What Do We Expect When We Pray

In the Bible, there are verses that address belief and faith in relationship to prayer and seeing God at work in our lives. A helpful way to understand belief and faith in our contemporary society is through the lens of expectation. What do we expect to happen when we pray? Do we really expect that our prayers are going to change things?

I’m not talking about specific expectations, but rather a general expectation that God will show up in our lives or in a situation, bringing action that changes the reality of what we see and experience. God responds when we pray, shifting the storyline and creating a different reality than what would have existed without prayer.

This kind of expectation is a helpful way to think about prayer. It prevents prayer from becoming a type of therapy to calm ourselves or from getting stuck in a place where we think that our prayers do not matter. The biblical encouragement to “pray without ceasing” and other similar instructions indicate that God wants to act on our behalf.

As we press into the reality of discovering more about God, how He works in the world, and what His Kingdom looks like in our everyday reality, we begin to understand how to pray in ways that can bring change in ways we never imagined or hoped for. Is there a place in your life you need to see change?