31 talks about what happened as a result of the believers gathering together to pray. The place they were meeting was shaken, and one of the greatest moments in the history of Christianity happened as they were filled with the Holy Spirit. Prayer appropriates the movement of the Holy Spirit, and the movement of the Holy Spirit brings God's power.

Paul told the Ephesians (Ephesians 3:16) that his purpose in praying for them was so that they may be strengthened by God's power through the Holy Spirit. Then to the Colossians, Paul told them to devote themselves to prayer and specifically to pray for him. Why? He wrote this from jail, and only God's power could make it possible for him to be able to continue sharing the Good News of Jesus. How could God's power intervene in Paul's situation? As a result of the prayers of those people. (Colossians 4:2-4).

People who are trapped in addiction often speak of the "power" their particular "drug" of choice has over them. Whether it's narcotics, alcohol, pornography, nicotine, gambling, doom scrolling, perfect grades, lying, cutting. I could go on. Could even be something like work or shopping. Whatever the "drug" of choice is, there is a powerful, sometimes insurmountable, draw or attraction that simply can't be overcome by trying harder, behaving better, having more willpower. It requires something bigger.

Did you know that viritually every type of addition counseling or detox strategy or rehabilitation program involves yielding to a higher power? In the context of what we are trying to do here through these devotional challenges, that higher power is the One, True, Living God who created this universe and who created you. And who has an unlimited supply of power that is able to overcome even the most powerful of earthly or evil forces you may encounter in life? It's God. And how do we unleash this power? We do it through prayer.

Now, you may not be addicted to anything, but you will, if you haven't already, run up against things that you feel powerless to conquer or overcome. They aren't always huge, life-altering things. But they are significant enough that you're having a hard time seeing your way through them, around them, or over them. What you need is not to just try harder or suck it up or get over it. What you need is the power of God, leveraged for your life and your walk and your struggle. That power is unleashed through prayer.

CHALLENGE: Go back through that list of addictions. If you were being totally honest with yourself, is there something in that list that you have a difficult time controlling? How would you feel about opening up to someone about that? Who would that person be? What would it take to have that conversation? If there's nothing on that list, is there something else where you need some help in working through or overcoming something? Who could you talk to? In either case, would you be willing to commit it to the Lord, and to ask for His power to be unleashed on your behalf?

Prayer Changes Us

If you've only thought of prayer in the past as a way of asking God for things, or as something you do only when things get really bad, this is an opportunity for you to see that a major component of prayer is what is does to us personally. Prayer changes us. If you pray, build that intimate relationship with God, take struggles and challenges to Him, start thinking about and praying about those around you who are having struggles and challenges or who need to come to know Jesus as their Savior. When you do that consistently, you will see that all of that starts to change you, to change your heart.

A while back, I found a white board while I was cleaning out some stuff in my basement. I decided I would hang it on the wall next to my breakfast table so I could write my grocery list on it. You know, as soon as I realize I'm out of ketchup, I could write that on the board, then take a look at the board before I went to the grocery store. Then I found the "AnyList" app, which allows me to make a grocery list on my phone. So, the white board hung clean and white for a long time. From time to time, I get ministry updates from missionaries that I support. They always have prayer requested in them, but once I've read the newsletter, sadly, I often forget to pray those prayer requests. So one day I thought, "why don't I just print the ministry updates and hang them up somewhere so I'll remember to pray?" Boom! White board. I started posting ministry updates there, then I started writing other prayer requests up there as they came to me. And the names of people in my life as God brought them to mind. And specific prayer requests for people who are struggling. And now my white board is completely full of meaningful, specific things to intentionally pray for. I think there must be close to 75 names up there. And every morning, I go through that white board and pray for everyone on it by name.

I don't share that to say, "hey, look at me." I share it to say that the white board has transformed my prayer life. Looking back, I'm wondering how seriously I even took praying for other people. I mean I would say a few thank you's and some make some asks of God and a throw in a couple of "oh yeah, I was supposed to pray for so-and-so". Now I've changed to a full-on petition for God to move in a bunch of other people's lives. And not only has my prayer time changed, but my heart for other people has changed too. That one, fairly simple change in my prayer life has changed the way I see and interact with people. It has made me want to seek out how I can be praying for someone--not just as a response to a request for prayer, but actually proactively and intentionally asking, "how can I pray for you?"

It has also changed the joy and peace I have in my life, because now I am seeing God working in ways I never saw it before (translation: "unsearchable"). Prayers are being heard and they are being answered. And as people share what's going on in their lives, I'm very often able to trace it back to praying for God's intervention in their life or situation. That's no credit to me, it's a credit to the power of prayer to not only get God involved, but to change me and change my heart for God and for the Kingdom.

CHALLENGE: Very often we can make minor adjustments in our Spiritual life that pay major dividends. What's something about your prayer life that you would like to see change? When you pray? How you pray? How often you pray? The focus of your prayer? In our next devotional challenge, I'll offer up some suggestions on areas where we could improve our prayer discipline. Get an idea of what needs improvement between now and then.