Why Pray If God Already Knows Everything?

The short answer: Prayer isn’t for giving God information. It’s how children talk with their Father, and it’s one of the real ways God has chosen to act in the world. Jesus knew God better than anyone, and He prayed more than anyone.

It sounds like a clever objection. If God already knows what I need, and already knows what He’s going to do, why tell Him? Isn’t prayer like texting a friend something they’re already looking at?

Jesus actually answered this. He said, “your Father knows what you need before you ask Him” (Matthew 6:8). And then, in the very next breath: “So then, this is how you should pray” (Matthew 6:9). Notice the “so then”. Because God already knows, therefore pray. For Jesus, God’s knowledge isn’t a reason not to pray. It’s a reason to pray with confidence.

(Book 1 answered why God sometimes seems not to answer. This chapter asks a different question: why pray at all?)

Prayer is relationship, not data

Imagine a family where the parents know their teenager is hungry, tired and worried about exams. Does that mean the teenager never needs to talk to them? Of course not. A parent who knows everything about you still wants to hear from you, because what they want isn’t information. It’s you.

That’s what prayer is. Jesus called His followers friends: “I have called you friends” (John 15:15). Friends talk. Not because they’re filling each other’s knowledge gaps, but because talking is what love does.

So the Bible invites us to “approach the throne of grace with confidence” (Hebrews 4:16), and to bring Him everything: “in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6).

God uses means

Here’s the second half of the answer. God doesn’t usually do things on His own when He could involve us. He could make bread appear on your table, but He normally feeds you through farmers, shops and someone who cooks. He could tell everyone the gospel by thunder from the sky, but He sends people. In the same way, He has chosen to do some things in answer to prayer.

James says it bluntly: “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). And he points to an ordinary man: “Elijah was a man just like us. He prayed earnestly that it would not rain, and it did not rain on the land for three and a half years” (James 5:17). Prayer isn’t a show we put on while God does what He was always going to do anyway. It’s one of the ways His will gets done.

How that fits with God knowing everything ahead of time is a deep question, and Christians have thought hard about it. But notice: God knowing the future includes knowing your prayers, and the answers He has planned to give to them. Your prayers are part of the story, not an interruption to it. The thinker Blaise Pascal said that in prayer God gives us “the dignity of causality”. You get to make a difference.

Jesus prayed

If prayer were just informing God, the One who needed it least was Jesus. He was the Son of God. He knew the Father’s mind perfectly. And yet “Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up and slipped out to a solitary place to pray” (Mark 1:35). “He frequently withdrew to the wilderness to pray” (Luke 5:16). He prayed before choosing His disciples, at the grave of His friend, in the garden, on the cross.

He’s still doing it. Hebrews says He “always lives to intercede” for His people (Hebrews 7:25). If Jesus, who knows everything the Father knows, keeps praying, prayer must be about far more than passing on information.

Prayer changes you, too

One more thing. Prayer changes the person praying. When you bring your worries to God, you’re promised that “the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:7). Over time, talking with God reshapes what you want. You start to care about what He cares about.

So pray. Not because God is in the dark, but because He isn’t, and He wants you near.

Think about it: If prayer is more like talking with a friend than sending a request, what would you say to God today if you weren’t asking for anything?

Go deeper: Purpose in Prayer by E. M. Bounds — a Civil War chaplain turned writer argues that God has made prayer one of the ways He shapes the world, and that “the prayers of God’s saints strengthen the unborn generation.” Start with chapter 1, “God Shapes the World by Prayer”.