Proverbs 28.9 describes, God has no use for the prayers of the people who won’t listen to Him.

Everyone prays. Sometimes or all the time but everyone prays because everyone is broken. All of us hope, want, God to intervene in our life even when we are doing all we can to control its outcome.

We cannot control life, there are too many variables, too many people and things involved in our lives to possibly control their impact upon our life. These things show us we are not god and that we need the One True God to direct us, protect us and lead us.

Yet that is not God’s purpose, to watch over us for our good though we wish it were. God’s purpose is to rule as Sovereign King over all He has made forever. Our purpose is to acknowledge His sovereignty, His kingdom, by living lives in obedience to His will.

This brings us to the purpose of prayer. We pray to know and do the will of God. The will of God we are to seek is the will of God that glorifies God and furthers His rule and recognition on earth as it is in heaven.

We are not to pray for our will to be done or for our glory to come so that men recognize and worship us as god. Those who pray for themselves about themselves can expect to find God distant and ‘deaf.’ But those who pray to God while serving God so that they can better glorify God will find Him intimate and personal, abounding in ‘yes’ everywhere they look.

The only exception to this ‘rule’ is when we pray for ourselves that God would come to us to pull us out of the life of death we have been living in order to bring us into life eternal with Him. This prayer God listens for, the prayer, the cry, that we no longer wish to live for ourselves but earnestly desire new life, life abundant through Jesus the Savior.

This self-centered prayer God will be swift to answer, for it is a prayer reflective of His greatest desire.