What is the purpose of prayer? Why do you pray? Has prayer ever felt pointless? As though your thoughts don't make it past the boundary of your own skull? "Is prayer not superfluous?" asks John Calvin in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Calvin will be our guest speaker today. But before we get to his answer, let's consider this question further.
Is prayer not superfluous? In other words, what makes prayer necessary? What makes it meaningful and useful? This question is one that we who cherish the doctrine of God's providence tend to ask. Since God knows the future; since He is all-knowing and all-wise, why pray?
First, let's dismiss some wrong answers. We might think that our prayers are meant to persuade God to do something He wasn't already going to do. After all, that's why we often speak to other people, isn't it? Perhaps the function of our prayers is to inform God about something He didn't already know, or to provide Him with a perspective He didn't already have. Certainly not! The purpose of a Christian's prayer is not to persuade or inform the One Who knows all things. In fact, these are among the misconceptions about prayer that Jesus addresses before teaching His disciples how to pray (see Matthew 6:7–9). There, Jesus says, "...your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Pray then like this..."
So why do we pray? Is not prayer superfluous? Since God already knows what we need before we ask him; and since we "do not know what to pray for as we ought;" and since God is all-wise and all-knowing; and since God declares "the end from the beginning," and since His "counsel shall stand," and He will "accomplish all [His] purpose..." — why pray?
Calvin introduces the question this way, "But, someone will say, does God not know, even without being reminded, both in what respect we are troubled and what is expedient for us, so that it may seem in a sense superfluous that he should be stirred up by our prayers—as if he were drowsily blinking or even sleeping until he is aroused by our voice? But they who thus reason do not observe to what end the Lord instructed his people to pray, for he ordained it not so much for his own sake as for ours" (Institutes, 2nd ed., John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, vol. 1, The Library of Christian Classics [Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011], 851–852; emphasis mine).
Prayer is not so much for God's sake as it is for ours. Calvin goes on to provide 6 reasons for prayer being personally profitable. I record them here for your consideration.
First, that our hearts may be fired with a zealous and burning desire ever to seek, love, and serve him, while we become accustomed in every need to flee to him as to a sacred anchor.
Secondly, that there may enter our hearts no desire and no wish at all of which we should be ashamed to make him a witness, while we learn to set all our wishes before his eyes, and even to pour out our whole hearts.
Thirdly, that we be prepared to receive his benefits with true gratitude of heart and thanksgiving, benefits that our prayer reminds us come from his hand (cf. Ps. 145:15–16).
Fourthly, moreover, that, having obtained what we were seeking, and being convinced that he has answered our prayers, we should be led to meditate upon his kindness more ardently.
Fifthly, that at the same time we embrace with greater delight those things which we acknowledge to have been obtained by prayers.
Finally, that use and experience may, according to the measure of our feebleness, confirm his providence, while we understand not only that he promises never to fail us, and of his own will opens the way to call upon him at the very point of necessity, but also that he ever extends his hand to help his own, not wet-nursing them with words but defending them with present help.
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