A person asked me on behalf of a friend, “Why pray?” If God knows everything and His will is going to be done, what is the use of praying? Or, why not just say, “Your will be done” and leave it at that? I am going to offer some insights that I hope are helpful in regard to prayer. I believe they are biblically sound but they may not make everyone happy. Here it goes.

The Universal Order Verses the Particular Order

First, most problems and errors regarding the subject of prayer arise from the fact that not enough thought is given to discerning the difference between the “universal” and “particular” order of God’s creation. The universal order of all things is established, planned and fulfilled by God alone and is called His divine providence. How God actually does this complete ordering of things and yet allows for human free will is ultimately a mystery that we cannot fully comprehend. We cannot fully comprehend this mystery because of God’s infinitely powerful and wonderful nature. We can apprehend some of the mystery, but we will always be on the finite side of the prayer equation. Therefore, it is a great mistake to neglect direct statements in the Bible regarding prayer just because we think we somehow know how God orders His universal providence—we don’t. It is far better and more profitable for us to pay close attention to the “particular” order of creation as it is revealed to us in Scripture. In other words, we will be better off to leave the mysterious stuff to God and concentrate directly on what we can comprehend and we can do in the particular things of life.

What Can Be Discerned About the Universal Ordering of Things

One thing we can "apprehend" is that God’s immutable and the eternal providential counsels do not change. However, the immutability of God’s providence does not impose necessity on things that God knows nor does it suppress the value of prayer. This means that God has decided that it is a good thing that there should be creatures that have free wills—humans and angels. Man’s free will is called a “secondary cause” and the point is that God’s universal providence is not incompatible with secondary (free) causes. On the contrary, God is so infinitely capable that human free choices carry out the providence of God (God overcomes our evil choices). It is in this way that our prayers are effective before God, yet they do not destroy the immutability of God’s providence. Another way of saying this is that an individual request that is granted by God to a petitioner “falls” under the order of God’s universal divine providence.

Now get this. It is the same thing to say that we should not pray in order to obtain something from God because His providence is unchangeable, as to say we should not walk in order to get some place, or eat in order to take nourishment. It is just as absurd to say we shouldn’t walk because of God’s divine providence as it is to say we shouldn’t pray because of His providence. Just as sure as walking gets us to a physical place, prayer gets us to a spiritual place. Who in their right mind would stop walking just because they know that God has an immutable divine providence?

The Next Two Posts on Prayer

In my next post I will explore why it is good for God to answer the prayers of His faithful followers and why even great saints don’t always get their prayers granted. The last post in this series will explore the reasons why God will actually refuse to answer some prayers.