Why Pray?
29th August 2025
May I suggest to you that the most important thing a Christian ever does is pray? It’s remarkable and tragic that we don’t do more of it. We all believe prayer is valuable and yet we all struggle. I don’t often hear sermons on the subject of prayer, but in Matthew 6v5-15 Jesus teaches us about prayer. Next week, I'll start a series of studies of that passage. Before I begin to look at that text, though, I'd first like to make a few observations about prayer.
God doesn’t need us to pray. God is omnipotent - all powerful. So God can do what He likes, whether we pray or not, and yet He responds to our prayers.
Prayer doesn't work; God works. He graciously responds to our prayers. When Christians pray, the lost are saved, the sick are healed, relationships are restored, churches thrive, sometimes revival comes. People, churches and nations are changed when Christians pray. Our prayers don't make these wonderful things happen; God makes them happen. In a way that is rather mysterious, God chooses to include our prayers in the working out of His purposes. From everything I’ve seen and heard and learnt and read in Scripture, God does more stuff when we pray than when we don’t. He just likes to include us, as a father likes to include his children, in what He does.
God doesn't need us to point things out to Him. He knows everything. He's not only omnipotent, He's omniscient - all-knowledgeable, He doesn't think, "Thank goodness Phil prayed that prayer. I'd forgotten about that." God doesn't ever forget.
God doesn’t need our advice. God's perfectly wise, He always knows what is the right response to every situation. It's ridiculous to pray, "Well, if I was you, God, I’d do it this way." As Romans 11v34 asks, "Who has been his counsellor?"
I know that when we pray, because of the constrictions of language, it's almost impossible not to point things out to God, and not to talk to Him about what might be done about it. That’s just the way humans communicate. God doesn’t mind, so long as we remember that He doesn’t need to be informed and He doesn’t need to be advised.
We don't change God's mind when we pray. Occasionally I'm asked the question, "If I pray enough, can I change God's mind?" The answer I've learnt to give to that question is, "Since God's mind is perfect, why do you want to change it?" But God responds to our prayers. It's wonderful.
God loves it when we pray, and He loves to respond when we pray. God is sovereign over the universe, and He works when and how He wants to. Nevertheless, by and large, God works when we pray.
Some might ask, since God doesn't need our advice, and since God doesn't need us to point things out to Him or to advise Him, and since we can't impress Him with our prayers and twist His arm to make Him do what we want, why pray? So if I may, here are a few answers to the question, "Why pray?"
Firstly, in the Bible God tells us to pray.
Secondly, as we've seen, God responds when we pray.
Thirdly, wouldn't it be weird to have a heavenly Father as wonderful as God, and not talk to Him? It's such a privilege that you and I, because we've been born again through faith in Christ's sacrifice, are allowed to talk to God! Why wouldn't we do it?
Fourthly, if in our prayer time we sometimes stop speaking and listen to God, God will speak back. Perhaps He won't use English words that we can hear through our ears, but God will change how we think about a situation, God will give us ideas that didn't come from ourselves, God will teach us and, indeed, God will shape us, as we pray, thoughtfully, honestly and sometimes silently. It's been said by many Christian leaders that the main reason we pray is not that it changes God but that it changes us.
It’s often been said that the prayer meeting is the engine room of the church. Churches that pray, people that pray, draw closer to God, find more of His heart, find more of His purposes, align themselves more closely with what He’s doing, and so blossom. When we try to do things without God, which is what living without prayer really means, we don’t blossom. Again, prayer is the most important thing we do.