Prayer is an enigma. We reach out to a God who is all-knowing, all-powerful, who has proven that he both understands and loves us (Psalm 103:14; Romans 8:32). On account of his attributes and character, we are assured that, “your Father knows what you need before you ask him,” so we need not “heap up empty phrases” as though we will be “heard by [our] many words” (Matthew 6:7, 8). Yet, despite possessing this knowledge, we are exhorted, to “let [our] requests be made known to God” in “prayer and supplication with thanksgiving” (Philippians 4:6). Why would that be? Might it be because there is more taking place in prayer than our offering a laundry list of needs?
When Jesus responds to the request that he teach his disciples how to pray (Luke 11:1-4), he offers a succinct prayer (certainly not one of many heaped up phrases). But its effect is to focus our attention on the Kingdom of God. As those who have “entered the Kingdom” by reason of our having been made children of God (John 1:12-13; 3:5), we pray to our Father. We ask that His name would be held in reverence by us and all that he has made, and that we would not bring shame upon it, as his people had in times past (see Ezekiel 36:22-23); that his rule would be increasingly realized in our life, church, and world; we express confidence in his provision for all of our lives; we humbly express our need for his continuing grace and we live in that humility with others; and we pray with the self-awareness that we are “prone to wander,” and so ask God to not lead us into trials that will prove too much for us to bear. This is Kingdom praying with Kingdom priorities. If the matters we bring before our heavenly Father are brought under this rubric, it will condition what we pray for and how we pray.
This leads to another enigmatic aspect of prayer: asking, seeking, and knocking (Luke 11:5-13). If our loving Father knows what we need, why must we be taught to be persistent in our praying? It can’t be that he is like the reluctant and annoyed neighbor that Jesus portrays. Nor does he not know how to give what is needed. I suspect the delay is for the purpose of purifying our prayer. We are Kingdom people learning to pray with Kingdom priorities. How often might the requests we make be infected with desires that do not align with the desires of God? More often than we might realize. But as the need persists, we persist in our prayers, and God persists in helping us sort through just what it is that is going on.
Prayer is enigmatic, but it is not frivolous. God uses our prayers to accomplish his will in our lives and in his world. What an extraordinary privilege!
