My Problem With Prayer

I've had a problem with prayer. It undoubtedly declared itself during our stay in Seattle while Andrew was in the hospital, but it has been there all along in every other topic and problem and has been since. My problem with prayer is that God will do whatever He will do, and prayer doesn't change that. Now, someone will point out all of the great answers to prayer in the Bible and I am not going to argue with them: God has answered prayers in the past. But for all points and purposes, those prayers have all been about very large problems, like nations being destroyed or extreme droughts being ended. There are no prayers in the Bible like, "Lord, please give me a good night's sleep" that have been answered. So why do we bother to pray little prayers like that?

My problem with prayer is that some people would argue, "Well, sometimes God answers 'No' and sometimes he answers 'Yes,' so we should always pray in case the answer might be yes when it otherwise would have been no!" But how would you know one from the other? Using the 'good night's sleep' prayer, someone might pray that every night before they go to bed. Sometimes, they have a good nights sleep and they praise God for it. Other times, they may have an awful night and then say, 'God must have answered in the negative.' But I think that it's crazy to believe that a prayer is going to make any difference in what type of sleep you will have! I'm going to have the same night's sleep regardless of whether I pray about it or not! I may not pray at all and have the best night of sleep in my life; or I may pray very sincerely and have the worst night of sleep. The request has no effect whatsoever, so why pray it?

Now I'm not saying that we shouldn't pray at all, that would be blasphemous. I'm only saying that the little requests don't matter at all, and the big requests don't really matter either! We can be thankful, we can pray for wisdom, we can pray in worship, we can pray just to speak our mind to God; and all of those things are beneficial. But to pray and ask God for a good sleep or a safe trip, what difference does it make? None at all.

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