Dear Elim Grace,

Let’s be honest: Do you wonder why you should pray, if God already knows everything?

It’s true. God knows everything about me and my life. God was present at the beginning of creation and of time, but not time as I understand time. Time comes to me in successive moments, one after the other. But God sees all of time, every moment past, present, and future, at once. C.S. Lewis said time is God’s “unbounded now”. 

In ways we can’t comprehend, God has taken all our prayers from the beginning to the ending of time as He knows it and has incorporated them all into His good and perfect will. So we must not think of prayer as something that comes to God AFTER he has determined what to, but BEFORE in eternity. 

Your prayers matter because God who is before time and outside of time has seen your prayers and worked all of them together for good according to His purpose in time. In many ways, it’s never too late to pray.

But more to the point of prayer, God wants to work in me through my prayers. 

God doesn’t only want to know everything ABOUT me. He wants to know ME. “Search me, O God, and know my heart!” (Psalm 139:23) cries the Psalmist. God wants to have a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with me. He wants me to open my heart up to Him. 

To know and to be known by God (Galatians 4:9) is the highest and deepest joy in all of creation. The Apostle Paul proclaimed, “I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:8) 

The reason the Son of God stepped out of eternity and into time, out of heaven and into His creation, is that I might have “fellowship with God,” a “life abundant”. “This is eternal life,” prayed Jesus, “that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)

In prayer God wants to treat me not as an object, but as a person. So in prayer I must come to see myself as I am — not an inanimate object, but a personal being before God. 

There is nothing more precious we can do with our time than live in close relationship and deep fellowship with God. Than come into His presence with thanksgiving through prayer. 

Pastor Jonathan