For May 25, 2006 Church Page, Highland News Leader

Do you think your prayers will change God’s mind?  Suppose you pray for rain for your crops while someone else is praying that it won’t rain on their picnic?  Wouldn’t God be wiser than to take direction from so many different people? Jesus thought it evidence of God’s grace that “he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.”  (Matthew 5:45)

So, why pray, if God already knows what we need and provides it? Perhaps that is why we pray.  Jesus also said: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” (Matthew 6:7-8)  It is because God already knows our needs that we may come, like trusting children, to tell God what is on our hearts.  Those words of Jesus are followed with the Lord’s Prayer, which guides us to pray for our daily bread.  If the crops are parched from lack of rain, certainly we should lay this burden on God as a Parent who cares.

More than this: Jesus expected us to pray and believe that God will grant our prayers.  Later in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus told his disciples: “Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith, you will receive.”  (Matthew 21:22).  I believe that this prayer of faith really does change things, not so much because it changes God’s mind as because our prayers themselves are avenues through which God is able to heal and help.  They are indeed another form of “love made visible”.  And love is a powerful thing. 

Just as medicine helps people to heal, just as a caring presence helps people to heal, so an interceding prayer can bathe a needy person in God’s healing love – and ours.

Rev. Dr. David Beebe

Evangelical United Church of Christ , Highland