Why Do I Have to Ask If God Knows Everything? What Does Prayer Actually Do?
How to Pray So That You KNOW You'll Get Your Answer, Q&A
Question: Why Do I Have to Ask If God Knows Everything?
There are few better ways to grow your faith than praying.
If you pray regularly, you can’t help but grow your faith. You’re continually presenting your requests to God, then seeing what God does in response.
Prayer grows your faith, because you have to trust God with your requests.
Faith is trust. If you have faith in someone, you trust them. To grow your faith in God, lean into areas where you have to trust Him. Prayer is the key area in which we have to trust God. When we pray, we entrust Him with everything we asked. It’s out of our hands, now. It’s in His. We’re leaning on Him, trusting Him to hear and act.
Why do we have to pray?
One answer is that prayer makes us strong. We need prayer to grow our faith.
Show me someone with strong faith, and I guarantee they have a good prayer life. If their faith in the Lord is rich, robust, and energizing, you will certainly find them praying often with the God they trust so much.
Conversely, show me someone with weak faith, someone who hesitates to trust God with anything. You won’t be surprised to find that they don’t have a good prayer life. Someone who doesn’t trust God isn’t going to be entrusting Him daily with their needs and desires.
The more we pray, the stronger our faith will become.
The stronger our faith becomes, the more we’ll accomplish with our prayers.
The more we accomplish with our prayers, the greater impact we’ll have for God’s Kingdom, and the more fulfilling our lives will be.
Asking stretches your faith. Asking gives God a chance to reveal Himself, to teach us, to refine our faith.
Asking grows our faith. Asking requires trust. It reveals your heart. How do you react as you wait for the answer? Will you persist or abandon the effort? Not only does asking grow your faith, but it reveals the weaknesses that need strengthening.
All this is good.
But is this all prayer is?
Is prayer a spiritual weight room? A place where you go to work out, to make your muscles stronger, but not a place where anything actually happens? Is prayer only an activity that strengthens our faith, but doesn’t change anything in the real world, because God already knows what He wants to do?
Not at all.
Prayer is what brings Heaven to earth.
Prayer is what turns the world of rebellion into the Kingdom of God.
Prayer is what makes things happen.
This sounds great — but it seems to clash with an all-powerful, all-knowing God. How could our prayers change what God will do, if God already knows what we’ll ask, already knows what we need, and already knows what He will do?
The answer is one word: Dominion.
In Chapter 6, we explored the prayer “Your Kingdom come!” This is a prayer we must pray for God’s Kingdom to come in this world, as we are the ones with the dominion over this world. When God created humanity, He gave us the dominion over this earth. We must invite Him in, just as a teenager invites their parents in their room.
God knows what we will ask, indeed.
But we still need to invite Him in, to give Him the legal right to come and work in the ways we need.
God must adhere to this plan, as it was His own power that set it in place. God used His sovereign power to establish humanity as the rulers of this world. It’s not our power that keeps God at bay, but His own power and authority which He has delegated to us.
And God doesn’t go back on His word. When God said we would have dominion over this world, He meant it.
If we don’t pray “Your Kingdom come,” it won’t — at least, not in our lives, or the areas we have control over.
If we don’t pray, we are like a stubborn teenager blocking the door to their bedroom, refusing to let their parents in. We have the authority to do so. God gave it to us. How we use it is up to us.
So yes: we need to ask. Even if God already knows.
Ask to humble yourself like a child.
Ask to grow.
Ask to learn.
Ask to know your part in bringing the Kingdom of God to earth.
Ask to partner with God in becoming who you were born to be.
Ask.
Then persist as God answers.
If we don’t pray it, not letting His Kingdom come. Blocking it. Leaving it hanging.
Like a little child.
Ask parent to help. Child is growing, has dominion of their own little life, making their own decisions and thinking their own little thoughts. Can ask for help. Parent can’t do everything or it will stunt them. No growth. No learning.
Child not just learning about selves, but parents. Learning to trust. Learning goodness of parents. Taking on more and more. Parents equipping, helping, teaching.
From the start, parents know their kids will ask for things. Need help. Can probably guess exactly what many of the request for help will be.
Child still needs to ask to invite parents in, to use dominion to allow parents to work in child’s life Author resistance, with partnership, with learning, with growth.
Child resisting parents help is no good. Child unaware of help is not learning. Child who has everything done for them is not going. Child needs to invite in to accomplish purpose or f being child: to learn, to grow, to actualize who they are meant to be.
So yes: you need to ask. Even if God already knows.
Ask to humble yourself like a child.
Ask to grow.
Ask to learn.
Ask to give God dominion-granted access.
Ask to partner with God in becoming who you are born to be.
This echoes how Jesus explained the Kingdom of God. Jesus said something curious: to really understand it, don’t think like an adult. Don’t think like a scholar or a teacher. Instead, if you really want to understand the Kingdom of God, you need to think like a child.
Jesus said:
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (Matthew 18:1-4 ESV).
With prayer, we often wonder why we have to ask if God already knows our needs. If God knows everything, he obviously knows everything we need and everything we are going to ask. So if he already knows, why do we have to go to the trouble of saying it?
Consider humbling yourself to be like a child.
Children ask relentlessly, especially when they’re younger. They’ll ask the most insightful, naive, brilliantly curious questions about the world. They’ll ask a hundred questions each day, sometimes not even waiting until you answer before they ask three more. Sometimes they’ll ask for something over and over, even after you’ve said no, ceaselessly pressing until they get what they want.
Children ask.
Children ask because they trust. The child who asks a hundred questions every day does so because they trust their parents will answer. The child who presses over and over trusts that their parent is sure to answer if they are asked enough times.
Contrast this with a jaded adult who barely asks God for anything real. They might pray small, rote prayers at meal times or at church, but they don’t really expect God to answer. Even when they really need something, they might pray a few times, but then they’ll give.
Why don’t they pray more? Because they don’t trust. Unlike children, they don’t trust that God will answer if they keep pressing.
This adult could benefit from Jesus’ words — to turn and humble themselves to become like a little child. Trust that God will answer. Choose to ask, and ask again, and again, and again.
Don’t let pride kick you off your prayers. Don’t fall into the ruts of thinking God won’t answer.
Humble yourself to the attitude of a child who simply trusts.
You might find yourself understanding God better.
If you’ve been enjoying these posts, you can grab a copy of the book they come from right here:
https://kdp.amazon.com/amazon-dp-action/us/dualbookshelf.marketplacelink/B0DZ32ZLVV
