O Lord of hosts, God of Israel, who are enthroned above the cherubim, you are God, you alone, of all the kingdoms of the earth; you have made heaven and earth. Incline your ear, O Lord, and hear; open your eyes, O Lord, and see…
-Isaiah 37:16-17a

Why do God’s people pray?

Martin Luther would tell us we should pray because God wants us to. This is a good reason, though “because you should” isn’t usually a great motivator for action. You really should drink more water, do cardio three times a week, change your furnace filter four times a year, floss your teeth every night, and come to a full and complete stop at every stop sign. 

Should, should, should. When prayer feels more like a chore than anything else, it might be hard to get up the motivation.

Perhaps God’s people pray because of the personal benefits. Some studies show that prayer improves the pray-er’s sense of peace and calm. It can make people feel connected to others, lessen anxiety, and reduce anger. Dating or married partners who pray for each other have been found to be less aggressive and more forgiving. In other words, prayer seems to be good for you! If you want to improve your emotional and mental wellbeing, pray. 

But then, Christian faith isn’t a self-help journey to your best self. Getting into the habit of prayer just to see if it’ll make your life better doesn’t seem to be why we pray, either.

Some people focus on the outcome– in other words, they pray to get what they want. Peace, a promotion, or a pony: we have all prayed for a particular result to come true. The Bible is full of prayers for healing, for destruction of an enemy, for deliverance from disaster. There’s nothing wrong with asking for what we want. And God does hear and answer our prayers. But if all we expect from prayer is to change what’s happening in our lives to what we hope for, we make the mistake of turning God into Santa Claus, acting good and praying hard in exchange for what we want.

Prayer isn’t a good deed you do in order to get what you want from God. If that’s all, you’ll be deeply disappointed with yourself and God when the answer to your prayer is no.

In the verses from Isaiah at the beginning of this devotion, King Hezekiah is praying to God for deliverance from an army surrounding Jerusalem. Hezekiah was a fairly powerful man; after all, he was the King of Judah. Despite his personal power, Hezekiah’s prayer puts God squarely in the position of holding true power.

No matter what you’re praying for, whether it’s a good parking place or recovery from disease or for your heart to stop racing when you’re face-to-face with someone intimidating, prayer puts God in God’s place and you in yours. Prayer reminds you that you’re not in control of everything. Prayer erases any illusion that you can handle it all by yourself. The single greatest power of prayer is that it keeps us humans humble as it keeps God great. The power of prayer is to reveal all the things that are not in our power.

Prayer also has one other great power: it can be shared. Not everyone can teach Sunday School, or organize a meal train, or lead a meeting, or make music, or tie a quilt, or fix a deficit with one check, or proofread a newsletter, or update a website. Everyone can pray.

Truly, everyone! You can pray if you’re two or ninety-two. You can pray if you have the gift of gab or prefer to keep silent. You can pray long, flowing prayers, or you can just say, “Help, God!” You can pray if you know every detail of a situation or if you have no blessed idea what’s going on. You can even pray when you don’t know what you’re praying for. After all, prayer doesn’t depend on how good your prayer is. Prayer depends on how good God is, and God is good all the time.

So why do God’s people pray? We pray to know that God is God, and we are human. We also pray because it is something we can all do, strengthening our bonds as the body of Christ. That’s the power of prayer.