Seven Reasons to Pray

by Dan Hayes

(SOME OBVIOUS, SOME NOT SO OBVIOUS!)

This article is an unapologetic attempt to motivate... ME! Yes, me. Because if anybody needs
help in getting motivated to pray, its yours truly. I mean, I know prayer is important. Theres
sure enough of it in the Bible, and you can find tons of books on prayer. Not only that, all the
godly people Ive ever met testify to the crucial nature of prayer in their lives. So I understand I
should pray, but...
Well, let me be honest. Sometimes (often?) prayer is hard and even confusing for me. As Tim
Downs asks, Is it hard to pray to an unseen, infinite, omniscient being? You bet! And, living in
this world so bathed in materialism, about the only reason even Christians give me for praying is
to get answers. So when I dont get the answers I want (and sometimes not even any answers),
I dont know why I should keep praying. So...
Whats that, you say? You feel that way, too? You think everybody feels that way? You just
gave up praying three weeks ago because you didnt have any more motivation either? Can you
look over my shoulder at what Im writing and maybe get motivated, too? Absolutely!
Any of the rest of you out there trying not to look interested can follow along, too. The more, the
merrier.
Why Pray?
Well, as I said, sometimes you get the impression that prayer is a grocery list: Our Father, who
art in heaven... Gimme, gimme, gimme! And, by the way, my name is Jimmy! This is sort of a,
shop til you drop way of praying. But somehow I cannot see that as the prime and certainly
not the most satisfying reason.
So I began to study how and why Jesus prayed. After all, He got more answers than anyone else
and He always prayed for the right reasons. I was amazed! First, because He prayed all the time.
The Bible says that He would often withdraw to the wilderness and pray. Often is right. He
prayed just about every chance He got. He was perfect; so it wasnt like He was praying for
forgiveness of sin or anything like that. Why?
Well, thats the second reason I was amazed. The more I study, the more good motivating reasons
I find to pray. I find theyre basically the ones Jesus Himself had. And since, as I said earlier, Im
often flummoxed about prayer and get discouraged, these reasons almost always give me a lift -and sometimes even a jolt.

1. BUILDS OUR RELATIONSHIP WITH JESUS

I am first called to prayer because it is a key vehicle to building my love relationship with Jesus
Christ. Hear me now this is important. Christianity is not primarily rules. It is a relationship.
Arent you sick (I think everybody is) of rules Christianity? Every day somebodys got another
rule for us to follow to be good Christians. Dont get me wrong. Certainly there are commands
in Gods Word and promises. Certainly Christ has standards, but we dont become Christians
because we receive standards. We become Christians because we receive Christ, who loves us,
died for us, lives in us daily.
What I need, then, is to build my love-grace relationship with Him. And I, like most of us, know
so little about love-grace relationships. I have to learn to allow Him to embrace me, to care for
me, to point out my needs to me (and how He fills them). I need to listen to Him, and I
desperately need to talk to Him.
Where and how is all this done? In prayer. In Ephesians 3:14-19, Paul prays, that you may be
able to comprehend... what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love
of Christ which surpasses knowledge...
Know in this passage is the same word used for the intimate closeness of a husband and wife
in sexual embrace. Whoa -too early for that, Dan. Well, the Bible doesnt think so. Paul is
praying that you and I will experience that kind of love with Christ -not sexual, but intimate,
deep, close, unfettered. It is so deep that Paul later says it surpasses knowledge. Imagine -he
wants us to know what is too deep ever to be known!
Where do we experience this? One place we can learn to do so is in prayer. Even Pauls desire
for us to experience this life is voiced in a prayer (Eph. 3:14). When we get down and get
honest before God, we are on His turf in a unique way. Seldom do we get closer to Him than in
prayer.
One girl from a Jewish background wrote the following: I now know Christ is here all around
me, just waiting for me to reach out, to let Him love me... When we pray, we can pray to
experience this love, to be bathed in it, to learn how to give it back, to learn how to let it seep
into the dry cracks and crevices of our lives.
In fact, the longer I love, the more I think that the chief reason for the gift of prayer is that we
learn to receive, experience, and return His love in genuine relationship. Prayer is one place
when God can get at us (and we think prayer is for getting at Him!) and speak to and minister to
us. It is for this reason first that we can learn to rush to prayer.
2. HELPS US OVERCOME TEMPTATION
Second in our list of reasons is that prayer is an important instrument in our overcoming sin and
temptation. Perhaps no experience in the earthly life of Christ is more instructive on prayer than

Jesus teaching and subsequent modeling in the twenty-second chapter of Luke. The fact that his
disciples were patently oblivious only shows us our same frailty today.
In verse 39, Luke sets the scene. Jesus and His apostles (now eleven) have left the upper room
on the night before His death. They have navigated the winding path they knew well up the
Mount of Olives to the olive grove called Gethsemane. The eleven are troubled and confused
about all they have seen and heard so far, yet Jesus knows that the great temptations are soon to
be before them -His capture, His trials, His scourging, His mockery, the lure of their denial, His
Crucifixion.
In verse 40, mindful of their need for fortitude, He addresses them: He says, [in order] that you
may not enter into temptation. What did He mean? Simply that their antidote to yielding to the
temptations that fear, discouragement, and horror would soon present them was fervent, heartfelt
prayer. This would fortify their trembling faith and courage.
How could He know this? Because He, too, faced His own darkness. Looming in the next few
hours was the eternity of death and hell for the combined sins of humanity. He now came to the
culmination of His purpose on the earth, and the terror of the pit must have clutched at this
throat. Even more subtle, perhaps, were the whispers of rationalization which rose venomously
from the tempter.
Certainly they wont appreciate what I am doing for them. They will cast it away. Many will
ridicule Me and trample My Fathers salvation underfoot. How can I bear the sins of Sodom, of
the butchers of babies in Bethlehem. How can I stand to be clothed in the sins of all the child
molesters and mass murderers and the Adolph Hitlers of all the ages? How can I bear the devils
glee as he turns the screws of my agony?
Perhaps there is another cup. Yes, perhaps I can let this one pass, return to My gracious Father
from whom I have never in all eternity been separated. Yes, that possibility exists. I can go to
Him now, avoid the dread cross, discuss it further, find an alternative plan...
We are naive if we think these thoughts and these temptations to abort His mission in the
eleventh hour did not occur to the man, Jesus. Far greater than the disciples temptation was the
temptation He faced and how infinitely more cosmic in its ramifications. One sees the shadowing
figure of Lucifer himself hurling these twisted ideas at Christ.
So what did He do? He modeled exactly what He had told His struggling band: He prayed so that
He could defeat (not enter in) temptation. We are told by Luke that His prayers were so
heartfelt, His struggles so intense, that His sweat was bloody, pre-figuring the flow that would
come tomorrow. He was in such agony that, in answer, an angel became visible to help Him bear
up under the strain.
And bear up He did! For triumphantly, at the end of that hour, He could rise for prayer, having
settled with His Father, not My will but Thine be done. Prayer had been the means of His
victory. He returned to His men to find them... asleep! He had told them to pray. Instead, they
followed the college students motto: When in doubt; sack out!

He roused them (maybe none too gently). Perhaps He dodged Peter, who grabbed his sword,
looking for an ear to cut off. He confronts their tiredness, their crankiness at being awakened,
and says again (verse 46), pray that you may not enter into temptation.
Notice that He commanded this in the beginning of this passage, then He demonstrated it in the
body of this passage, and He reiterated it at the end of this passage. When you face temptation,
PRAY, PRAY, PRAY! That is what will see you through. That is what He is trying to teach.
Well, how about you? How about me? Usually we pray only after we have yielded. What about
seeing prayer as our first (not last) option: the fortifying of our courage and strength prior to our
temptations? If we would pray more, we would yield less!
3. HELPS US DETERMINE GODS WILL
Third in our series of reasons to pray is the following: we pray because prayer is crucial in
determining Gods will.
Now youre talking, you say. I always use prayer when I want to know Gods will. I pray
about my choices, and when I have `peace about one of the options, then I go with it.
How many times have these words been uttered? -I did it because I had peace about it? Yet,
how askew is that from Gods Word. Prayer certainly is vital in determining His will, but not
because it gives us peace. Let me show you how faulty such thinking is (and I had it for a long
time). How many of you have ever shared your faith, witnessed to another person?
Well, right before you shared your faith, which was almost certainly Gods Will, how many of
you felt this warm, calm sense of `peace? Hold up your hands. Hmmm. No hands! Werent you
rather scared, nervous. Perhaps your Adams Apple turned to applesauce and the butterflies in
your stomach turned to helicopters! Your palms sweated. Shoot, your hair sweated. No great
feeling of peace there, but you did it anyway because it was Gods will, right?
You see, you knew it was Gods will in other ways besides a subjective emotion and contrary to
it. You used Gods Word, the volitional promptings of the Holy Spirit, and maybe some training
you had received. Peace is often only a synonym for comfort, behind which people hide so
they wont have to find Gods real will. Gods real will often produced scary feelings, not warm
fuzzy ones.
So wait. How does prayer help determine His will then? Jesus again gives us a demonstration in
Lukes gospel. Read the sixth chapter, the twelfth through the sixteenth verse. Here, He prays all
night about what seemed at the time an insignificant issue in history: the choosing from the
crowd which followed Him a special group of disciples which we now know as the Apostles.
Who could have cared what group of men an obscure rabbi in an obscure province of an obscure
corner of the Roman Empire chose for leadership. No major newspaper or television station
covered the story of that all-night prayer vigil. Yet, because of those prayers, through the

influence of men, today (2000 years later), 1.3 billion people around the world call themselves
by this obscure Rabbis name.
Obviously, He needed to know which of His several hundred followers were chosen by His
Father to be Apostles. How did prayer help? It helped in the way John Wesley described. I
find, he said, that the chief purpose of prayer in seeking Gods will is that prayer gets my will
into an unbiased state. Once my will is unprejudiced about the matter, I find God suggests
reasons to my mind why I should or should not pursue a course.
The chief purpose of prayer, then, is to get our wills unbiased! The purpose is not to give us an
ethereal sense of comfort. Thus, we pray to God about His will in some area, knowing (usually)
that we are already leaning in a certain direction. We implore Him first to help our wills to move
back to the center -- that is, willing to do whatever is His will. Once we arrive there (and it may
take some time), He shows us through our minds why one alternative is better than another and
therefore is His will for us.
Thus it must have been on that night for our Savior. As He prayed, He must have had preferences
for His followers. He probably had a list at least a mental one. Perhaps Peter was already on it,
but perhaps Andrew was not. Thomas certainly wouldnt have been on mine, and neither would
Simon the Zealot. Maybe they werent at the top of Jesus, either. Yet, through the work of His
Father and His own yielded nature in intercession, the reasons came clear to Him why all three of
these men plus nine others should be tapped.
Our searching out of Gods will can be the same. We pray so that our wills (not our emotions)
can be yielded to the Divine whatever. Then II Timothy 1:7 becomes alive: For God has not
given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and sound judgement. May the tribe of
unprejudiced wills and sound judgement increase!
Well, are you with me so far? Im with me so far. Remember, this is for me; and, I have to say,
its helping some.
4. PRAYER ACCOMPLISHES GODS WORK
We come now to the fourth of our obvious (or not-so-obvious) reasons to pray. It is this: prayer is
a major way we accomplish Gods work in the world.
Here is a major accelerator to my motivation to pray, and it stems from one of the most
unbelievable (literally) statements Jesus ever made. It is found in John 14:12-14. It would be
good to turn there because youve got to see it to believe it.
We have come back to the night of the Last Supper. Judas has left to betray Jesus. His leaving
allows Christ to pass on some of the most sublime of His earthly teachings to the remaining
faithful. In the context, He is discussing His deity, His union with the Father, and the works of
God in the world. Suddenly, He makes this statement: Truly, truly . . . he who believes in Me,
the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go to the
Father.

Look at that statement. Savor it. Regard it. Peruse it. Study it. Imbibe it. If it is true!!
He shall do. Jesus did not say, they shall do. He did not say, the corporate body all
combined together will do. He used a singular pronoun meaning one person. The very works
that I do and greater than these is His statement.
What works did our Lord do on earth? Oh, just a few simple ones: cleansed the lepers, healed the
sick, proclaimed release to the captives, taught tens of thousands, led thousands to salvation,
raised the dead, healed those born blind.
Piece of cake! We might say that one Christian in a hundred thousand or a million could do those
things. Perhaps a Billy Graham, a Bill Bright, one gifted in healing, a Chuck Swindoll, a James
Dobson could do at least some of those works; but not me -- not Joe or Betty ordinary
Christian.
And even then, how will the Grahams, Swindolls, Dobsons, and Brights do greater works than
our Lord? Yet the plain fact of Jesus statement is that the only qualifier to doing such works is
[the one] who believes in ME. How?
That brings us to verses 13 and 14. These are often misplaced in the context, yet they obviously
relate directly to verse 12. And whatever you ask in My name, that will I do, that the Father
may be glorified in the Son. And, since He knew they wouldnt get it the first time (and neither
would we), He repeats it: If you ask Me anything in My Name, I will do it.
Shout it from the housetops! Prayer is the way His greater works get done! True, most of us will
not be worldwide evangelists, though a few will be. Most of us will not be gifted in healing,
though some will be. Most of us will not be great preachers and teachers, though some reading
this will be.
But every one of us can kneel down and pray. Every one of us can touch the lost masses of earth
and help snatch them from eternal darkness to eternal life. Every one of us can participate in
Christs healing power spreading both medically and miraculously across the earth. Every one of
us can put up our hands and stop the forces of moral degeneracy that threatens to engulf the
depth of the human spirit. Every one of us can do these things through our prayers!
Today, if I will, I can spend 15 minutes behind the Kremlin walls with the Supreme Soviet,
influencing them for God and for good. Today, I can spend 20 minutes touching the entrenched
Muslim minds of the Mullahs of Saudia Arabia or the ascetic Bhuddist Monks of Nepal. Today,
I can stand against pornography and rape and incest and child abuse in the far-flung towns of this
country.
Because, when I talk to God in my living room, or office, or church, He is the same God who
reaches into families, into Nepal, into Arabia, into the Kremlin, into homes. I participate with
Him, not only through my efforts and works in my geographic location, but also throughout the
world in accomplishing His works through my prayers.

It matters not what type of gifts, talent, or personality I have; it matters only that I take this time
to cooperate with Him in my prayers. And that is all that matters for you, too. May we get it
before much more time passes.
5. A WEAPON OF SPIRITUAL WARFARE
Fifth in our series of reasons to pray is that prayer is a major weapon in fighting the spiritual
battle. Ephesians six, verses ten to twenty, outlines some of the armaments in the arsenal of God.
We are reminded that ultimately our struggles are not against humans, but against powerful
spiritual beings and forces in the heavenly places (the spiritual realm which directly influences
the natural, material realm).
The picture here is that of a war. Life as a Christian is not a playground; its a battlefield. While
there is much beauty and love in the world, it is often bent and twisted by our Fall and Satans
machinations. Thus, the war for souls between God and Satan is fought with Christian cocombatants with Him.
We are instructed by Paul, an experienced soldier in this combat, to be appropriately clad and
armed for our struggle. In this passage, he uses some of the most vivid imagery in the New
Testament. Modeling a Roman Legionnaire, we put on the helmet of salvation, the breastplate of
righteousness, loins girded with truth, feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel, shield of
faith, sword of the Spirit (the Word of God).
Now, it seems we have a complete set of armor and weaponry. And if I were writing this passage,
I would say, Now get out there and fight the battle!
But interestingly, Paul does not say that. In fact, he waits until verse eighteen to get to the heavy
artillery of this arsenal of God -persistent prayer. Notice what he says: With all prayer and
petition pray... with all perseverance and prayer... and pray...
In two verses, we are commanded to pray five different times. Do you think he (and God) are
trying to make a point? He is attempting to seize our attention concerning prayers power in the
defeat of Satan and his minions. Parallel to this text is II Corinthians 10:3,4: For though we
walk in the flesh, we do not war according to the flesh, for the weapons of our warfare are not of
the flesh but divinely powerful for the destruction of fortresses.
The weapon of prayer softens up Satans fortress. Hells gates cannot prevail. It is the cannon,
reducing the wall to rubble so that the troops can go through. Too often, the gospel moves slowly
because the softening-up process of prayer has been neglected. When practiced, however, prayer
puts the wind at the back of Christs soldiers.
A few years ago, at a prestigious American University, one powerful administrator was blocking
the placement of additional full-time Christian workers on campus because of his own disbelief
in the gospel. The Christian students on campus resorted first to prayer. Feeling that no one had
the right to keep students from hearing about Christ, they prayed that God would either change
this mans heart or remove him from his position. For six months they prayed faithfully.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, he was transferred to a powerless position and a replacement
named. Among the first questions the replacement asked was this: Why arent there more
Christian workers? The workers came, and the gospel flourished. Prayer is key to fighting this
spiritual battle.
6. A PREREQUISITE TO SPIRITUAL AWAKENING
You are probably beginning to get the message (Im sure getting it!) that prayer might be the
most multi-faceted gift of devotion which the Lord has bestowed on humanity. This sixth reason
underlines that truth: prayer is the necessary prerequisite to sweeping spiritual awakening.
We are indebted to Him for providing in two freighted verses (II Chronicles 7:13,14) a prcis of
all God says on this subject in the entire Word of God: If I shut up the heavens so there is no
rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and
My people who are called by My Name humble themselves and pray, and seek My face, and turn
from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin, and will heal their
land.
As I say, this is a prcis, a summary of the rest of Gods teaching on the subject of spiritual
awakenings or revivals -- those times when God enters time and space in such obvious ways that
masses of believers became stalwart and committed, and multitudes of unbelievers crowd into
the Kingdom of God.
Such manifestations have occurred numerous times in Biblical and post-biblical history. Yet
every time they occur, one clear progenitor has existed. Somewhere, there has always been a
group, or many groups, who have given themselves to fervent, consistent, persistent prayer for
the very purpose of cleansing from sin and the reviving of the Body of believers and the
conversion of the lost. J. Edwin Orr once said that every revival in history could be traced to
find at its source a group of people gathered for prayer.
Something about such group prayer breeds honesty, openness, and humility. Usually this group is
the first to be struck by Gods awesome, yet gracious presence. Then revival spreads through and
beyond them to the reaches of the church, community, or campus. Examples abound.
At Yale University in 1905, prayer meetings began to multiply. A faculty member was so
impressed that he sent John R. Mott a letter in which he wrote: We want you to come to Yale for
a series of meetings... The Spirit of God is here with us in power... I have never known a time
when there were so many inquirers.
The result of those meetings was an awakening in which one third of the Yale student body were
involved in small group Bible Studies. K. S. Latourette goes on to write that the class of 1909,
who were freshmen in 1905, produced more missionaries than any other class in the history of
Yale.
The key? Humility, repentance, and persistence in prayer. These are what we need today to lay
the foundations through which God can manifest His Person in powerful ways. As we pray, we

experience change which revives us. Then we become the seeds of revival to change those
around us.
As the concentric circle enlarges, awakening spreads more broadly and quickly. And all of this is
the fruit of prayer. What a wonderful reason to pray -- to see the resultant awakened church,
campus, city, or country. May we be driven to our knees to pray for such a reality of His
presence.
7. PRAYER IS VALUABLE TO GOD
We come now to the last of our seven reasons. In many ways it is the most compelling if only
because it is not linked to any sort of earthly result. It is this: prayer itself is inherently valuable
to God. In other words, whether we ever see any answers (and we will) and whether we ever
derive any personal benefit (and we will), God views prayer standing alone with an
incomprehensible value.
Two wonderful demonstrations of this are found in Hebrews 7:25 and Revelation 5:8. In the first
passage the writer informs us of the occupation and passion of the Lord Jesus since His
ascension: ...Since He always lives to make intercession for them.
Think of it: He always lives to make Intercession. S.D. Gordon, amazed, put it this way in
summing up the life of Christ: Thirty years of living, thirty years of serving, one tremendous act
of dying, and two thousand years of prayer. What an emphasis on prayer! Prayer, then, is so
important to the Lord that it has been perhaps the chief activity of Christ since He bodily left our
planet. God obviously values it in a way we usually do not.
The second passage is equally strong. In Revelation 5, we are admitted to a rare view of heavens
throne room. We do not have many illustrative descriptions of heaven, but this is one of the most
vivid. In the tableau, we see the four living creatures, the twenty-four elders, the Lamb (Christ),
and God the Father.
The book of the Judgement of God is being given to the Lamb, and the verse reads: And when
He had taken the book, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell down before the
Lamb, having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense which are the prayers of the
saints [Ital. added].
In heaven, incense is prayer. What is incense used for? It is used for fragrance, for the beauty of
perfume. Two of the gifts from the Magi at Christs birth were incense. The thrust of this verse is,
when God chooses the fragrance - the perfume, the perfect aroma of His heaven - it is the
fragrance of prayer.
Consider that there were other choices He could have made. He could have used the perfume of
service, or of Bible Study, or of witnessing, or of hard work, or of tithing, or of church
attendance, or any one of a number of wonderful Christian activities. Yet, in His perfect wisdom
He chose prayer.

Perhaps He chose it because in virtually all of the other disciplines there are so many differences
among humans in gifting, strengths, energy, etc. But in prayer, we all, regardless of our
differences, have equal access to Him and equal love and grace and power from Him at our
disposal.
In any case, when we enter heaven for the first time and (no doubt) fall on our faces before Him,
the aroma we will notice will be that of intercession. All of which makes us ask: If God values
prayer that much, how much do I value it? Certainly, I should place it at a more central point in
my life than I usually do.
There they are. Seven (of many) reasons for us to give much more thought and attention to
prayer than is common among Christians. Even in this writing, I found myself pausing often to
take prayer action based upon these motivations. I hope the reading affected you in a similar
way.