Purpose in Prayer

1 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth! You have set your glory above the heavens.
2 From the lips of children and infants you have ordained praise because of your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
3 When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have set in place, 4 what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?
5 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings and crowned him with glory and honour.
6 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; you put everything under his feet: 7all flocks and herds, and the beasts of the field, 8 the birds of the air, and the fish of the sea, all that swim the paths of the seas.
9 O LORD, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!
Psalm 8

7 I will proclaim the decree of the LORD: He said to me, "You are my Son; today I have become your Father.
8 Ask of me, and I will make the nations your inheritance, the ends of the earth your possession.
9 You will rule them with an iron sceptre; you will dash them to pieces like pottery." Psalm 2:7-9

We have been thinking of prayer these past few weeks as one of the building blocks of our relationship with God, as sustenance and as the development of us into “little Christs”. But prayer is not only that which nourishes the builder, it is also the work of the Kingdom itself. God places the power in our prayer and then in turn uses these empowered pleas to generate His love to others. John Wesley said, “God does nothing on the earth save in answer to believing prayer.”

E. M. Bounds says: “Prayer, in one phase of its operation is a disinfectant and a preventative. The prayers of God’s saints are the capital stock in heaven by which Christ carries on His great work upon the earth. Men are to pray – to pray for the advance of God’s cause. Prayer puts God in full force in the world. To a prayerful man God is present in realized force; to a prayerful church God is present in glorious power.”

Psalm 8 above, and the creation story in Genesis before it, makes clear that the God-given role of humanity is to care for the earth, its environment and its inhabitants. We are given the earth in trust to manage for God. He sees the process of this governance as a partnership between God and mankind. But how can we possibly add anything to the partnership? All that we are, all that we have and all that we can do are only derived from God’s goodness. Like children working in the workshop with a patient father, if we ask Him he will give us all that we need. He will show us how to do it. He will work together with us so that we can learn, so that we can be rightly productive and so that our relationship with Him will develop in the process. This is another role of our prayer lives.

We hear stereotypes of men who will not ask for directions at the petrol station or women who refuse assistance in the kitchen, but these contain a grain of truth for many of us. We are all brought up to be independent, self-sufficient people who are not a burden to anyone and a help to many. But God’s plan is for us to move from dependency through independence to a mutually dependant relationship with each other while allowing God to provide the resources required as necessary.

For this to be effective we need to ask God for what we are lacking, for guidance as to how to proceed; we need to partner with Him in His work in order to be effective. This is why God, through the Psalmist in Psalm 2 above, says “ask me!” Are you facing frustrations at work, unsure of goals for your life, unable to break through in a relationship, lack resources, feel insecure or undervalued, cannot seem to achieve what you believe God is calling you to? Pray and ask Him. There is power in our prayers. He wants to answer the prayers of His children and to uphold His part of the partnership but He needs our cooperation to do so.

Mike Clarkson