I Was Just Thinking … About Encouragement to Pray

The privilege of prayer is high on the list of blessings Christ has made available to those who commit their future happiness to him. In prayer believers draw near to God and experience the joy of having God draw near to them (James 4:8). As creatures created to represent God, we find rest for our souls only as we are in fellowship with him. So Augustine said at the beginning of his Confessions (written around A.D. 400), “You [Lord] have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

Another great blessing which comes from God through prayer is the strength of heart needed to bear up under circumstances that threaten our well-being. David indicates that through prayer he “strengthened himself in Yahweh, his God” (1 Samuel 30:6) Likewise, Hebrews 4:!6 commands us, “Let us draw near to the throne of grace with confidence, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

But the greatest blessing God wants to bestow upon us through prayer is the receipt of specific answers to requests that we have directed to him. Jesus’ statements in Matthew 7:7–11 affirm that just as an earthly father will surely give his children the bread and fish that they ask for, so God will without question give good things to those who ask him. In fact, Jesus declared that God would respond to our requests far better than any human father could ever respond to his child’s request: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” (vs. 11). On the basis of this, Jesus commanded, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (vs. 7).

These commands to pray found in Matthew 7:7 (and many other such commands in Scripture) mean that if we should fail to ask God to supply our needs, then we would sin against him. Now sinning against God means rebelling against some deep desire he has. But why, we may ask, would our failure to ask God for things cause him to be disappointed, and conversely, why does our asking him for things bring him great happiness? In short, why is God’s own self-interest so tied up with prayer that he commands us to ask him for things? I believe that the answer to this question provides a great encouragement to keep bringing our requests to God, so I would like to share with you what I think this answer is.

In several places in Scripture God compares his relationship to us with that of a workman to an employer. According to Isaiah 64:4, “No eye has seen a God besides you, who works for those who wait for him.” Here God is compared to an employee who benefits us employers by exercising a highly desirable skill to provide us with needed goods and/or services. God assumes the same role in Psalm 37:5, where we are commanded, “Commit your way to the Lord; trust in him, and he will act.” Like an employer, we are to entrust our well-being to the workman, who then exercises his singular ability to perform tasks that are vital to us.

All of us have at one time or another been employers, customers, or clients, so we have no difficulty recalling occasions when we have greatly valued a workman who provided us with a service that we urgently needed. Many of us also have been employees who possessed an ability to meet some need that others had. So we found ourselves approached by people who wanted us to use our particular skill to supply their need.

Now we need to consider what chiefly motivates people to use their time and energy to employ a skill for the benefit of others. The money that they can earn is probably the first thing that comes to mind. Certainly each of us needs money, because it commands the labor to produce the many goods and services which we must have but cannot produce ourselves. Further reflection, however, reveals that the promise of receiving wages is not the most basic reason why people exercise their skills. In 1972 Studs Terkel published a book in which he recorded interviews he had with people occupied in about 100 different sorts of work. He concluded that there is “a meaning to their work well over and beyond the reward of their paycheck” (Studs Terkel, Working. New York: Avon Books, 1972. Quoted by permission of the publisher). This meaning consists in the delight of having and being able to use a skill which can meet a real need that others have.

So, for example, Studs Terkel related how a supermarket checker did not want to retire even though her pension would support her adequately. Instead, each day she looked forward to coming to work because she had the ability to remember the prices of all the items in the market. Thus, the customers appreciated the speed and accuracy with which she could ring up the total amount they owed. In short, the motive that impelled her to work was the delight she had in the goodness which she could extend to others through her skill as a supermarket checker—this is the essence of grace. To be sure, such delight in one’s vocation can become an egotism which is repellant to others, but it certainly does not have to do so. It is only being honest for people to acknowledge realistically the degree of goodness which they can impart to others through the abilities they have acquired.

God has frequently commanded us to pray. So, again, why does he do this? As a workman, God lacks no skill to perform any task for us. “All things are possible with God” (Mark 10:27). It is only right and fitting for God to delight in a realistic assessment of the goodness he can extend to his creatures by virtue of his unsurpassed wisdom and power. His delight in his goodness as God is so great that he exerts his omnipotence so that we worship him from a realistic assessment of his worth.

Since God delights so in his goodness, he can be fully happy only as he puts it to use for the benefit of those who stand in great need of it. Now since God wants to bless us this much, it is no wonder that he frequently commands us to present our requests to him. His commands for us to pray are the necessary corollary of his delight in his goodness. Consequently, when we comply with these commands and ask God to extricate us from difficulties and supply our needs, God delights in us and in our requests for help with the very delight which he has in himself. This activity that moves from his delight in himself in order to create a corresponding delight in us is called ‘grace.’

I know of no greater encouragement to engage in prayer than the foregoing line of thought. But this understanding of why God commands us to pray also makes evident how much we will displease him if we do not bring our petitions before him. If the reason God commands us to pray is the delight he has in his own worth, then those who neglect prayer are scorning God and saying, in effect, that he is not holy, that he does not have infinite, unexcelled, and irreplaceable worth. Failure to comply with God’s commands to pray is nothing less than blasphemy.

It is no wonder, then, that Jesus urged that we “ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1).

Daniel Fuller
October, 1979