Good question. And there’s a really good answer!
Charles Spurgeon explains:
‘The act of prayer teaches us our unworthiness, which is a very salutary lesson for such proud human beings as we are. If God gave us favours without constraining us to pray for them, we should never know how poor we are, but a true prayer is an inventory of wants, a catalogue of necessities, a revelation of hidden poverty. While it is an application to divine wealth, it is a confession of human emptiness.
The most healthy state of a Christian is to be always empty in self and constantly depend upon the Lord for supplies, to be always poor in self and rich in Jesus.
Prayer is in itself, apart from the answer that it brings, a great benefit to the Christian. As the runner gains strength for the race by daily exercise, so for the great race of life, we acquire energy by the hallowed labour of prayer. An earnest pleader comes out of his closet, even as the sun rises from the chambers of the east, rejoicing like a strong man to run his race.
Prayer girds human weakness with divine strength, turns human folly into heavenly wisdom, and gives troubled mortals the peace of God. We know not what prayer cannot do!
We thank You, great God, for the mercy seat, a choice proof of Your marvellous loving-kindness. Help us to use it in the right manner throughout this day!’
Yes God does want to hear from His people in feast or famine, in need or not. But is the #1reason to pray to get things from God? Is it not to acknowledge and show our dependence on the sovereignty of God, the love of God, the grace and mercy of God, the faithfulness of God? Jesus sums up the #1 purpose of God in “Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven”.
To pray that God will DO something FOR us is not a bad thing, but surely it is when in so praying we forget our dependence on a Sovereign God and to incorporate that prayer within the over-riding prayer that God’s will be done. The real reason we’ve been commanded to pray is to remind us Who is really in control of everything, and to know that His will is good!