Why Do We Pray?

It’s been about twenty years since I first heard a familiar but misguided objection: If God is completely sovereign, then what is the point of prayer?

Or, to put it in the language of the London Baptist Confession: if God has already “decreed in himself, from all eternity, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely and unchangeably, all things whatsoever comes to pass,” then why ask him to do anything at all?

I remember an old friend once being shocked by John Calvin’s claim that God ordained prayer “not so much for his own sake as for ours.” In other words, prayer is not meant to change God, but to change us. As Daniel Brendsel puts it,

Prayer is not our strategy to effect a change in God but activity-in-speech to which God summons us. He doesn’t call us to pray because he is strapped for any other way to deliver the goods to us, as it were. And he doesn’t ordain prayer (I speak in human terms) for his own benefit. (Answering Speech, 115)

Prayer is for our sake.

Take, for example, the petition, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6:11). Many of us pray this daily — but is it actually required that we pray this in order to eat? Couldn’t we simply rely on the comforts and abundance of American life?

Brendsel quotes theologian Matthew Boulton to help us see what’s really going on:

We make this request not to inform God of our hunger, or to rouse God into action, but rather the better to experience — in and through the reception, touch, taste, enjoyment, and sustenance of whatever bread may subsequently come our way — the tangible reality of God’s providential love for us. We ask for bread, then, not only so that we might receive it, but also and principally so that when we receive it, we might actually experience it as it is: a divine gift to us, and even more, an answer to our prayers. (Life in God, 168)

Brendsel explains that God intends for prayer to help us experience all of reality as it truly is, a divine gift. Every waking second, every breath, every provision comes from God’s hand. And we are to receive it as from him. The more we pray, the more we understand that, and the more we begin to see his answers all around us. 

From this vantage, seeing rightly, it is true that God answers a tremendous amount of our prayers, far more than he doesn’t. And that should inspire us to keep praying, to pray without ceasing even (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Prayer magnifies his glory. It gives us more of him close and clear. 

Prayer really is for our sake, to the glory of God.