Christian Photographers Community

from George MacDonald, The Word of Jesus on Prayer

'But if God is so good as you represent him, and if he knows all that we need, and better far than we do ourselves, why should it be necessary to ask him for anything?'

I answer, What if he knows prayer to be the thing we need first and most? What if the main object in God's idea of prayer be the supplying of our great, our endless need—the need of himself? What if the good of all our smaller and lower needs lies in this, that they help to drive us to God? Hunger may drive the runaway child home, and he may or may not be fed at once, but he needs his mother more than his dinner. Communion with God is the one need of the soul beyond all other need; prayer is the beginning of that communion, and some need is the motive of that prayer. Our wants are for the sake of our coming into communion with God, our eternal need. If gratitude and love immediately followed the supply of our needs, if God our Saviour was the one thought of our hearts, then it might be unnecessary that we should ask for anything we need. But seeing we take our supplies as a matter of course, feeling as if they came out of nothing, or from the earth, or our own thoughts, instead of out of a heart of love and a will which alone is force, it is needful that we should be made feel some at least of our wants, that we may seek him who alone supplies all of them, and find his every gift a window to his heart of truth. So begins a communion, a talking with God, a coming-to-one with him, which is the sole end of prayer, yea, of existence itself in its infinite phases. We must ask that we may receive; but that we should receive what we ask in respect of our lower needs, is not God's end in making us pray, for he could give us everything without that: to bring his child to his knee, God withholds that man may ask.

Gripped,
Kevin

There are indeed some good points here.  Another point that has blessed me, though is that one of the purposes of prayer is to make us cooperative with God.  It isn't that God needs our prayer to accomplish His designs - He doesn't - but He simply wills to incorporate our prayers in the accomplishment of His works.  He uses our prayers in the accomplishment of His will.  So, resultingly, in many cases, He will not act if we do not ask - "we have not because we ask not."  He just wills to use our prayers to accomplish His will.

I agree there is a lot of good points here.
I think Daniel understood the need to ask in prayer. I believe God wants us to know the importance of coming to Him for our every need. In prayer we realize without God I can do nothing.
It is in Him we move and have our being.