The True Purpose of Prayer

We too often think of Prayer as something we have to get through, but we get through for the purpose of getting into His presence. Prayer represents primarily only one thing for us— complete, entire, absolute identification with God— and there is nothing in which this identification is more real to us than in prayer.

“Your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him” (). Then why should we ask? The point of prayer is not to get answers from God, but to have perfect and complete oneness with Him. If we pray only because we want answers, we will become irritated and angry with God. We receive an answer every time we pray, but it does not always come in the way we expect, and our spiritual irritation shows our refusal to identify ourselves truly with our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove that God answers prayer, but to be living trophies of God’s grace.

Matthew 6:8 KJV 1900

Be not ye therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.

“…I do not say to you that I shall pray the Father for you; for the Father Himself loves you…” (). Have you reached such a level of intimacy with God that the only thing that can account for your prayer life is that it has become one with the Father, just as Jesus and the Father are One? Has our Lord exchanged your life with His vital life? If so, then “in that day” you will be so closely identified with Him that there will be no distinction.

John 16:26–27 KJV 1900

At that day ye shall ask in my name: and I say not unto you, that I will pray the Father for you: For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God.

When prayer seems to be unanswered, beware of trying to place the blame on someone else. That is always a trap of Satan. When you seem to have no answer, there is always a reason— God uses these times to give you deep personal instruction, and it is not for anyone else but you.