Is prayer still relevant?

                I have made this title rather similar to a previous title of mine (Is God still relevant?) for a reason here. With all of the need for checking and verifying information and methods of living, does prayer still have a “prayer” for people to talk to God today? I would say yes, and I want to take a few minutes to unpack why prayer still works, even when the answer from God is no.
                So what is prayer? A casual definition for it is a conversation with God. In my prayer life, I talk to God about things that happened in my day, thanking him for what happened and asking forgiveness if I could have handled a situation in a more Christ-like manner. I also ask him to take care of myself, my family, and the needs of others. What people like to focus on in objections to prayer is the requests of God. They will set up “experiments” to test God’s providence. Now there was another famous situation in which someone was trying to test God. When Satan tempted Jesus to throw himself down from the temple and bring a legion of angels to catch him so that his feet would not strike stone. Jesus simply replied “It is said ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Luke 4:12). Now what does he mean by that? We should not court danger, be it physical or spiritual, in an arrogance that God will take care of us. We see what happens to Israel in the Old Testament when they court danger brashly thinking that God would protect them no matter what they do. How do we pray that it tests God? Praying that God would let us ace the exam we haven’t studied for, blessing us with massive wealth that we would spend on ourselves, that we wouldn’t get found out in our lies or sin (which is massively ironic). So how do we pray that we don’t test God? Well, we are told in the New Testament that God will provide whatever we pray so long as we pray in sync with his will (1 John 5:14). If we need a template to how we should pray, look at each element of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:9-13).

                So we have a quick rundown of do’s and don’t’s of prayer, but I have yet to get to the point of the question. Is prayer still relevant? Well the quick answer is a resounding yes! If you are a Christian I would hope that you believe in a relevant, living God who is a person and wants to be a part of your life. God wants to hear from you about your life and what he can do to help! Now, the big stinger of all of this. God is definitely a person and is, well, God, and is the ultimate authority in the universe. He is not your fairy godfather and has the right to say no to prayer requests, as hard as that answer is. This is not because God is a tyrant or a cruel master, but because he has so much better planned for us than we could ever imagine. I would hope that this has been helpful if you are a Christian struggling in their prayer life or if you aren’t a believer and wondering what the deal was with prayer. May God bless you and have a good rest of your day. 

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