The simple and straightforward reason to pray is that it works. That’s essentially what Jesus tells us in our text for this week, Matthew 7:7-11. “Ask and it will be given you…” And many of us who pray can tell at least one or more middling to truly dramatic stories about a time when prayer really did work.
When I was in seminary a member of the church we attended had gall bladder surgery. I visited him in the hospital afterward and he told me that one of the conditions of his recovery and release from the hospital was to be able to urinate normally. That had yet to happen following the surgery, so he asked me to pray for that event. I did so. Later when I saw him out of the hospital he told me that the prayed for event had happened within an hour of my prayer. He compared it to Chaplain O’Neill’s famous prayer to stop the rain for General Patton during World War II, although the effect was the reverse, starting a flow rather than stopping it.
But as C. S. Lewis and many other thoughtful Christians know and have pointed out, the clear effect of prayer is not easily proved. Lewis dismissed the possibility of studying prayer statistically, say by having hospital patients prayed for in some controlled way, because such a study would prevent any real prayer from occurring. Nonetheless there have been a number of attempts to study prayer in just that statistical way. As one might expect, the results are thoroughly inconclusive.
Jesus’ assurances about prayer in our text are placed into the context of an analogy, a parable about human parents and their children, which can help us to see why prayer cannot be regarded or tested as a kind of divine vending machine, yielding statistically measurable results. Even fallible human parents are disposed to give the very best they can to their children. This is what Jesus tells in verses 9 to 11. Yet we also know that the best human parents do not accede to every whim or request their children express. Such a practice would be foolish, poor parenting. Thus this parable about parents giving good gifts both assures us of God’s intent to answer our prayers for the best and explains why many if not most of our prayers are not answered in the way we expect.
Nonetheless, the assurance that “how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” is plenty of reason to pray. What remains is to understand what those “good things” God wishes to give us are. Luke 11:13 helps us get at this by taking those same words of Jesus and rendering them, “how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” Prayer works because it connects us in a loving relationship with God our Father who always wants to give us what is best, and what is best for us is a deep and abiding relationship with His own self.