Your Father Knows

“When you pray, don’t babble on and on as the Gentiles do. They think their prayers are answered merely by repeating their words again and again. Don’t be like them, for your Father knows exactly what you need even before you ask him!” Matthew 6:7-8

I have asked myself the same question probably everyone who has read this verse asks themselves: “If God knows exactly what I need even before I ask him, why even bother praying?” To assume that I don’t need to pray because of this verse is to assume that the primary purpose of prayer is to make my needs known to God so that He can meet those needs, to assume that there is something about me (or anything for that matter) that God does not already know. 

But prayer is not a board meeting to inform the CEO of what’s going on in the company so that he can make a corporate decision. Prayer is a relationship. Jesus gives us a hint of that when he says “your Father knows.” When I was kid,  I had a bad accident on my bike. Even though my mom saw the whole thing, when I ran and crawled up in her lap for comfort she asked, “What happened?” She then patiently listened to my story about what went wrong before offering a solution and encouraging me to get back on my bike. 

Jesus wasn’t saying don’t pray. He was just saying don’t pray like the Gentiles do. Don’t be like them. Their prayers are a spiritual lottery. They pray vain repetitions thinking the more they petition, the greater the odds of being heard. But your Father already knows what you need. He is waiting for you to crawl up in His lap. He wants to listen to your story so that he can offer you the solutions and the encouragement that he already knows you need.