Why?

Hanging out with a friend last night (BTW, I simply love having 3 or 4 hours of conversations about life with the friends I am close to. Not conversations about the weather or a sports team, but about the fun, hard to understand and challenging parts of life. I can always count on random conversations from the important to the funny when I get together with my good friends.), I did a poor job of trying to explain something to him and have been thinking about a better way to explain it. The question sort of came down to this - Why pray? Shouldn't we just do it ourselves?

Seems a lot of people fall into one of two different sides. The first being that we should work our butts off and accomplish everything we can on our own. The second being, pray about it and wait for God to take care of it. Both are right and wrong in my opinion. The first says I can do everything by myself. The second says I don't have to do anything. For me, it is a combination of those two things. I have a part to play and God has the rest. I have certain abilities and need to use those, but there are some things that are beyond me. Kind of like playing on a team. I may play midfield on a soccer team. I have certain things that I am suppose to do in playing that position. I set up the strikers. I play the first line of defense. For the team to work, I have to do my part, but I don't play keeper. The keeper can do things that I can't. He can catch the ball. He can punt it. He sees the whole field and directs players where to set up. Neither player works on his own. Not a perfect analogy I know. God could simply play the whole field and doesn't need us. But, for whatever reason, he has chosen us to play a role. We are to display His love where we are at. We are the plan he chose. So we have a part to play, but we aren't expected and can't do it alone.

So why pray? Doesn't He already know what we need? Yeah, I think he does, but he won't impose on us. He will wait for us to take part in the plan. He won't force us to do anything. He may want you to help you, but He will let you make that choice.

Also what we need, may be different than what we are praying about. We often think we know what is best, but really we don't have a clue most of the time. If we did know what was best like we often think we do, then why do we constantly mess things up. Oh wait, that is when we blame God. Funny how we think we can't mess up and don't need any help, but still we are willing to blame God when our way doesn't work.

How does it all work? Don't have a clue. Why does He choose to do things that don't always make sense to me? Probably the same reason that a parent makes choices that might not make sense to a 3 year old. He understands a whole more than me.

Don't know if that helps in any way or just makes things muddier. So what do you think? Why pray?