Importance of Prayer

As we have mentioned, prayer is communicating to God. It is giving our feelings, ideas, and other concerns to God. Going back to the very first time that we accepted Jesus Christ as our personal Lord and Savior, our Bible study leader introduced to us Jesus Christ and the kind of relationship that Jesus Christ wants to establish between Him and us. Remember the very first thing that we did in our acceptance? We prayed to Jesus to come into our lives. It is the very first time that we accepted Jesus’ in our hearts and the relationship that he initiated. Therefore, by the definition itself, we can see that it is important first of all in our relationship with God.

Secondly, prayer is important in the forgiveness of sin. It is through our heartful prayer that we confessed our sins to God. Again prayer is our communication with God. Of course God knows every sin that we’ve done but God wants us to come to him in full humility confessing our sins to him (Romans 10:9-10, 1 John 1:9). When we pray for forgiveness it is like pleading to God and admitting that we have sinned against Him and we need to be reconciled with Him. It is like a father-son relationship. Imagine a son who is so rebellious that he made his father upset and sad. Then the father would impose a discipline, “ok, I will take away your allowance.” If the son recognizes that discipline, he immediately approaches the father and say, “Dad I am sorry.” What more if it is a “king-subject” relationship? Let me ask this to you who are reading this book, do you know any other way in coming to God to ask for forgiveness? As far as I know, mere works cannot compensate our trespasses. It is only through our confession of our sins. Prayer is the only way that we can express our humility and full submission to God.

Prayer is also important in asking God for something. Philippians 4:6 is very clear that in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, we are to present our request to God. It is through prayer that we can ask favor from God (Matthew 7:7; Luke 11:9). There are times that we want something but God is not giving it to us because we do not ask (John 16:24, James 4:2b). In the passages that we mentioned, we can conclude therefore that prayer is necessary in asking God’s provision.

We can also find another importance of prayer in terms of our adoration and thanksgiving to God. During worship services, we sing praise and worship songs with different themes like confession, pure praise, pure worship, thanksgiving, etc. We sing most of these songs prayerfully by our hearts and minds. In my own experiences, whenever I fail to sing the songs prayerfully during the worship service, it is very hard to listen to the message of the word. If I am preaching, it is hard to relate to what I preach. It is because I am not ready in the eyes of God and I failed to truly worship Him in spirit and in truth. Now if you are a pastor like me, how can we ever claim that the word that comes out from our mouth when we preach comes from God if we were not able to worship God in spirit and truth?

Our motives also give us a reason to pray. Through our prayers, we can show our dependence on Him. Genesis 25:19-24 talks about the story of Isaac asking and pleading to God for a son. And he was heard by God and answered him and gave him two sons, Esau and Jacob. Though God knows everything including our needs, He wants us to ask from Him. He wants us to pray to Him giving our concerns to Him. He wants us to be dependent on Him in every way.

Praying is far better than arguing and complaining. Exodus 17:1-7 gives us a story of the Israelites complaining about their current situation against Moses. Instead of praying, they preferred complaining and crying out against God and Moses. In our daily lives, there are some conflicts that can be solved by discussion, some by careful thinking and rearranging of thoughts, and some with good counsel, but some can only be resolved by prayer. Prayer would actually be effective before we do all the other possible solutions mentioned above. Prayer helps us prepare to listen to others and it quiets our feelings and thoughts.

Finally, by prayer we can restore our relationship with God. The story of Samson in the book of Judges 16:23-31 gives us a clear picture of a man who disobeyed God and went far from Him. In his final day, he prayed to the Lord for forgiveness and was able to restore his relationship with God. Though it was only very little time that Samson had to settle with God and restore his relationship, we can see here that God honored his prayer and answered Samson one last time before he died and his relationship was restored.


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