In one of his last voice messages to me he said, “God works in mysterious ways.”. Dave (not his real name) was a close friend of mine in high school, we played road hockey almost every day after school. He was the goalie and good at it too. We wore the sweat stained collars of our uniform dress shirts as badges of honour and ignored our teachers’ warnings not to take slap-shots. He stopped most of them, but I always knew I could sneak one through the high blocker side. I replayed these memories in my head as I listened to his voice message to me from the hospital bed where he lay dying of cancer at the age of 31. 

My friends and I prayed for Dave. We prayed for healing. We prayed for a miracle. Within two months, those prayers changed from prayers of healing to prayers of comfort for his family as they grieved their loss. Where was God? Did He not hear us? Do our prayers even matter?

In one of my favourite Martin Luther quotes he speaks on prayer, “I have so much to do that I shall spend the first three hours in prayer”. It seems counterintuitive that anyone would start a long list of to-do items with…not doing any of those items. Yet, there is wisdom in his approach. While the size of his to-do list did not change during those hours spent in prayer, his heart posture before God changed. So, in prayer we:

1. Praise God by acknowledging and affirming who He is. We reflect back to God who He is and worship Him. Worshiping Him in prayer reminds us of who we are before our Creator.
2. Give Thanks by acknowledging and thanking Him for what He has done and how He has blessed us. This reminds us of God’s providence and faithfulness to us.
3. Confess our sins to Him. It is not that God is unaware of our sin. Rather, it is important that we present who we are truthfully before Him and then receive His forgiveness, grace, and mercy.
4. Request that God would meet our needs. It is important that we ask that God would fulfill what He has promised to us and when we do so, He demonstrates that He is faithful to provide.

So why didn’t God provide a miracle for my friend Dave? Does prayer not change the outcome of our circumstances? Is it already determined? C.S. Lewis writes, “It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so. They have not advised or changed God’s mind—that is, his overall purpose. But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including prayers, of his creatures.”¹ In other words, God’s overall purpose is constant and remains the same but the realization of that outcome can take a different path and can be informed by our prayers.