Pray Like it Matters

The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working James 5.16b

It is a mystery to me why God invented prayer.

Certainly He knows what we need: 

Your Father knows what you need before you ask him. Matt 6.8

Certainly He has the power to meet any need: 

With man it is impossible, but not with God. For all things are possible with God Mark 10.27 

Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance? Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding? 40.12-15

Certainly He knows what He is going to do and when:

But He is unchangeable, and who can turn Him back? What he desires, that He does. For He will complete what He appoints for me, and many such things are in His mind. Job 23.13-14

Yet the Lord has asked us to pray as though, somehow, prayer makes a difference.

What if failing, frail and feeble people can change the course of things through prayer. 

• What if Joshua had not prayed for the sun to stand sill
  
• What if Elijah had not prayed for rain, or for fire to fall upon the altar
  
• What if Moses had not prayed for water, or Hannah for a son
  
• What if Jonah had not prayed from the belly of the whale
  
• Or Paul and Silas from the darkness of Jail

Would Gods' hand have moved? Would the stories end as they did? Or, did their prayers actually make a difference?

I see in the Word of God an ongoing encouragement to seek the face of God in prayer knowing that God has designed it so that PRAYER MATTERS!