Prayer’s Purpose

April 28, 2022

For those of us who are praying people, most of us at one time or another have wondered why God doesn’t seem to be listening. Our petitions are earnest, but come up empty. In the present Bailey family saga, people have wondered about the justice of our son Nathan’s having brain tumors. “He’s such a nice guy,” they say. Or, “He loves Jesus and does so much,” as if being a follower of Jesus somehow exempts us from the nasty parts of life. 

I certainly don’t have the answers to all these questions, but this morning at our men’s prayer group, I did get a little insight into this matter of unanswered prayer. We begin our time with a psalm; today’s was psalm 80. The psalm is a lengthy question to God, asking how long Israel is going to have to suffer at the hands of her enemies. Three times in this psalm the exact same plea is offered, but with a notable difference in how God is addressed each time.

“Restore us, O God; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved!” 

“Restore us, O God of hosts; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved!” 

“Restore us, O LORD God of hosts; Cause Your face to shine, And we shall be saved!”

—Psalm 80:3,7,19 

At first, he cries out to God, what we might call the generic name for deity. The second time, he pleas with the “God of hosts,” or armies. God here is not so generic; he is the God who commands soldiers for war. The third plea is even more specific: the “LORD God of hosts,” LORD being the proper name of God, usually translated Yahweh or Jehovah. 

The prayer gains intensity with each repetition. This is no casual, off-hand prayer! It may have begun that way, but it doesn’t remain so. I think the very act of prayer was changing the one doing the praying. Prayer—genuine prayer—has a way of doing that. In the quest for deliverance, the one praying gradually came to a deeper awareness of the One to whom the prayer was offered. 

Prayer isn’t just a way of getting what we want, as if God were a celestial Santa Claus. Part of God’s purpose in prayer is his desire to reveal himself to us; for us to gain a deeper and more intimate knowledge of God himself. If God were simply to grant us every wish at our slightest whim, we would become spoiled brats instead of mature believers. God’s greatest gift to us is not the granting of our requests, but the gracious gift of himself. And that is only possible when we persevere in prayer even when it remains unanswered. I wonder how much of God’s presence, peace, and power I’ve forfeited because I gave up on prayer too soon, depriving God of the opportunity to reveal himself to me in a deeper, more significant and life-changing way.