Monday, October 01, 2007

Why Do We Pray?

I know this is a question that's been bandied about for a few millenia, but now it's my turn to wrestle with this one a bit. Let me be clear that I'm not asking this because I don't think we need to pray, or because I believe it's not efficacious at all, but rather it's because of late I've been praying more than is my usual mode and this question has risen in my mind.

I've been praying in earnest for a few weeks for Meg, and I will continue to do so since I feel it's what God wants me to do. I sometimes wonder why I love this woman so much, since it's overwhelming to me at times, but then I wonder if it's so that I will pray for her like a banshee. If not me then who? Maybe the sole purpose of my love for Meg, and the intensity of that love, coupled with the loss I feel is so that I will pray for her. I guess that is the way I look at it right now, and it sure makes the pain I feel more tolerable.

In church last week there was a discussion of a passage in Acts where some of the apostles headed to Antioch. The passage says that "the hand of the Lord was with them" and that many turned their hearts towards God. How does conversion work anyway? What happens when you pray that someone will turn his or her heart towards God? We have free will, but what happens when "the hand of the Lord" is so directly involved? What miraculous events are needed to bring someone to God? And how does our praying for it aid it along? God clearly desires the whole world to come to him--can we say that his hand is involved at certain times more than at others? Are the prayers of the faithful vitally important in determining when his hand is involved, or the degree to which he is empowered to impact the lives of those he is calling to him?

I saw a devotional at a bargain bookstore the other day written for a very specific target audience: women believers whose husbands are not believers. Can we not assume that the women who would be buying that book are praying for the conversion of their husbands, and that their prayers are some of the most zealous and heart-rending prayers that go up to heaven? Why do some convert while others don't? Obviously the answer is free will, but where do our prayers enter into the equation and why are some effective and others not?

In essence, I'm asking the same question I know so many people have asked time and time again: why does God need us to pray? Well, obviously he doesn't need us to do anything, but he desires us to pray. But do our prayers really help? Of course, I believe they do, but why? Why do they if God is all powerful? A better question: why does God choose to need us?

I feel like these are very elementary questions, but I've never felt compelled to pray so earnestly for anything in my life, and it's causing me to wrestle with these kinds of questions. It's fascinating to me, actually, and I guess I'm hoping to find words of wisdom from men and women much wiser than I that will spur me on to pray even more fervently. I guess the bottom line is that I'd like to know that my prayers mean something, that they are being used by God.

I plan on doing some reading, so any book recommendations would be appreciated (and that goes for my family members too, who tend to read my blog in silence, which is OK with me, but suggestions here would be appreciated.)

I did find the following C.S. Lewis quote from his essay The Efficacy of Prayer that helps a lot in this regard, and I'm going to try and track it down.

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of men? For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it. But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate. He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned men; or convert the heathen without missionaries. Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to cooperate in the execution of His will... It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God' s mind -- that is, His overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His creatures.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Dan, I love this quote you've posted by Lewis. I think he's right (not that Jack needs my stamp of intellectual or theological approval). I think it's largely a mystery, but that's because all our prayer is relationship with the One Who is incomprehensible. We know prayer is efficacious because He says it is. He tells us to petition Him. I don't think He does so just because He loves to hear us ask. I think there's more taking place.

I'm far more ignorant about prayer than knowledgeable, so bear with me. It's all I've got at this point in my life.

Petitionary and intercessory prayer is a work of cooperation with God, prompted by His grace. To expand on Lewis's examples, consider how God provides for us. Manna and quail aren't the normative means by which we are fed. He equips us. We work. As we cooperate with His grace of health and strength and intelligence, we are compensated for our labor by the men and women for whom we work. God provides for us, but we cooperate with Him in His provision.

God graces us and we reject or act according to that grace to do the work of intercession - with Christ, I might add, Who is interceding for Meg (He invites us to join Him). He listens and "reacts," He has a relationship with us. Think of how God cooperates with Abraham concerning Sodom, with Moses concerning the destruction of the Israelites, or how Jesus relates to the Syro-Phoenician woman - these people "change God's mind." Their work, their relationship is real, it's efficacious. Not because they were able to teach God something. Not because He needed to be instructed by their mercy. God allows us to cooperate with Him so that we might have relationship with Him. That we might be friends, brothers, and sons. That we might share, participate in His divine life.

And even so, in the end, after all our efforts, all our prayers - and I'm not saying this is a small thing, it is huge - we may very well be left holding Thy Will Be Done.

I wish I had some good books on prayer to recommend to you.

Dan said...

Thanks for the thoughts Scott--I appreciate it. I think it's a topic that can be quite perplexing.

I picked up Letters to Malcolm by Lewis yesterday, since it's primarily about prayer, but I find it to be a bit too dialectical in its approach.

I'm still in search of the essay which I quoted. I did a scan of books on prayer, and many of them seem like an "Idiot's Guide," or rather a guide to getting what you want in your prayer life--not really what I'm looking for.

I believe that the Lewis essay is exactly what I'm looking for, so hopefully I'll be able to pick that up today sometime.