Why Pray?

Assessing our involvement with an omnipotent God

KAI COHAN
FEB 10, 2025

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In a small huddle around a standing table, in the midst of motion as people gathered for
service, a portion of my discipleship group gathered. “She’s eventually going to die. And I
have to become okay with that.” Our brother’s words about his wife hung in the air
between us. She had been in a coma for many months and the prognosis was growing
dimmer with each passing day. His statement was not one devoid of hope, but an
acceptance that his wife was being called home. In that moment of space, I felt a
presence behind me swell and an energetic pressure said “pray over her”. I froze at the
table. I wish the words of the Holy Spirit would always start with “Do not be afraid”, as
without that precursor it is difficult to not only be paralyzed with fright, but to be able to
absorb the loving command. Others spoke with care and consideration, and we were
soon joining for worship and service. It sat with me. Was I to go to the hospital and pray
over his wife? I do not have the gift of healing but had I ever actually explored the
possibility? It seemed so results based, that it would be a forbidden test to God, or a test
of myself or a test of my faith in God. I believe in the gift of healing, I have experienced
miraculous healing on my own body, but to be confronted with this challenge created
great unrest. If she woke from a coma thanks to a hands on prayer, that would be
glorious for the church and all those connected, if she did not, then would the hope that I
created by going cause further agony onto a burdened man? I found the quandary so
difficult that I visited my pastor to discuss it. He deftly highlighted that the response to
the Holy Spirit is the Lord’s will, that we are not to assess the result of our actions as a
determining do or do not, but to respond to the command of our Father.
 In Luke 9:56-62, Jesus shows the three resistances to following him through our self
benefiting consideration; what will I get? , not now , and maybe later
My Pastor said that he himself had been many, many times to pray over her, that family,
friends and members of the church had been to pray over her, so it wasn’t a revelation
that I had expressed in asking. As I learned more about the medical situation, the bravery
of her husband and the strength he had shown in his faith, I started to see the love and
goodness that grew around the tragedy. I felt at odds with myself to think that I could
petition God to change His work, and now that I had made known that I had such an
experience with the Spirit, there was no backing out. But what use was my prayer in this
situation? What use was prayer at all? As soon as that thought crossed my mind, it was
time to go to the word.

“His power is made perfect in weakness”

- 2 Corinthians 12:9
We all encounter storms in our lives that bring us to pray for shelter, for protection, to
change what we are experiencing. In sunshine we do not pray for rain, but in drought, we
will. We plead with God to deliver us from our suffering, we ask Him for something that
we desire to happen. Our prayers are petitionary - truer in that all the words in the Bible
for prayer fall under the same meaning - they mean to ask. Sometimes we can feel lost
and forgotten by God for unanswered prayers. The disciples when rocked in the boat by
a storm, woke the Son of God to cry out that their prayers were not being answered. The
prophet Isaiah declared to Yahweh “Your great pity and your compassion are withheld
from me” (Isa 63:15). The prophet Habakkuk draws into question why the wicked
prosper despite the prayers of God’s own people.
“why do you idly look at traitors
and remain silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than he?” Hab 1:13b
Job wrestles with a profound agony “You have turned cruel to me” (Job 30:21). An
unanswered prayer is a request to something out of our control and influence, and when
God does not provide an answer it can feel that you have been cast off into an abyss. Yet
if we only prayed what was within our abilities, we would soon not pray at all and be
under our own rulership. So while we can be quick to draw upon our needs not being met
and in that feeling abandonment, it can be tempting to lose some of the belief in our
power of petitionary prayer. How are we to pray and live in ways that advance God’s
kingdom of unselfish love?

“There is present in all these the element of petitionary prayer… because all these
forms of prayer spring from human need to and seek an answer to human need”
Bloesch, Struggle of Prayer

Prayer is essential in Christian living, it is the communication that places us in direct

response to God who has declared to us that “When you call upon me and come and
pray to me, I will hear you” (Jer 29:12) We speak to God, we speak to Jesus and we call
to the Holy spirit to dwell within us. In prayer we give thanks, we glorify the Lord, we
bless, we encourage and we ask. We ask because the Lord does deliver on prayers, I
doubt you would ever find a Christian who has never had a prayer answered, for God
Himself is moved by prayer. One of my favorite examples is Elijah who prays for the life of
a child to return and “the LORD listened to the voice of Elijah; the life of the child came
into him again, and he revived” (1 Kings 17:21-22). So much of our pain is emotional
circumstance to events out of our control, and being able to speak to God through prayer
is being heard, for our laments to be witnessed and with that a rescuing in the love of the
Father. For “When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and rescues them from all
their troubles” (Ps 145:18). Those troubles are often where we have positioned our self
in the communication. Jesus taught us that prayer influences God’s action. “Ask and it
will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you.
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone
who knocks, the door will be opened” (Matt 7:7-8) and He continues later in Luke 11:1-
13 “Your Father in heaven” will “give good things to those who ask him!”. This shows us
that our prayers can influence God and make a difference for He hears, and He
responds. One could argue that all goodness in the Bible comes from either direct prayer
or direct intervention from the Father. Jesus intervened on the law to bring about the new
covenant that we may be redeemed, but He also prayed “Father, if you are willing,
remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”(Luke 22:42).
Jesus prayed for people in His ministry, He petitioned for others through those prayers.
When He encountered a Father with a son possessed by a demon that the disciples
could not cast out, Jesus says to the man “All things are possible for the one who
believes” to which the man replies “I believe; help my unbelief” and Jesus cast out the
demon. (Mark 9:23-24) The disciples were baffled and ask why they could not cast out
the demon as they absolutely believed, and Jesus says “This kind can come out only
through prayer”. Faith and prayer are factors that are intrinsic to one another.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without
reproach, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith, with no doubting, for the
 one who doubts is like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind. For
that person must not suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord”
James 1:5-7

Scripture is filled with calls to petitionary prayer and many create an indication that they
can influence divine action and such action is (at least partially) linked to factors such as
faith, alignment with God’s will, motives, humility and repentance, right relationship with
God and perseverance. When we consider the entire story of redemption, our whole
existence is one locked in a prayer plea to return home with the Bible recording those
pleas and how the factors affected the outcomes. When we receive deliverance from
temptation of sin through prayer, that is from the divine, it is the relationship we have that
scripture assures us of. Our relationship with God, as imagers of Him, places prayer in a
very special place as it does move Him, it does make a difference and some things in life
occur, at least in part because God’s people asked Him to act accordingly. (2 Corinthians
1:11, Phil 1:19). God does things because we pray for them, which would suggest that
had we not prayed as we did, God would not have acted as He did.

“Prayer does not change God, but it changes the one who offers it.” Kierkegaad

An alternative view can be that prayer adjusts our desires as believers to be more in line
with God will for us, and less about Him being pleaded into action. But this goes against
many grains, which strips God of His loving nature. To diminish Christian prayer as only a
therapeutic response makes God a monster for leaving His children to suffer
unanswered, which would also make Israel justifiable for turning to other gods for they
would be answered. The jealously of Yahweh is because He does hear, He does answer
and He does care - what we are to consider is how much our petitionary prayer allows
God to accomplish results He would not otherwise have accomplished.
Why do some prayers go unanswered?
If there was a Jeopardy board for “Questions Pastors are asked the most”, you would be
safe with this as a response to bank at least $200. If God does act in response to prayer
with His perfect knowledge, will and power - then why do some prayers go unanswered.
My first response would be that we are always framing our questions and our needs from
our human perspective that is both limited and as a consequence of the fall, sinful.

“You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive because
you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”
James 4:2-3
I could pray for a million dollars under the guise that I want to do good for all my family
and donate it to the church and all these other wonderful things, God knows my heart
and my secrets (Psalm 44:21), He knows what I would do if I got that million dollars, and
beyond me, He knows what all the people around me would be like if I got that million
dollars. That may not be what He has planned for me, so I can pray and pray and pray
and then get so mad for God not answering my prayers that I stop praying all together.
But whichever way I go, I am walking with God. His desire for me is good, my desire for
me is through my own eyes, not His. God also knows what I am going to ask before I
even ask it (Matt 6:8). He knows all good (Psalm 147:5) so why would He not do good?
Often our answers are within our own perspectives. We don’t know what harm we have
been saved from because we have not experienced it. When we pray at night that the
Lord may comfort and protect us, and the next day is just an uneventful day, we don’t
think of what we don’t know about.
The truest of truths is that we don’t know. It is the glory of God to conceal things (Pro
25:2) but in prayer, we seek Him, we seek the relationship and we transform our spirits
with Jesus. Prayer fosters a true friendship between God and humans, and while we
consider why prayer is not answered as being of fault instead of purpose, if we were
granted all our prayers it would turn God into (at best) our personal power source,
making Him a tool at our disposal and not the loving Father who is nurturing a member of
His family to grow in the image of Jesus. We are made in His image, we are given Free
Will because He has Free Will. It could be considered that in doing so, God has
committed to grant creatures a free will of the kind that some divine interventions may
only occur in response to petitionary prayer. This would not entail any limit to God’s
sheer power and thus would be consistent with divine omnipotence.

“God has restricted his powers of interaction with humankind in such a way that
those power are exercised only in response to promptings from Humankind”
W. Paul Franks
Perhaps then, it could be said, that our prayers cannot encroach on another person’s free
will, that considering the causality of our prayers would demonstrate the scale of which a
prayer is to be petitioned. If every single person alive, tomorrow morning woke up,
confessed Jesus is Lord and prayed for world peace - every single person on the Earth,
do you think we would have world peace through a 100% petitioned prayer? I think it’s
plausible. This is why I pray for Jesus to return. Through the will of our hearts which is
where the Spirit dwells, we can make the Lord’s will upon this fallen world, and with that
supernatural ability that transcends all time and physical reality, we can do anything…
I think back to the impression I felt in the lobby of the church on that past Sunday, “pray
for her”. And how I went about seeking information, consulting brothers, learning all that I
could, but that I was actually spending more time wondering if I should go and pray for
the woman in the coma, then simply praying for the woman in the coma. Many people
are placing hands on her every day, many people are at her bedside, many people - her
children included - are praying for her. The world needs more prayer, not less through
proximities or guarantees. The pagan world teaches you that you can have all the power,
that you don’t need to have petitioned prayer, you can make up for it with more ritual. But
for Christians we are the keepers of the truth. When there is a matter that affects many
people, the more we pray, the more we allow the Holy Spirit to act in the will of God and it
is up to us to trust that God is doing the absolute best at all times. If the wife of a brother
in a coma dies, she returns to God. She is blessed to be in heaven with Jesus and the
saints. Tragedy brings people together, we are stronger because of our faith, not
because of the outcome. I made the mistake of placing myself into the story, and then
reacted on how I could be best used, when all the Spirit wanted was for me to pray with
all my heart, mind and soul. I am not the hero of the story, but what dwells in me is the
hero of all stories, through prayer we send out the free will of God.

“Free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible
any love or goodness or joy worth having. The happiness which God designs for His
 higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to
each other, and for that they must be free.” C.S. Lewis

The overarching story in the Bible is that a behind-the-scenes cosmic conflict between
God’s kingdom of light and a demonic realm of darkness, is affected by the choices we
make, and the petitioning prayer we practice. If God has rules in place where He requires
the power of prayer to be able to act within the Prince of the Air’s domain, then you can
be assured that the Lord will place it on your heart to pray and grant His loyal family the
power to carry out the unseen work in this long war.

If humans were given the authority to grant power to supernatural beings, that
could be good cause for a rebellion against God to some of them.

Through exploration and reflection I have learned that my walk with Jesus is one of
constant refinement, and that part of my spiritualism is to be the living, breathing, temple
of the dwelling Holy Spirit. I had hesitated to extend that into my prayer life, which, as a
survivor of cancer and one who has encountered many, many miracles, I misinterpreted a
simple command of prayer. Thanks to the living word of God, the power of prayer is
revealed.
Thank you for reading. I ask that if you see fit, please extend a prayer to B - the woman
who is in the coma, her family and those that love her.
Let us pray.

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