Prayer Questions

Have you ever asked yourself the question, "Why should we pray?" There are a lot of answers to that question, so let's narrow it down a little bit. Have you ever asked yourself the question, "If God is sovereign, why should we pray?" or , "If God is in control of all things, they're going to happen whether we pray or not, so what's the point?"

There are probably a few answers to that question too, but let's just look at one. Within His call to abide in Him, Jesus casts light on the issue in John 15 starting at verse 7:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you
John 15:7

We could spend two or three additional blog posts examining this verse's teaching on prayer, but we're going to stay on topic and try to answer our question. Jesus tells us that if we abide in Him, we can ask whatever we wish and it will be done for us. What's more is that He doesn't just tell us to ask, he encourages it! So one answer to our question could simply be, "We pray because Jesus encourages it". After all, it's always a good thing to do the things that Jesus encourages, right? That's definitely true, but there's more to the answer than that. We can get closer to it if we rephrase the question to be, "Why does Jesus encourage us to ask for things that He will answer? Why would God work through this mysterious mechanism of prayer when He could easily just bypass the whole ordeal and accomplish His purposes without it?"

It's a good thing Jesus kept talking after verse 7:

By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples
John 15:8

We see in verse 8 that God is glorified when Christians bear fruit and prove to be Jesus' disciples. But what does bearing fruit have to do with prayer and why does that give God glory? Jesus said verse 7 before verse 8 for a reason. Let's look at them together:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples
John 15:7-8

First let's connect bearing fruit and prayer. When we're abiding in Jesus and letting His words abide in us, we're going to be asking for things that Jesus wants. One of the things He wants is for us to bear fruit. Bearing fruit can be lots of things. It can be overcoming sin, doing good works, or becoming more like Christ. Regardless of what the fruit is, we're going to pray for it when we're abiding in Jesus. And, as Jesus promises, God is going to answer those prayers! Now why does that bring God glory?

Imagine if He bore that fruit without our prayers. We might miss something. We might think we overcame that sin because of our efforts or did those good works because we're a good person. We might not give credit where credit is due. Now if we had been praying for bearing fruit, we'd only have one explanation for it: God did it! When we pray and God answers, we remember that God is the one working and praise Him for it, therefore giving Him more glory than if He worked without our prayers. So, we've discovered why Jesus encourages to pray to our God that doesn't need our prayers. When we pray and He answers, He gets glory! More glory than if He worked through some other means. God is a giver, and our prayers let us see how great a giver He is!