Chris Knight
That is a great question because, if God already knows what I am going to pray, it can feel a little like giving Him information He already has. But prayer was never primarily about giving God information. Jesus actually addressed this very issue when He said, “Your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” (Matthew 6:8, NLT). Interestingly, Jesus did not follow that statement by saying, “So there is really no need to pray.” Instead, His very next words were, “Pray like this” (Matthew 6:9). God knows and Jesus still tells us to pray.
Prayer is less about informing God and more about relating to God. My wife often knows what is bothering me before I tell her. Apparently, after enough years of marriage, my face has become a fairly reliable notification system. But knowing what I am thinking is not the same thing as hearing me share my heart. Relationship involves communication and our relationship with God is no different. He already knows what is happening inside us, but He still invites us to come near, speak honestly and trust Him with what is on our hearts.
Prayer also changes us. When Jesus taught His disciples to pray, He included the words, “May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10, NLT). Prayer is not simply an attempt to convince God to do what I want. It is one of the ways God brings my heart into alignment with His. Sometimes I begin praying convinced that God needs to change my circumstances, only to discover that He wants to change something in me. I have gone into prayer with a fairly clear idea of what God should do, only to realize somewhere along the way that He was not asking for my leadership advice.
At the same time, we should not conclude that our requests do not matter. Scripture repeatedly invites us to ask God for what we need. Jesus said, “Keep on asking, and you will receive what you ask for” (Matthew 7:7, NLT). James even tells believers, “You don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it” (James 4:2, NLT). God, in His wisdom, has chosen to make our prayers a meaningful part of how He works in the world. He already knows what we will ask, but that does not make the asking meaningless.
Think about Jesus in Gethsemane. The Father knew His agony. The Father knew what Jesus wanted. Yet Jesus still prayed, “Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine” (Mark 14:36, NLT). That may be one of the clearest pictures of prayer. We bring God what we want while trusting Him with what He knows is best.
So pray even though God already knows. Tell Him what hurts, ask Him for what you need, thank Him for what He has done and confess where you have failed. Pray boldly enough to ask Him to change your circumstances and humbly enough to allow Him to change you. The purpose of prayer is not to make an all-knowing God aware. It is to draw us into relationship with a loving Father who already knows us completely and still wants us to come near.