What’s the Point of Prayer, Anyway?

Psalm 13
August 2, 2026
Matt Goodale

Today we are continuing our sermon series where you get to tell me what to preach on. And someone—actually a couple of you—asked me to preach on the topic of prayer. More specifically, they asked: What is the point of prayer? I think this is very fitting topic for today.

Let me begin by acknowledging that prayer is a tricky subject. There are all sorts of understandings about what prayer is, how it works, how important it is or isn’t. Entire libraries have been written about prayer, so there is no way one sermon can answer every question.

But my hope today is that we can recover one way of thinking about prayer that has been largely forgotten.

Because I’ll be honest with you. Often it feels like I’ve had more prayers left unanswered than answered.

Anybody else??

Over the course of my life I’ve prayed for a lot of things that never happened. Some seem almost funny now.

I prayed for less homework in middle school. God apparently believed in education.

I prayed for a girlfriend in high school and that went unanswered for quite some time.

But there are still other prayers I’ve prayed that don’t feel funny at all.

Growing up I prayed for the people experiencing homelessness in downtown Colorado Springs, and week after week I walked past the same people.

I prayed through seasons of anxiety and depression, asking God to take them away. Eventually those seasons passed, but never overnight like I hoped and never without a long painful journey.

I prayed for my grandpa to be healed from pancreatic cancer, and he died.

I’ve prayed for peace in our nation. For wars to end. For justice. For healing. For wildfires. And every morning the headlines seem to reveal unanswered prayers.

My guess is that many of us have had this experience. Maybe you’ve prayed for a child. Or a marriage or a diagnosis or a job or relationship or addiction.

And the silence from heaven has been deafening.

So what do we do with that, given that that seems to be most of our experiences with prayer?

It seems to me there are three possible conclusions.

The first is that we’re somehow praying wrong. Maybe we don’t have enough faith or the right words. Maybe there’s some magic formula we haven’t discovered yet.

The second possibility is that God simply isn’t good. Or doesn’t care or isn’t listening.

And I don’t think either of those explanations holds up very well. Because if the first one were true, then virtually every faithful person in the Bible prayed incorrectly—the Bible is littered with unanswered prayers. And if the second were true, then the entire story of the Bible collapses. We worship a God who comes near to suffering, not one who ignores it.

So what gives? Maybe there’s a third possibility.

I wonder if perhaps we’ve misunderstood what prayer is actually for. We often treat God like a genie in a lamp and prayer is rubbing the lamp in the right way to get to genie to come out and grant our wishes. I wonder if we’ve assumed prayer is something scripture never claimed it to be.

There’s an ancient Greek myth that has stuck with me for years. It’s the story of Prometheus.

As the myth goes, human beings once knew the exact day they would die. Imagine living like that, knowing the exact day you’d die. Every birthday would feel a little different, huh? But human beings knew their limits.

But Prometheus, one of the gods, pitied humanity. So he gave them three gifts.

First, he took away humanity’s awareness of our limits. You didn’t know the exact day of your death anymore.

Second, he filled humanity with endless ambition and hope that tomorrow could always be better.

And third—most famously—he stole fire from the gods and gave it to humanity. Fire meant technology…progress…power…the ability to reshape the world and your own destiny.

Now, this is just a myth, a story ancient people told to understand themselves more, but I think it is a story that names something profoundly true about us: we don’t like limits. We don’t want to be finite creatures. We want to be in control.

And if we’re honest, that’s the story much of our culture tells us everyday:

Just work harder. Optimize more. Find the better app. The better diet. The better productivity system. The better investment. The better technology.

Surely one more breakthrough will finally fix everything. Our world keeps whispering the same message: “You can control your life.”

And if you can’t, then you’re just missing the right tools.

And I wonder if we’ve begun treating prayer as just another tool, another technology, another way to control the outcomes of our life. I wonder if sometimes we treat prayer as a way of defying the fact that we have limits and that limits are part of being human. Prayer just becomes one more way to exert control over these lives that if we’re honest, we’re terrified of losing control over. And so we pray:

God, fix this.

God, change them.

God, heal this.

God, make this happen.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. Scripture absolutely invites us to ask for those things. Jesus himself tells us to ask. Just yesterday in the car Iona prayed, “God please stop the fires.” That’s a beautiful prayer. So asking isn’t the problem.

The problem is assuming that the asking and the answering is the whole point of prayer. I wonder, what if prayer isn’t primarily about gaining control over our lives again, but about learning to entrust our lives to God?”

Because if prayer is primarily about controlling outcomes…then every unanswered prayer feel like proof that prayer doesn’t work. And eventually we stop praying altogether.

Which brings us to Psalm 13. The book of Psalms is basically a book of prayers. If you’re ever curious, open it up and you will find so many raw, honest and relatable prayers in there.

But listen to how Psalm 13 begins: “How long, O Lord? Will you forget me forever?”

Not exactly the kind of prayer we’d expect to find in church, is it?

The psalmist, maybe David, isn’t calm or composed. He’s frustrated, desperate, confused and afraid.

He asks four times: “How long?”

How long will you forget me?

How long must I wrestle with my thoughts?

How long will sorrow fill my heart?

How long will my enemies triumph?

There’s a raw honesty here. It’s the prayer of someone who has asked God for something…and is still waiting.

Maybe that’s why I love this psalm so much, because it reminds me that I’m not the only one who has unanswered prayers. It reminds me that unanswered prayer isn’t a failure of faith and has always been part of the life of God’s people.

But here’s what I find fascinating. David never stops talking to God. Think about that.

He could’ve concluded God wasn’t listening and walked away. Instead, he directs every bit of his disappointment and frustration toward God.

“How long, O Lord?”

His circumstances haven’t changed…but his relationship hasn’t ended either.

Sometimes we think faith means having confidence that everything will work out the way we want. But maybe faith is much simpler.

Maybe faith is simply refusing to stop addressing God…even if that means sharing all of our anger and disappointment and disillusionment with God.

Because then we get to the ending of the psalm.

“But I trust in your steadfast love.”

Wait…what happened??

Did the enemies disappear? No.

Did the suffering end? No.

Did God explain everything? No.

Nothing changed. At least nothing on the outside. And yet, somehow David moves from, “How long?” to “I trust.”

So what changed? Not his circumstances.

What changed is his communion with God.

Somehow, by staying in conversation with God—by refusing to walk away even in his anger—David discovers that God’s presence is deeper than his pain.

I think that’s maybe the point of prayer. Prayer is not pretending we don’t hurt. And prayer isn’t about convincing God to care, because God already cares. Prayer isn’t about becoming powerful enough to control life. Prayer is learning to loosen our grip on the illusion that we ever controlled it in the first place.

Maybe that’s why prayer feels so uncomfortable. Because prayer forces us to admit something we spend our whole lives trying not admit:

I cannot fix everything.

I cannot save everyone.

I cannot carry the weight of the world.

Think about the times you’ve prayed the hardest. Most of us don’t pray our deepest prayers when life is going exactly according to plan.

We pray them in hospital waiting rooms.

At gravesides.

Sitting beside a loved one’s bed.

During divorce.

During unemployment.

After the phone call we never wanted to receive.

We pray them as we watch a scary wildfire rip through Spokane.

Why is it those moments that push us to prayer more than any others?

Because those moments strip away the illusion that we were ever in control.

Prayer becomes what we do when we finally stop pretending we’re God.

Not because we’ve given up.

But because we’ve remembered who God is…and who we are.

That can be hard to admit…because, well, like the Prometheus story reminds us, we don’t like limits. We want to be in control of our own lives.

But once we learn to let go, it’s scary…and there is comfort to be found in that admission.

Because if I’m not responsible for saving the world…then maybe I can stop trying.

Maybe I can remember there already is a Savior. And it isn’t me.

Prayer returns me to that reality again and again. It reminds me that God has been redeeming this world long before I arrived…and God will continue redeeming this world long after I’m gone.

Jewish tradition hints at this in a beautiful way.

The Hebrew word for prayer, tefillah, isn’t only about asking God for something. It also carries the idea of self-examination—allowing prayer to search us, reshape us, and draw us deeper into God’s life.

In other words, prayer isn’t only something we do. Prayer is something that happens to us. Prayer changes us.

Communion—relationship—changes people.

Just as years spent with a spouse change us…or years spent raising children change us…so years spent with God change us. Because relationships always change the people who remain in them.

So maybe tomorrow morning you’ll wake up…and your circumstances won’t have changed.

The diagnosis may still be there.

The relationship may still be broken.

The grief may still be heavy.

The war may still be raging.

The wildfires may still not be contained.

You may still find yourself praying, “How long, O Lord?”

And according to Psalm 13 that is not a failed prayer. That may be one of the truest prayers you will ever pray.

Because every time we turn toward God—even with anger, even with tears, even with questions—we are practicing something this world desperately resists.

We are admitting:

I am not God.

I cannot control everything.

But I belong to the One who holds all things, and who is with me always, even when life hurts.

Amen and may it be so.