Prayer is an attempt to let God change our mind

Let us first understand that we do not pray to God to change his mind regarding his decisions on our life. God does not change his mind by listening to our prayers. He does all the things after the council of his own will, that is to say he is completely sovereign and even works our prayers. Everything was written in our book in advance. It is therefore logical to come to the conclusion that the fervent prayer of a righteous man doesn't really change anything in god's mind, and that we really ought never to make our petitions known to God because we should be seeking only his will.

But the truth here is, nevertheless, that we are predestined to be brought into trials that will involuntarily prompt a fervent prayer by a righteous man, such as this prayer. This is all coming from our same Lord who devoted two whole parables to telling us to make our petitions known and be persistent in prayer. Why does God do this? The answer to this is that he certainly does not do it for His own benefit.

God already knows every word we will pray (and is even causing it). We are instructed to be persistent and fervent in prayer for our own benefit, "that you enter not into temptation." If we do not follow these instructions we will certainly "enter into temptation”. Yes, it is all written in advance, but the example of our Lord demonstrates that those who are "as He is" will be brought to fervent and persistent prayer.

God himself wants us to walk through life trusting him holding his helping hand. The world was created that way, we walked away from it, Jesus died to offer it back to us, but the desired relationship has not changed. He wants us trusting him, like father and child. When we put our feelings in front of Him we will not change his mind but we might affect what he does. If I do not ask for any xyz He might decide to let me pursue it in the secular world and marketplace, those rules applying. But if we do ask he will come to us with, "Ok, lets talk about that. Lets examine what you really want and the best way of experiencing it."

Let us take an example of a girl of 6 years wanting to have a bicycle for herself. When we asked her questions knowing more into her desires. We set up a system where she earned money by helping her father wash the car, helping her mommy wash dishes at some house, etc. We overpaid her by tons, and in about 6 weeks she had the money to buy the bicycle. When she handed the money in her bag to pay the shop owner and then wheeled the bike out of the store, she really stood ten feet tall. She loved the bike but it was pride of ownership she really wanted all along, and we showed her the means how to get it.

However, did we change our minds when she asked for it? No. But her asking put the issues on her table, not ours, and we were able to provide what she was really asking for. If we had not waited on her to ask, but just provided the bike, she would not have gotten what she really wanted, and she would not have enjoyed trusting us in the process, which is what we all enjoyed. '

Now when we realise that it's about aligning ourselves with God's kingdom, with his values, and with his character. I like the word "align" because I think it accurately reflects what we need to do in light of the effects of the fall, when we were all plunged into a state of sin. This means we are out of alignment with God and prefer instead to indulge our own desires.

And just as we sometimes have to take our cars into the shop to get our wheels realigned when they "want to" go in a different direction than the designers' intent, prayer is about submitting ourselves to God, aligning ourselves with him and his purposes. So prayer isn't mainly about telling God what we want so he can give us our heart's desire, it's supposed to be about submitting to his will even as we share our desires with him, with the understanding that if he wants something different and better than what we want, we acknowledge that he has the right to do whatever he wants because he is God and we are not.

We pray to communicate with God, because communication is an absolutely essential part of maintaining a relationship. God is sovereign and yet when we pray it makes a difference. I think that praying keeps us connected to our source, he father of the universe, so it is a way to keep on abiding in him and allowing him to abide in us. So we pray not to get what we want out of God like some cosmic vending machine, but to keep us connected to and dependent on him, which is what we were created for in the first place. Cheers!