Why must we pray?

Question

If God hears our prayers (through our thoughts) before we pray, then why must we pray?

Answer 1

We should pray aloud just to confirm what it is we are praying for. The sound of your own voice may make you feel embarrased, but it's when you fight through that embarrasment, that you're able to have a more spritual connection and have a more heart felt prayer. It may even bring you closer to your spritaul self.

Answer 2

So we only focus on him, and block out everything else. It brings you closer to him,and the more you pray, the more you have access to him. It's like being on the phone with your best friend. When you pray, ask him once for something. The next time you pray, thank him for answering your prayer. Why? Because if you keep asking for the same thing over and over, he'll think you didn't believe he could hear you the first time, and you didn't believe he was going to answer you prayer. Believe you have already received. He will answer in his own time.

Answer 3

Prayer has a way of focusing your mind. For instance, if I dont actively pray for the guys at work, I dont remember throughout the day to try to take advantage of opportunities to share God. I am more mindful of opportunities that God presents to me.

Prayer focuses the mind and God loves to hear faithful prayers as much as you would like to hear good things from your own children. Also you have the ability to influence many, especially at family functions if you hone your prayer and peaople know what is on your heart and that you are focused on God. Not that prayer is for show, but it does open doors along those lines.

Answer 4

Well, he does know what we're thinking, but that isn't praying. God wants you to have a close relationship with him and you can't have that by just having God read your mind. That's not even fair!
You must pray for all the blessings God gives you and thank him for everything he helps you with. If he gives you burdons to bear, you pray to God for help. If you didn't have any burdons, you wouldn't need God, so then you would forget about him. So everything God does, has a reason, just have faith in him. Good luck!

Answer 5

Hi there:

I don't think we "Must Pray". I find that God (or whichever Divine Power makes most sense to you) doesn't need our prayers. WE do. We pray to feel that we are one with our god(s), to feel the presence of something greater than us in whose hands we can offer our fears, problems, or shortcomings without being criticized. If the gods demanded our prayers, they'd still be around like they were in the old days (Old Testament has God interacting with humans all the time, as did the older faiths [Sumerians, Babylonian, etc.]). Now that they have given the world to us, we need them more than they need us.

That's my way of thinking anyway,
Be well in all things,
Rave

Answer 6

Hey, you have to take your 50/50 chance.
I could pray to a dough nut, ( actually I do) and I have exactly the same chance of having my prayers answered as praying to the imaginary man in the sky.
Scientifically proven too, by the way.
Your god....Absolutely no proof.

Answer 7

It's for us. God knows what we need and what we're going to say even before the thoughts come to us. Prayer is for us, it's a sweet communion and communication with God. It brings peace and gives us a feeling of assurance. Also, the bible tells us to pray without ceasing. God knows how much we need peace (in this insane world)....and gives us the privilege of prayer in the name of His son.

Answer 8

Books like Conversations with God and Sylvia Browne's Book of Angels extol the virtues of mind reading, telepathy, being "guided", angels hooking into your chakra etc.

God is not like that. He likes communication. He's not into arranging our world for us. It's ours. He encourages us by means of communication, not shifting things around in our consciousness or perception of the world.

Acts 17:27 says: "God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us." The outspokenness of this speech indicates, not that the apostle Paul was bombastic or proud, but that the situation in Athens with idolatry and associated problems such as family break-up, crime etc. must have been absolutely deplorable.

If we can't even communicate literately with God, how on earth would we be able to manage it in the face of some of the tragedies that happen, such as the Virginia Tech disaster?

Answer 9

Paul states to be never ceasing in prayer. Meaning always dwelling on God even in thought.

I noticed the athiests sure think about God alot on here. Makes me wonder if in the back of their hidden thoughts there may be some belief. If they didn't they wouldn't answer all these questions on here, even if they are negative.

Answer 10

We do not pray for the benefit of God because God is all knowing and already understands our needs it can be in those quite moments in talking to him that the answers come to us.