9 Reasons to Pray(part 2)
Why should we pray? God already knows our hearts. He already knows our desires. So why pray? We could easily say it is because the Bible commands it. Paul goes as far as to say, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thess. 5:17)—that is reason enough. But let’s explore a few other reasons for why we should pray.
Previously we considered: (1) We pray because we love; (2) We pray out of gratitude; and (3) We pray because we want to know God more fully.
4. We pray to know our own hearts more fully:
I think of Habakkuk’s words, “The Lord is in his holy temple; let all the earth keep silent before him” (Habakkuk 2:20). There is a real benefit in coming before the Lord in silence. It is true that we get to know Him more fully in prayer, but we also get to know ourselves more fully. How often we pray and are convicted by some sin that we didn’t know was present before. We hear it uttered from our lips or find our minds entangled by it as we approach Him in prayer. Like Peter on the rooftop, we are made aware that what we have believed or practiced or dreamed or sought is unholy. Prayer lays open our hearts not only before God, but before ourselves. God already knows what is in them, we often do not.
5. We pray to be conformed to His Image:
Some have said that prayer’s purpose is not so that we might change God, but so that God might change us. And there is much truth in this. Calvin said, we pray in Jesus’ name so “that there may enter our hearts no desire and no wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make him a witness, while we learn to set all our desires before his eyes, and even to pour out our whole hearts.” In prayer our hearts are shaped and moulded, our affections are stirred, and our minds are transformed. The prayer closet is the academy of righteousness. One may enter as a truant and emerge a cadet.
6. We pray to acknowledge our dependence upon Him:
We are not independent beings. As Paul preached at the Areopagus, “In him we live and move and have our being.” We are and can be nothing apart from Him. Prayer recognizes that. Ursinus once commented that, “Prayer is as necessary for us as it is necessary for a beggar to ask alms.” A beggar is by definition one who asks for alms. We are people, human beings, created in His image; by very definition we are dependent and are to pray.
– by Jason Helopoulos (to be continued)