Why Pray? by Eric Snider

Some people believe that God never changes (“immutable”), that God knows everything (“omniscient”) even details about future events, and that nothing happens without God knowing in advance (“foreknowledge”) and in some way controlling (“sovereignty”) what happens.  For someone who believes that, you should be surprised if they offer petitionary prayers, prayers in which they are making requests of God. If God is immutable and has accurate foreknowledge, no prayer can change God to will something other than what God had willed in advance. And if God is sovereign and omniscient, God doesn’t need our prayer to determine and control what happens. So how do you account for Matthew 7.7-8: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened”?

One possible answer: it is not that the prayer will change God; it will change you. By asking, we acknowledge that we are needy, dependent. Ultimately we are needy of and dependent on God. By seeking we acknowledge that there are great goods beyond our imagination and beyond our means to obtain. There are things to seek that are beyond this world, goods compared to which the goods of this world are like a child’s mud pies. By knocking we acknowledge what is in our power to do: to persist, to stay connected and in communication with God, to be at God’s door so we can hear and listen to him.

Just this week I read a newspaper cartoon in which a young boy asked his grandfather if he said his bedtime prayers.  The grandfather responded yes, and that he believed there are two reasons to pray: to ask for something, or to say thanks for getting it.  The young boy said “how about just to say ‘hi’?”