Everyone is called to pray, but not everyone prays. Some don’t pray because they believe that God doesn’t care about the smaller details of their lives. Others don’t pray because they believe that God doesn’t hear their prayers, and even if He did, He wouldn’t move on their behalf. These are good reasons not to pray if they were true, but they aren’t. They are lies that can easily be exposed by looking at the truth of the Word. Here, we will look at three reasons the Word tells us we should pray.
God Cares About Every Detail of Our Lives
God cares about every detail of our lives, no matter how big or small. God cares so much about us that He knows the number of hairs we have on our head (Luke 12:7). When Jesus walked this earth, He didn’t just “show-up” when it was a matter of life and death, but He also “showed-up” when it wasn’t. Jesus cared enough about the details of a wedding that when the wine ran out, He made more (John 2:1-10). He cared enough about a crowd missing lunch that He multiplied a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish to feed 5,000. God cared enough for me that when I asked Him to help me find a lost cell phone, He showed me where to find it. If it matters to us, it matters to God; we can pray about everything and anything and we should.
God Hears Our Prayers
How do we know that God hears our prayers? His Word says that He does. Psalms 34:15 reminds us that “the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous, and his ears are attentive to their cry.” In Jeremiah 29:12 God tells us that when we pray He will listen. In Jeremiah 33:3, God tells us to call to Him and He will answer us and tell us great and unsearchable things. 1 John 5:14-15 urges us to confidently come to God in prayer because when we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. If it were true that God doesn’t hear our prayers, why would He spend so much time encouraging us to pray?
Prayer Moves God
God moves on this earth in response to believers’ prayers. Sometimes, when we pray, it seems God is not moving, but things are happening in the spiritual realm that we cannot see. Daniel fasted and prayed for 21 days waiting for God to move. For 21 days he cried out to God but there was only silence. Finally, an angel appeared to Daniel and said to him, “from the first day that you purposed to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them.…” (Daniel 10:12). Daniel had no idea that from the moment he uttered the first word of his prayer that God began to move in the spiritual realm towards the answer. God heard Him. Sometimes we must wait longer than we want for the answer and sometimes we don’t receive the answer we want at all. Instead of letting doubt take hold, we must trust that God is moving on our behalf and that He always has our best interests at heart.
You are called to pray. You are called to communicate with your lifeline, with your one true path to peace, your heavenly Father. God cares about you and every detail of your life no matter how big or small. God hears your prayers. He wants you to talk to Him. He wants a relationship with you. Don’t lose faith. Don’t lose hope. Sometimes it seems God is not moving on your behalf, but the truth is you can’t always see Him moving; you can’t always see what He is setting in motion. Even in those times of silence, you can be assured that God is working things out with your best interests at heart; that He is working to give you hope and a future!
