How does praying work?

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Hi, I came across a question from someone the other day, and I had trouble answering it. This person was asking why do we pray? Since God is all-knowing and omnipresent, wouldn’t He know what’s in our hearts already? So why do we still pray? I’ve never thought of it that way about my own praying. What do you think? Thanks!
 
Are you a parent? If you have kids, try to look at it this way.

God is our Father. Jesus told us so. Therefore, it is true. What father doesn’t LOVE to hear his children speaking to him?😉

Put it that way to your friend… maybe “prayer” will make more sense, in this context. God bless.
 
catechumen08 said:
Hi, I came across a question from someone the other day, and I had trouble answering it. This person was asking why do we pray? Since God is all-knowing and omnipresent, wouldn’t He know what’s in our hearts already? So why do we still pray? I’ve never thought of it that way about my own praying. What do you think? Thanks!
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Prayer has a number of purposes. Many of them are psychological: praying helps you focus on God and on becoming a better person. However, prayer is also more than that; we have been specifically told to pray for things. This is the paradox of life: on the one hand, it’s about taming our rebelious souls and straightening them out so that they can cleave to God’s will. On the other hand, God also loves us and wants to elevate us in power and honor, so he gives us the ability to determine, to a certain extent, how things play out on Earth. We have hands and muscles and brains. And prayer. Prayer helps fill both these goals: it helps put us in line with God, but it’s also the place for us to voice our desires to God, to work our wills through him and vice versa. Of course, we should probably almost always amend our prayers with “but not my will, but yours be done,” and always understand that just because you pray for something doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily get it.
 
The short and dry answer is: Prayer is for us not for God as if God needed our prayers. However He did create us in His image and desires deeply to have communion with us just as it is our deepest longing. It has been said that " God thirsts for us" prayer is the conduit by which our relationship with him is nurtured. Remember too that their are different forms of prayer: meditative which focuses the mind on God, contemplative which is just abiding in his presence and vocal which can come from the heart or can be recited. Well thats my tidbit. Oh yeah one more thing. God commands it and calls us to be co laborers with Him in His work. So I look at prayer as an invitation to work with our loving Father and walk with His Son in the harvest field rather than working for a task master who leaves us alone to do his bidding.
 
Prayer isn’t just asking for things. Prayer is praising God, thanking Him for all He has already done, talking to Him about what’s going on in our lives, sharing our dreams and our worries, just like we would with anyone we love. You can’t have a relationship with someone if you don’t talk with them.

God has also given us free will. We can believe in Him and talk with Him, or choose not to. God has also given us the gift of His Infinite Mercy, but He doesn’t force it on anyone, we have to ask for it (which is why I love the Chaplet of Divine Mercy prayer!). There are so many blessings God is waiting to shower on us, but we have to ask for them, too, and always that everything be done according to His will (meaning what’s best for our salvation).

God has an abundance of grace waiting for us. It’s like He has to hold the gates shut to keep it from bursting out. When we pray, He opens the floodgates and showers us with grace, mercy, and love!
 
Prayer is a conversation with someone we Love. When you love someone your talk with them as often as possible.
 
Great question!! We need to pray to continue/establish a close relationship with God. He wants us to talk with Him, eventhough He already knows what is in our hearts—it is like any relationship. We have to spend time with Him to get closer; and that includes lots of prayer.
 
How can you know someone if you don’t talk with them?

Sure, God knows every single one of us, he formed us. “I knew you before i put you in the womb” But do we know him? Prayer is a tool for us, it is to help us align closer to the will of God by developing a personal relationship with Him.

It’s like, imagine if you lived in a room your whole life. The room had 4 walls made of 1 way mirrors. On your side is the reflective side. On the see through side, the guy that put you in the room sits there and watches you all day. He knows all about you. You don’t even know he’s there. Then one day, you get a message telling you that there is a person on the other side of the glass. You become aware of his presence, and want to know more about this person. Why did he put you in there? Can he help me get out? Praying is like breaking the glass.
 
Thank you all for your replies! This does clear it up for me. So praying is more like a conversation with someone you love. I do have a remaining question, however. When we pray for another, how does praying help the recipient of those prayers? Thanks!
 
catechumen08 said:
Thank you all for your replies! This does clear it up for me. So praying is more like a conversation with someone you love. I do have a remaining question, however. When we pray for another, how does praying help the recipient of those prayers? Thanks!
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C.S. Lewis dealt with that question in one of his essays. It was a long time ago since I read it but his idea went along this line of reasoning: God invites us to become co-laborers with Him in His work of salvation, by choosing to use our prayers in order to affect changes in the ultimate outcome of things. In other words God may choose to do something based upon your prayer that otherwise He may not have chosen to do had you not prayed. The book of essays by C.S. Lewis was called God In The Dock but I can’t remember the exact essay that dealt with this topic. Maybe there is a good C.S. Lewis fan out there who can recall this particular essay and elaborate a little further on this topic
 
diggnitty said:
In other words God may choose to do something based upon your prayer that otherwise He may not have chosen to do had you not prayed.
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That’s very interesting! I didn’t know that was the case, because I thought everything was predetermined in God’s plan, and that we, as humans, are powerless to change it, nor would we want to change God’s plan, because He knows what’s best for us. I’m not sure how to reconcile that.
 
All wonderful answers!

If you wish to get to the very nitty-gritty of it - we pray because Jesus told us to. 🙂 That is good enough reason for me, but you have a lot of other good info here as well.

~Liza
 
By praying we get closer to God. We learn to count on him for what we need, go to him with our problems, and look for his solutions in our lives. We also can develop stronger relationships with the saints, who can help us to live a holier life, growing closer and closer to God each day, and helping us to understand better how we can follow God’s will in our lives. Also, by praying with those of us in our every day lives, our friends and our family members, we invite God into our lives. You know, where two or three are gathered…I have found that by taking the time to pray with my young children, discussing their prayer intentions, I am better able to understand what their needs are. So, by praying I think we invite God into our lives and into the lives of those that we love.
 
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