Why pray? What’s the point? After all, God knows everything already, and He will do what He will do.
This is a question beloved of philosophers of religion, who like to ask such questions for a living. But I suspect that there are very few Christians who haven’t at some point wondered about this question. Why not just pray “Thy will be done”, and then be done with it? After all, even Jesus says that “your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8).
The Large Catechism has a simple, three-fold answer to this question. We should pray because, first, it’s God’s command; second, because He has promised to hear us; and, third, because of our own need.
That is, we pray out of pure obedience; but not only out of obedience, but also because we trust His promise, and because without God’s help, we have no hope.
In this three-fold explanation, which seems so childishly simple, lies a profound truth about the nature and purpose of prayer.
It is indeed true that we are offering God no fresh news when we pour out our lives before Him. Nor is He in the business of playing hard to get, only attending to our needs if we ask nicely enough, or long enough. We need not and cannot manipulate God. He is, in the brief but powerful words of the Creed, Father Almighty. He is almighty, needing neither advice nor assistance. But He is also our Father, which makes us His children. And it is in God’s Fatherhood that we find the key to understanding prayer.
God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ (Ephesians 1:3) from eternity. But by our union with Christ in Holy Baptism, we have been adopted as sons and co-heirs with Christ (Galatians 3:25–4:7), so that we can now confidently call ourselves children of God (1 John 3:1).
What this means, in short, is that we now know that “for those who love God all things work together for good” (Romans 8:28). God is the giver of good gifts (James 1:17) to his children. Everything about our lives is a gift of the Father, both His tender mercies and His fatherly discipline.
Thus we can be sure beyond all doubt that when God gives us a command, He does it for our good, just as much as when He makes us a promise. “All things work together for good.”
And so we learn that we pray not for God’s benefit, but for our own, and for the benefit of our neighbours. But that benefit does not consist primarily in the things that we have on our mind, even though the Catechism teaches us that we must name the needs that spur us to prayer. We have to wait till the fourth petition before we get to talk about ourselves and the needs of which we are conscious!
First, we must learn to pray to God about Him: His name, His kingdom, His will. These are the greatest needs that we have: that we hallow His name by our faith and our life; that His kingdom come to us in this time of grace so that when it comes in glory it may be for our redemption rather than for our condemnation; and that in all things, the devil, the world and our flesh be thwarted in their attempt to derail our salvation.
When we pray thus—truly, whenever we pray—we are exercising our faith in God. By turning to Him, we are made mindful that He is our Father and we are His children. By turning to Him, we are made mindful that it is from Him that we should expect all good things. By turning to Him, we learn to put everything in the right perspective: that we can only expect good things from God on account of Jesus, but also that on account of Jesus we can expect only good things from God.
A recurring feature in the prophecies of the Old Testament is God’s anger at Israel for turning to other things than Him in their time of need, when He was their God. Their failure to pray was an indication that they had no faith in Him as “Israel’s helper”. Can you imagine the dismay of parents who find that their children have come to grief because they failed to ask for help from the parents, trying in vain to solve their problems as if they had no parents. It’s upsetting not only because of the trouble caused, but because it shows that the children had no confidence in father and mother. The ultimate tragedy is not the situation but the relationship revealed by that situation.
This is the reason God commands us to pray, and tenderly invites us to pray: that we remain mindful of our relationship with Him, continue to draw from it for our spiritual and bodily needs, and for the needs of the world.
To that end, Jesus has us pray about the presence and work of God first. Thus He draws our attention to His name—that is, His revelation of His character and work in His word—reminding us that whenever we open our mouths in prayer, we are merely responding to Him who spoke to us first. Likewise, He draws our attention to the coming of His kingdom—His righteous and merciful rule and the destruction of all unrighteousness and wickedness—that we remember our citizenship in heaven. And in having us pray for God’s will to be done, He puts us in mind of God’s wise and loving purposes, which are only fulfilled when we are finally securely drawn out of this world of temptation to the eternal rest of God’s children beyond sin and death.
So why do we pray? What is the point? “Much in every way,” as the apostle might say. Like a muscle, faith grows and develops through exercise; and the chief exercise of faith is prayer. By having us ask of Him, God has us turn towards Him in confident expectation that He will be true to His word. And He has us turn towards Him as our Father, so that all our prayers are predicated neither on our worthiness nor on the skill and power of our words, but rather on the perfect work of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has made us children of God. Thus, we are helped, our neighbours are served, and God is glorified.
What a gift! What a Giver!
Rev. Tapani Simojoki serves in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of England as pastor of Our Saviour Lutheran Church in Fareham, Hampshire. A native of Finland, he also spent part of his youth as a missionary kid in Kenya. He and his wife Sarah have four children in their teens and twenties.