Why pray if God already knows what I need?

It is the most honest objection anyone makes to asking God for things, and it does not come from sceptics. If God knows everything, he knows what is missing, and he knew it before anyone knelt down. Saying it out loud tells him nothing. So why say it.

The question deserves better than the usual sidestep, which is to reply that prayer changes the person praying. True, and it costs nothing to say. Better to look at what the texts actually do.

The objection is in the Gospel before it is ours

We did not find it.

Therefore don’t be like them, for your Father knows what things you need, before you ask him.

Matthew 6:8 (World English Bible)

Read the verse before it, or this one sounds like a discouragement from asking at all. What is corrected there is a particular way of praying.

In praying, don’t use vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their much speaking.

Matthew 6:7 (World English Bible)

Repetitions. Saying the same thing again, in the hope that saying it again helps. Behind it sits the idea that you get somewhere by supplying more: more detail, more background, more reasons, as though prayer were a file to be filled out and a fuller file went through faster.

Jesus cuts that off. The person receiving it already knows. And then, three verses later, he gives the Lord’s Prayer, which is made of six petitions.

So one function of asking has just been removed, one only: the reporting of facts. The others are still standing. The question is which.

The same question, twice in one chapter

Mark did something odd in chapter 10, and it goes unnoticed because the two scenes are read on separate days.

Two disciples come up, and do not start with what they want.

James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came near to him, saying, “Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we will ask.”

Mark 10:35 (World English Bible)

Whatever. One word, and it does all the work: they are asking for the agreement before naming the thing. A blank cheque. Jesus neither grants it nor refuses it. He makes them speak.

He said to them, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Mark 10:36 (World English Bible)

Only then does it come out: to sit at his right and at his left in his glory. Once it is a sentence you can look at it, and it does not survive being looked at. They would probably not have put it that way if they could have had it without putting it any way at all.

Fifteen verses later, a blind beggar sits by the road on the way out of Jericho. He shouts, people tell him to be quiet, he shouts louder. He is brought over. He is blind, everyone can see that, and he has just shouted twice.

Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “Rabboni, that I may see again.”

Mark 10:51 (World English Bible)

In English the two questions are the same sentence, word for word. Mark asks it once of men who did not want to say what they wanted, and once of a man who knew. As information, the second one is superfluous. It is not superfluous for him.

What putting it into words does

Here is what asking does that nothing else does in its place.

As long as something stays a need, it has no edges. It weighs, it takes up room, it colours the day, and you could not say it in one sentence if asked. The moment it becomes a sentence, it has edges. You see what you are asking for, and sometimes you see that you did not want it.

That is precisely what separates the two scenes. James and John wanted not to have to say it. Bartimaeus says it, in five words.

Notice what he does not ask for. Not that it stop, not that it be less hard, not that people leave him alone. He names something to receive. That is a request in the positive, and there are fewer of those in our praying than we think.

God asks questions he has the answer to by the third page of the Bible.

The Lord God called to the man, and said to him, “Where are you?”

Genesis 3:9 (World English Bible)

The man is hiding behind a tree in a garden. The question is not there to locate him, but so that he comes out and answers for himself.

Two people who asked for one thing

Ignatius of Loyola built the Spiritual Exercises around this obligation to put it into words: each contemplation opens by asking for what you want to obtain. And the prayer that closes the book asks for one thing, named.

Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding and my entire will; all that I have and possess, you have given me; to you, Lord, I return it. Give me only your love and your grace; that is enough for me.

Ignatius of Loyola, Spiritual Exercises, 234

Only. That one word sets the rest aside, and owns the setting aside.

Augustine comes at it from the other end. Before knowing what to ask for, he notices that something is missing.

You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, I, 1

That is a need with no identified object: something is searching and does not settle for what it is handed. All our specific requests are attempts to name it, and they often get it wrong. Nobody finds the right word by waiting for it to arrive.

A prayer for asking plainly

To be said once, with nothing added afterwards.

Lord, You know already, and I am going to say it anyway. Not to tell You something. To find out what I am asking for. I have circled it for a long time: that it would stop, that it would weigh less, that things would work out. Today I name one thing, one only, and I name it plainly. This is what I want. Do with it what You want.

One thing to try today

One sentence, out loud, with one constraint.

Answer Mark 10:51 as though it had just been put to you. One thing, in a short sentence.

The constraint is this: the sentence has to say what you want to receive, not what you want gone. If it contains “less”, “no more”, “that it would stop”, or any negative, it is not finished. Rewrite it until it names something.

That is usually the uncomfortable moment, and it is the whole exercise. A lot of our requests do not survive being put in the positive, and what shows up instead is truer.

If no sentence comes, start by stopping: the request rarely arrives first. And once you have it, it is enough for today, with nothing added to complete it.