What Prayer Does

There are lots of things prayer does. I’m almost tempted not to blog on this for fear I would leave out something important about prayer and look foolish. However, I’m going to swallow my pride, admit I don’t know everything about prayer and just share one simple thing that prayer does....

When you pray you become more attuned to spiritual things. That is, you begin to see God (spiritual lessons) all around you. You see these God lessons in everyday life. For example, if a week goes by and you’ve spent no time in prayer you might walk past a plant and think “nice plant”, while if you spent time in prayer that week you might see that God gave us illustrations of the resurrection in everyday life. You see, a seed has to die and then be planted in the ground before it can become something totally different. In the same way, when we die, that’s not the end of the story. We will live again. And the bodies we will have in heaven are going to be totally different than the bodies we have here on earth, just like the body of a plant is different than the body of a seed, or how a butterfly is totally different from a caterpillar.

Or take for example something as simple as a banana (trust me, I know that sounds weird). If you’ve spent time in prayer you might see a spiritual lesson. For example, when the outside of a banana looks good, the inside usually tastes nasty (it’s not ripe yet). But if the outside looks kind of nasty (brown) it’s usually ripe and will taste delicious. What’s the lesson in that you ask? Don’t judge by external appearances. What does that have to do with Scripture? In the Old Testament (First Samuel I think) the Bible records that God doesn’t look at outside appearances, God looks at the heart. We as humans judge by external appearances (which is foolish) but God judges by looking at the heart.

Again, my point is that as you spend time in prayer you will begin to see God in everything. That is, you’ll begin to see spiritual lessons that teach you about God through nature, through object lessons, through people, through experiences, etc. I know I’ve felt at times like God doesn’t speak to me, but now I feel like God has always been speaking, but because of my prayerlessness I just couldn’t hear Him.

Again, prayer increases your spiritual acuity. That’s just one benefit of many when we pray.