A Question for the ages: If God knows everything, why do we have to pray? Pray is not for God's benefit, but for ours. We were created, in the beginning, to fellowship with God. I assume this because of Genesis 3:8 " Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden." (NIV) that they had a physical relationship. However, after the fall, God clothed them and banned them from the Garden of Eden. God can't look at sin. Habakkuk 1:13 says; Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?" (NIV) So, if God couldn't look at us, how could we commune with Him? The definition of prayer is: a solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship. Although, we know from Genesis 4:2-16, Cain and Able communed with God, the first true indication of prayer in the bible is in Genesis 4:26 after Enos was born people began to call upon the Lord. Because, God could not look upon sin, people in the Old Testament had to make sacrifices to communicate with God. This dates back to Cain and Able. They were called to give their first fruits; the very best of what they had. Able did and Cain didn't and, well we know how that worked out. People even made sacrifices for unknown sin, we sees that Job made many sacrifices to atone for whatever sins his children committed. Job 1:4-6 Now this being said, God DID talk to people. We see examples of this in Abraham, Noah and Moses just to name a few. However, this communion was still not like it was in the Garden of Eden before the fall; not like it was suppose to be. Because God loves and longs to commune with us, He sent our own personal communication application. According to the Old Testament a true sacrifice had to be that of an unblemished animal. There was only one thing that would work; God Himself. Jesus came and became a sacrifice on our behalf. so we can reconcile with God. Matt 27:51 Tells us the veil of the temple was torn when Jesus died. This represented the fact that we no longer needed to make sacrifices or have a mediator to communicate with God. We have 24/7/365 access to God. No, it isn't the same as walking with Him in the Garden of Eden, but it may be even better! I find it funny that in this techno age we live in, it's so had to communicate with people. If you call someone, you usually have to leave a message, if you text or email, you have to wait for a response, once we get the response we need we may have to schedule our response We probably spend more time trying to talk to someone than we actually spend talking to them. We no longer have to play tag with God. All we have to do is pray and call out to Him. God is not an ATM and I think a lot of people expect Him to be. Some say "I tried that praying and nothing happened." or "I prayed but I didn't get the answer "I" wanted. I've heard it's been said God answers prayers in three ways: "YES", "NO" or "WAIT" You don't, shouldn't, pray just to get what you want. You pray to communicate and fellowship with God. Yes , we can petition God for things we want or need. John 14;13-14. God said ask anything in My name and it will be given to you. A lot of people who don't get the answers to prayer they want will cite these verse. However, they leave the part that says "So that the Father may be glorify in the Son" out. Sometimes our desire don't match up with Gods. Romans 8:28 says "And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who[a] have been called according to his purpose." So, when we pray we need to remember a few things. We are communicating with God to fellowship with Him. We have direct contact like Adam and Eve did. We don't need to make sacrifices in order to talk to God: Jesus did that. Lastly, we need to remember God does this His way and it will all work out for the good of those who love Him.
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