Question: What’s The Point of Prayer?

Anonymous asked:

What’s the point of praying about the same thing over and over again? Doesn’t He already know what’s already on our minds anyway? I feel like my prayers get too repetitive and it makes me not want to pray anymore, and wonder why I have to keep repeating it.

Hey there: You know what’s great about your best friend?

Both of you can sit in silence and be comfortable.  You can tell the same jokes, same stories, same catchphrases, and still crack each other up.  You can hang out at the same places, eat the same food every week, do the same activities on the same exact days, and it would still be an awesome rocking time.  Your friend might finish your sentences and know everything you’re going to say already: but they still value your company, and they’d rather be with you right in that moment than anywhere else.

This is much like how it is with God.

If you think this is too “New Age spiritualism,” then check out John 15:15 —

I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.

In context, Jesus is saying that our relationship with him is a lot like a friendship.  Certainly he is Lord, Savior, and King, but he’s also Brother and Friend.  It’s why he became one of us.

Prayer then is not always about requesting things or asking for His plan or tearing your robes and wearing a sackcloth in dust and ashes.  Sometimes it’s the divine simplicity of telling God about your day, where you messed up and how you appreciated that sunrise or how you did on your exam or what’s been bothering you lately.  And He listens, even to our most mundane trivial concerns, because God completely absolutely unconditionally cares for every detail of our lives.  He’s like the friend you can trust with all your slobbery craziness, but also the King who will lead you by grace into the person you were meant to be.

If prayer gets repetitive, that’s okay too.  He’s fine with eloquent unique majestic prayers, and He’s okay with grunts and grumbles and groans.  But since life is about a relationship with Him: then prayer is talking with God, and for me, it has been my most favorite times in life.

Please allow me the grace to point you to a message I’ve preached on this, and I’ll leave you with a quote by our buddy G.K. Chesterton, the spiritual mentor of C.S. Lewis.

For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

— G.K. Chesterton

— J