“…we’re facing some big things, Lord.
And You whisper: “Child, look — look at Me.
Now You’re facing the Best thing, who dwarfs all the other things.”
And we exhale.. and we get it, God, because that is the thing:
Prayer isn’t so much to remind our God of what all the problems are —
but to remind all the problems of who our God is.
And You cup us close tonight and tell us: No matter what you’re facing, look into My face — and know it, feel it:
Your God is greater than what you’re trying to face,
your God is bigger than what you’re trying to escape,
your God is better than anything you’re trying to chase.
And our problems fade in the light of Your gentle face, Your tender embrace….

#SharingPrayerTogether (Ann Voskamp)”

That’s just the thing. We tend to think of prayer in terms of reminding God of all our desires and wishes and problems, as if He’d at some point forgotten since the last time we prayed and needing constantly to be reminded and motivated. We tend to think of God as like us, only smarter, bigger, stronger, faster . . . . but He’s not. He’s completely other.

God knows every prayer of every saint throughout time and space. He knows every single one, just as He knows every single one of those who offered those petitions in the first place. He knows your name. He knows what you’re asking, even when you don’t.

What prayer does is remind your problems of who God is. It’s a reminder to the one praying that prayer still moves mountains. It’s to call our minds throughout history to all the times when God has delivered His people, granting to them in their hour of need what they needed most.

I love what Oswald Chambers said:

“To say that ‘prayer changes things’ is not as close to the truth as saying, ‘Prayer changes me and then I change things.’ God has established things so that prayer, on the basis of redemption, changes the way a person looks at things. Prayer is not a matter of changing things externally, but one of working miracles in a person’s inner nature.”