Why Prayer

Why prayer? Why does God work through the prayers of His people? Why doesn't He just do what He desires to do?

Because He wants to accomplish it in and through and with US!

Stop and think about this for a minute...If God just did all He means to do in this earth, without having His people pray and believe for it, would He get the credit? Would the praise and glory He deserves ever be given to Him?
Clarification: God is not a man. As human beings, we are meant to live not for the glory of ourselves, but of God. We were created for His praise and glory (see Isaiah 43:7, 21). God, however, is God. He is the central theme of the universe and everything within it. It all revolves around Him. When you were little, did you ever have a parent, teacher, or some other adult in your life have to remind you that "The world (or the universe) does not revolve around you"? Guess what? It revolves around God! It is all about Him.

So, back to what I was saying--think about it. If God did everything without us...well, it would be completely contrary to the way He works. But why? Because He gets glory when His people know it is Him doing it. When it is God who leads someone to pray according to what He intends to do, He gets glory. He gets glory because that person then has to trust Him to accomplish what He has promised. He gets glory because then even when everything and everyone around that person seems to say it's not going to happen, that person is driven to his knees to ask God, not whether or not He is really going to do it, but instead for the faith to trust Him more, to believe He is who He says He is and that He will do what He has said He will do.
God has an agenda. He has a plan and a vision for this world and for all of us in it. Hearts will not be changed unless they behold the Living God, and our God's design is that He works in and through His people--His Body.

He wants us to be part of it.

Did you hear that? Okay, you're reading, but did that sentence sink into your soul? This is the God of the universe, the Almighty King of Kings, the One who is bigger and greater and more magnificent than we can even comprehend. And He desires to allow us to be a part of what He is doing in this earth. Are we in any way worthy of such an honor? Not in the slightest. But He still not only allows it, but desires it.

We were created to know our Creator, to live in a relationship that goes beyond words' ability to describe in its depth and intimacy. And we were created to be indwelt by Him, by His very Spirit, to be so thoroughly one with Him that there is not a part of our lives that can be separated from Him and who we are in Him. In Him we are--we exist--to live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28). In and through us, He is to lvie and move and have His way. When we give our lives to Him who gave His life for us, and allow Him to overtake our very beings (we were made for this!), it sets the stage for the greatest mystery this world has ever known to unfold before our very eyes.

And that is why God works through prayer. It's not that He doesn't already know what He has promised. It's not that we can tell Him what to do. Instead, it's so that we may know what His will is (which comes by getting to know Him in the first place), and may see Him do it. It is so that we may behold the marvelous way in which our God chooses to work, that we may be part of the grand adventure of seeing His Kingdom come to this earth as it is in Heaven.

May God Most High receive the glory due His Name in and through His people, whom He has purchased with His own blood! And may we yeild ourselves to be so consumed with His heart and so pursuant of His glory that we willingly offer our lives before the One who is worthy, that all the world may behold that our God is Lord of all!