“The LORD is close to all who call on him.”
– Psalm 145:18 (NLT)
Why is prayer so important? It’s through prayer that our two most basic needs are met: our need to communicate and our need for God. Without prayer, we can still communicate with other people, but it will always come up lacking. There will always be a sense that something’s missing, and we may not even know what.
That’s because God created us to communicate with Him, and anything that falls short of this falls short of our ultimate purpose. This truth was echoed by the Welsh preacher Martyn Lloyd-Jones when he remarked that, “[Prayer] is the highest activity of the human soul.” It’s the Mount Everest of our faith, and we’ll never find true fulfillment if we never scale its summit.
Maybe you have a lot of friends but you still feel lonely. You may even be a Christian who constantly surrounds yourself with other Christians-and yet you still sense something is missing. You love God, read His Word, share Him with others, but you know that your relationship with Him isn’t all that it should be. You may have union with Him, but not communion. He’s there, but He feels distant.
That’s because God created us to communicate with Him. If that’s not happening, then our lives won’t be fulfilling.
Pray now …and pray continually! (1 Thessalonians 5:17)