LIFE LESSON: Purpose of prayer is not to make God meet my expectations

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I grew up with the understanding that the purpose of prayer is to inform God about my expectations so he could fulfill them, but  I did not know what to make of it when  my expectations were not fulfilled as I expected. This  led me to ask questions about whether I prayed hard enough or long enough? Or even question the existence of GOD. I never asked these questions out loud but they were there at the back of my mind.


So when I saw the headline “Ace Magashule humbled by prayers ahead of corruption trial”, I paid attention because in South Africa it is common to see a politician or a prominent individual running to church for prayers when they find themselves in trouble. This always bothered me but previously it did not bother me enough to do anything about it. 

The fact that churches even complied with these politicians and in some cases they even invited them made me wonder about the purpose of prayer. It seems to me I am not the only person who thought the purpose of prayer is to make God meet my expectations.

So this time instead of letting it go as I have always done decided to reflect on this to see what I have learnt so far the purpose of  prayer in my journey of faith.

Purpose of prayer

To have an effective relationship with God, prayer is a requirement .It is a communication tool God has provided his children to enable them to communicate with Him. It is the will of God that his children use this tool but it is also my understanding that  over and above this it is the will of God to use prayer for the following reasons:
  • Spiritual growth
  • Battle for the soul
  • Expression of our needs
  • Intercession

Spiritual growth.

When we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior the Holy Spirit comes in to dwell in us, it  is a spiritual muscle that needs to be grown. Prayer is one of the tools we have available to grow our spiritual muscle, and this is one of the reasons prayer should be a consistent practice..

Spiritual growth enables the ability to discern the voice of God. 

Battle for the soul

Humans are made of Spirit, Soul and Body. The spirit influences the soul and the soul influences the body which in turn manifests how we react to other people and God’s creation.

The reason why the Holy Spirit comes upon us when we accept Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior is so that He (Holy Spirit)  can influence our soul which in turn will influence our bodies to do the will of God.

There are other spiritual forces who have rebelled against God and their sole purpose is to steer us away from doing the will of God. So these other spiritual forces are in a battle with God to influence our souls. Even though Jesus Christ has defeated these spiritual forces on the cross, if we have not accepted Jesus as our Savior, these other spiritual forces who are acting against the will of God are free to  influence our souls.

Jesus protects our souls from being influenced by these forces but we also have a job to do to remind our souls through prayer to be aligned to the influence of the Holy Spirit.

Therefore prayer is our weapon to use in the battle of our souls.

Expression of our needs

When we tell God about our needs it is the highest expression of trust, submission and union with God. 

We therefore should  use prayer to express our needs to God and trust him with the consequences.

Intercession

Through the life of Jesus we are taught to spend less time thinking about ourselves and more time thinking about the needs of others. One way to put this in practice is to intercede in prayer for the needs of others.

Therefore my take away from this is that the purpose of prayer is not to make God fulfill my expectations but it is to align myself with the will of  God.

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