Five Reasons Why I Pray

SCRIPTURE MAKES IT CLEAR that God hears and answers our prayers, but it will create confusion and frustration to people who think that praying only revolves around asking God to give us what we want, as if wishing upon a star or trying to win the lottery. Prayer must not be done arbitrarily. God is not a genie in a bottle.

I try to wake up every day at exactly 5 A.M. and start my day with a prayer. I also end my day with a prayer. And I still pray several times in the interim because The Bible says, “Pray without ceasing.” 

Here are five reasons why prayer is one of my daily habits:

1. To remind myself that God exists. To avoid getting defeated by any negative self-talk in the morning, I tell myself that God is in control. I have a father in heaven who owns everything, therefore he is my provider. He gave me life, therefore he is my healer. When I remind myself that I am not alone, I already start to feel better and stronger. I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. (Philippians 4:13)

2. To confess my sins. I ask for the forgiveness of my sins and the sins of my loved ones, too. Christians are not perfectly holy people. I continue to make mistakes in life, and as the famous gospel song goes, “amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.” I am forgiven, but I still need God’s daily sanctification to make me the person that he wants me to be. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). It means that Christians should live openly before God; we need to admit that we are sinful and allow Jesus to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

3. To thank God for everything – good and bad times, failures and successes, pain and suffering, peace and joy, big and small things. Be thankful in ALL circumstances, for this is God's will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. (1 Thessalonians 5:18)

4. To pray for my needs, and other people’s needs. I pray for my spiritual needs more than my material wants. For instance, I am very impatient and frank. I tend to hurt people with my words. So I pray that God would make me “quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to become angry (James 1:19).” Every day, I also ask him to create opportunities for me to share the gospel to those who need it the most.

5. To simply enjoy God’s presence. Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart (Psalm 37:4). This would be impossible for people who don’t really know God. People nowadays want a loving and gracious God, but deny that he is holy and righteous. Before we declare that God is good, we first have to realize that God is holy. It is only by having genuine faith in the Lord Jesus Christ can we truly be justified, otherwise we remain subject to the wrath of God. We need to wrap this around our tiny heads and allow God to set us free from all the lies that we have always heard and grasped. Once God has revealed himself to us in the most powerful way, we will always find joy in worshiping him. John Piper sums it up beautifully: God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in HIM.

Why pray? What is prayer for? Click here.

For more resources on prayer, click here.