Why Bother to Pray?

Elizabeth Elliot Devotional

If God is sovereign, and things will be as they
are going to be anyway, why bother to pray? There
are several reasons. The first is really all we
need to know: God has told us to pray. It is a
commandment, and if we love Him we obey his
commands.

Second, Jesus prayed. People sometimes say that
the only reason for prayer is that we need to be
changed. Certainly we do, but that is not the
only reason to pray. Jesus was not being made
more holy by prayer. He was communing with his
Father. He was asking for things. He thanked God.
In his Gethsemane prayer He was beseeching the
Father to prevent what was about to take place.
He was also laying down his own will.

Third, prayer is a law of the universe. As God
ordained that certain physical laws should govern
the operation of this universe, so He has
ordained the spiritual law. Books simply will not
stay put on the table without the operation of
gravity-- although God could cause them, by
divine fiat, to stay. Certain things simply will
not happen without the operation of prayer,
although God could cause them, by divine fiat, to
happen.

The Bible is full of examples of people doing
what they could do and asking God to do what they
couldn't do. In other words, the pattern given to
us is both to work and pray. Nehemiah and the
people of Israel worked hard to build the wall of
Jerusalem but were strenuously opposed by
Sanballat and Tobiah, who banded together with
Arabs, Ammonites, and Ashdodites to attack. "So
we prayed to our God," wrote Nehemiah, "and
posted a guard day and night against them" (Neh
4:9 NEB).