Prayer is good for us

I think as much as prayer is part of God’s intention for fulfilling His own plans through our requests (mind-blowing in itself!), it is also for our own good.  Philip Yancey, in his book Prayer, points out that prayer for him has become more than a shopping list of requests to present to God; it has become a re-alignment of everything.  It restores the truth of the universe, to gain a glimpse of the world, of him, through the eyes of God.  Prayer is the act of seeing reality from God’s point of view (p. 21).  I think I’ve been slowly understanding that in my own prayer life.

I remember praying before every study session during my HSC.  I always prayed, ‘God, please help me to focus and use this time you’ve given me productively.  May this please you to answer.’  Though it felt selfish to pray this at the time, God did answer my prayer, but I think He was also helping me to depend on Him for everything, which is part of His purpose for prayer.  It’s to help me see that He is the one in control and I can trust Him.  It’s to help me re-align my desires with His own, to see them from His perspective, to submit them to His will.

And sometimes, He answers ‘yes’ to show us not only that He answers prayer, but that He really does hear us and that He is sovereign over all things.  It’s been rainy weather for the past week.  Last Saturday, MiCF (Macquarie international Christian Fellowship) had organised an Amazing Race around the city, but unfortunately it was postponed to yesterday because of the weather.  We prayed that God would indeed make it a sunny day.  And He did.  As I was thanking God for the weather yesterday morning, I realised that God answered ‘yes’ to ‘sunny’ not just to answer that prayer.  He did it so we would see that He does hear us and that He is indeed in control over the weather.  He truly uses everything to bring glory to Himself.  When you have such beautiful weather (as it was yesterday) contrasted between the gloominess of the day previous and the day after (today it looks pretty gloomy), there really isn’t anything to say except to say it was the Lord indeed!  And He uses us to proclaim this with others.  I can’t count the many times that the international students brought up the weather yesterday and the many moments that He gave us to attribute it to His hearing and answering of our prayers.

I’m still learning what praying achieves, but I know that I can only do that if I continue to pray more and more, submitting everything to Him, which I still don’t.  So I pray for you and for me, that God would help us to keep persevering in prayer and give this ‘unseen’ act priority in our lives, because He uses it for His glory and for our good.  And that should be good enough reason for us to keep at it.