What’s the point of prayer if God already knows everything?

We sat on my porch, myself and a dear friend, with a tray of snacks between us as we caught up on life. She filled me in on her family, choking back tears as she explained the setbacks, struggles, and heartache of a family member’s medical diagnosis. Their world had been turned upside down overnight. After months of suffering, nothing was improving.

“Honestly, I don’t even see the point of prayer anymore. If God already knows everything, then why bother?”

I don’t remember how I responded. I’m not sure if I tried answering such a raw, painful confession, or if I just sat in the moment with her. But I understood. Because I’ve wondered the same thing.

It seems so contradicting – we’re expected to pray and commanded by God to never stop [1]. But God is also omniscient. He knows what we’ll say before we say it, and he knows what will happen in every detail of our lives and this world we live in [2]. So what’s the point in petitioning the Lord?

When we ask out of genuine curiosity, we gain intellectual understanding as we learn about God and study the scriptures [3]. We pray for different reasons – adoration, confession, and thanksgiving in addition to asking for help. We pray for the sake of relationship, for our own hearts, and sometimes just because Jesus himself did. 

But when we’re in seasons of desperation and hopelessness, underneath the question of “why pray?” we can really be asking if God even cares. We bypass the intellect and cry out for our hearts, our emotions, our pain. This article aims to answer our question through that lens.

Dark seasons will threaten any of our faith. When we’re losing strength to endure, we find comfort in community, encouragement in reminders, and relief in knowing we aren’t alone. We lean on the prayers of those around us and the groanings of the Spirit on our behalf. And we continue to pray ourselves, among many reasons, because God hears, God responds, and God loves.

God hears
But know that the Lord has set apart the godly for himself; the Lord hears when I call to him. Psalm 4:3

We can be confident of this: the Lord hears our every prayer. He hears our cries, he hears our rejoicing, he hears everything. There is nothing too complicated for him to understand, and there is nothing too small to escape his attention. He wants to hear from us, and he never grows tired of listening.

When the disciples were with Jesus on a boat and in a storm, it wasn’t the wind and the waves that woke him up, it was the cries of his people [4]. Our voices matter to him. They capture his attention and provoke a response.

God responds 
He brought me out into a broad place; he rescued me, because he delighted in me. Psalm 18:19 

Prayer moves the heart of God. While it’s a mystery to reconcile a sovereign king who does not change his mind and who responds to prayers, we know both are true. God does not change. And God responds. 

The Lord calls us to make our requests known to him [5], and the book of James warns, we don’t have because we don’t ask [6]. “The prayer of a righteous person has great power,” (James 5:16).

We can look across Scripture and see God respond to Abraham praying for Sodom, to his people crying out from slavery in Egypt, to Hannah praying for a baby, to the Church praying for Paul, Silas, and Peter in prison. We look across our own lives and remember God’s responses to our prayers. God is continuously working. 

God loves 
He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? Romans 8:32

Our perception of circumstances may cause us to doubt, but the cross is our guarantee of God’s love. While we were sinners, not praying, not seeking God’s will, not living in obedience and worse, deliberately, confidently living against him – that is when he rescued us. He came all the way. 

Dane Ortlund explains in Gentle and Lowly, “(Jesus) didn’t simply leave heaven for me; he endured hell for me… In Christ’s death, God is confronting our dark thoughts of him and our chronic insistence that divine love must have an endpoint, a limit, a point at which it finally runs dry.” But God’s love is as infinite as he is. 

There is no unanswered prayer, no suffering, no despair, no hopelessness, no medical diagnosis, “nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:39). Through Christ, God the Father has brought us into his family, permanently.

We respond 
“After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him. So Jesus said to the twelve, “Do you want to go away as well?” John 6:66-67

When Jesus asks his disciples this question, Simon Peter is the first to speak up. “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (John 6:68). Such is the crux for us. 

If we don’t cry out to the Lord in our times of need, where else would we possibly run?

Where else would we find help? Where else could we find comfort? hope? forgiveness? life? Who else could we talk to that could care for us more?

Even and especially when we don’t see the results we want, we keep praying, keep falling into the arms of our Creator, our Father, because there is no greater place to be. He is sure to walk us through every valley, sure to be faithful to his promises, sure to never leave our side.

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[1] pray without ceasing (1 Thess 5:17)
[2] Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, O Lord, you know it altogether… in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them. (Psalm 139:4, 16)
[3] If God is Sovereign, Why Pray? — For the Gospel
If God is Sovereign, Why Do We Pray? – Radical 
If God Is Sovereign, Why Should I Pray? – Ask Paul Tripp 
[4] Matthew 8:23 – 27
[5] but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. (Philippians 4:6b)
[6] You do not have, because you do not ask. (James 4:2b)

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Related: God Hears Your Prayers | Revive Our Hearts Blog | Revive Our Hearts