Ah, the prayer. It’s the tool that we use to speak to something bigger and greater than ourselves. Prayer is used by many different religions to speak to their version of God, including the God of the Trinity (God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit), Allah, Adonai, Brahma, and Ahura Mazda just to name a few. Prayer is also used to speak to holy saints or the universe, and in some cases, people pray just hoping that it reaches someone or something out there. But no matter to whom prayer is addressed, it is used by people all around the world in many different fashions. So why do we do it? Why do we pray?

Personally, my attitude towards prayer has often been up and down. The truth is, I sometimes get something out of it (like feeling closer to God), but I usually don’t. And even though I have noticed that when I consistently take time to pray every day my life does start to improve in certain ways, I have also often questioned why I should bother to pray.

Take a moment to think about it. If you believe in the God of the Bible, then you believe that He is all-powerful, infinitely good and loving, wise, and just (among many other qualities, all of which are good). If you believe that, then you know that God is much more wise than you are and that His plan for your life is much better than yours. Personally, I feel pretty confident that God doesn’t compromise His plans based on what I want, because then I would be missing out on something much better. So then, why bother praying? Why bother asking God for things when He has already determined what will happen? It’s not as if I am going to change His mind, and honestly, in the end that always turns out to be a good thing. So why bother even asking?

Maybe prayer is supposed to be for a different purpose. Maybe it’s not supposed to be mainly composed of asking God for things. Perhaps prayer is meant to be a time to just talk to God about what’s going on in your life, ask Him questions, and generally share companionship with Him. But even this brings up some problems for me.

For one thing, I believe that God is all-knowing. Because of that, I often feel a bit silly just telling Him what’s happening in my life and how I feel. I mean, He already knows, right? In fact, He understands me even better than I understand myself. Explaining to Him how I feel and why would be like me telling a doctor about the basic concepts of human biology. When I think about that, prayer starts to seem pretty silly to me!

So if praying to ask for things is out, and praying to tell God about my life and feelings is out, then what else can I use it for? Well, while thinking through this question I tried looking at it as I would look at any other conversation with a loved one. For me, conversations usually have several different aspects: sharing information, feelings, and struggles is one; asking for and giving advice is another; debating opinions can often be an aspect in certain conversations; and then there is the one aspect that I think is by far the most important— listening.

Even though we often seem to forget it, listening is actually a vital component of communication. At least for me, I am often so eager to share my own information and feelings with other people that I forget to listen to what they have to say. But conversation is completely useless if neither person is listening to the other! Which is why I think that in every healthy human relationship, both people have learned how to share things as well as how to listen. So then, why is it that in our relationships with God, we struggle so much with taking the time to listen?

Well, I would argue that it’s actually not completely because of our own selfishness. I mean, when it comes to conversation with God, things work a little bit differently than they do in human conversations. The biggest difference, I’d say, is that we can’t literally see or hear God when we’re talking to Him. It’s a little bit harder to listen to God speak to us when we can’t even hear Him! Because of that, I think we humans should get a little bit of slack. Prayer takes faith, and faith is not always easy for us to have. At the same time, I know that spiritual maturity depends on strong faith and an understanding of how to listen and commune with God. That’s why I find it extremely important to figure this whole prayer thing out.

To help me with this quest, I’ve started reading a book called Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference? by Philip Yancey. Seems fitting, right? Unfortunately, I just started reading it so I don’t have much to report yet. I plan on continuing this topic for the next couple of weeks, to share my journey as I attempt to better understand why prayer is so important. This week, I’d just like to leave you with one thought from the very beginning of the book, about the purpose of prayer.

The author suggests that prayer is so vital because it takes us out of our own little worlds and gives us a momentary glimpse of God’s infinitely greater perspective. So often, we become blinded to the world around us and the bigger picture because we are so distracted with the things that are happening to us. We forget that there are actually other perspectives in the world, and that the world really doesn’t secretly revolve around us. Prayer is a tool that can realign our point of view with God’s, if only temporarily. And I can certainly agree that there is something incredibly refreshing about getting out of my own head for a few minutes a day.

To me, prayer seems to be one of the most taken-for-granted things in the world. Many of us do it every day, or at least fairly often, and yet we never seem to stop and think about what it actually means. Whatever the purpose of prayer is, the mere fact that we can do it in the first place is purely amazing! We are just tiny little ants from God’s perspective, one speck out of almost 7 billion others; yet God does not see us that way at all. He sees us each as individuals, valued and loved beyond measure, and He takes the time to listen to each one of us whenever we speak to Him. How unfathomably amazing is that?

Without a doubt, I can say that prayer is a gift. My goal for the next few weeks is to learn how to use it.