The purpose of prayer? For most people, prayer is the asking God for what they want. While we should bring our needs before God, there is more to prayer than submitting our Christmas list to God.
At the end of Matthew 9, Jesus points out to the disciples that the fields are white unto harvest. The disciples are commanded to pray that God would provide workers for that harvest.
The next story (Matthew 10:1ff) has Jesus bringing the disciples back together and sending them out in teams of two to proclaim the Gospel and minister to the needs of others. The disciples become the answer to the prayer for laborers.
As Rees Howell observed, “One can never be a true intercessor until he is first willing to be part of the answer to his own prayers.”
How often we pray that God will do something and yet never ask how we can be the channel through which the answer comes. We pray for the salvation of others while never sharing our faith. We pray for the hungry without sharing bread. We pray for missionaries without going out ourselves.
We should not be surprised if one day we ask for the Lord to do something only to hear Him say, “Go, do it.” Prayer is not to be just on our knees but also on our feet as we move forward to carry out the prayer. The purpose of prayer is not receiving. The purpose of prayer is to receive our marching orders from the Supreme Commander.
I recall that one of the most memorable non-biblical literary sources in which this same issue is addressed is in "Where the Red Fer Grows" by Wilson Rawls.
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