Ask Dr. Youssef: "I feel like I'm always asking God for things, but is that the purpose of prayer?"

QUESTION:

"I feel like I’m always asking God for things, but is that the purpose of prayer?"

"The real purpose of prayer is to allow God to be glorified and magnified in our lives."

ANSWER:

The purpose of prayer is to open us up to God’s blessings and God’s power to change us. But that’s not how we tend to pray, is it? We tend to pray to coax God into seeing our point of view, to inform God of a situation that we think He clearly doesn’t know about, or to manipulate Him into giving us what we want or what we think we need. But the real purpose of prayer is to get us on our knees, with our heads bowed and our hearts surrendered to God and His will.

If we fail to understand God’s purpose for prayer, we will continue to pray for the wrong things, with the wrong attitude, with the wrong results, and we will miss the many blessings God wants to shower on our lives. So please understand: The real purpose of prayer is to allow God to be glorified and magnified in our lives. Yes, God has also given us the right and the power and the ability to pray for our needs to be met. He meets our needs through prayer because He loves us! And yet, when God meets our needs through prayer, He gets the glory.

Visit the Ask Dr. Youssef page for more Biblical insights from Michael Youssef.

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