To reject prayer because it is not answered in the way you hope is to take too small a view of prayer. Christ Himself prayed for outcomes that sovereign God declined to grant.

Hours after a young man who appeared to identify as a woman and to hate Christians opened fire on Catholic primary school students at Mass on Wednesday, leftist Twitter had identified a culprit: prayer.

“Prayer is not freaking enough. Prayers does not end school shootings,” wrote Jen Psaki, former White House press secretary and an MSNBC host. “Prayer does not bring these kids back. Enough with the thoughts and prayers.”

“Don’t just say this is about thoughts and prayers right now. These kids were literally praying,” lectured Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

“Forget about thoughts and prayers,” echoed CNN host Dana Bash, describing Frey’s position as one “most people feel.”

Manuel Oliver, whose own son was killed in a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., went on CNN to say “thoughts and prayers this time are out of the picture. I mean, these kids were actually praying…the God they were all praying to, and still they were shot.”

The implied argument is, if prayer didn’t protect these young Christians from being killed, it must be useless or at least insufficient. There’s a transactional undercurrent to these protestations: that these children placed their faith in God and He failed to hold up His end of the bargain.

Every Christian who has ever experienced suffering has wrestled with the question of why God does not prevent every tragedy. I’m sure the parents, siblings, grandparents, and friends of the victims are grasping for answers to those questions now.

But it’s quite another thing to mock and belittle the prayers offered by students at the Annunciation Catholic School Wednesday morning, or the prayers offered by loved ones and strangers mourning the tragedy. Such mockery betrays an arrogant misunderstanding about not just the power but the purpose of prayer.

The primary purpose of prayer is not to have your desires, however good they may be, granted. If it were, God could simply provide the material answers to all your wants; He has no need for you to ask. Rather, prayer exists to sanctify us, to give us tangible opportunities to have our faith strengthened, to give us a deep and personal knowledge of God and His love for us, to conform us to His likeness, to remind us of our reliance on Him, and to bring Him glory. Oswald Chambers described prayer as “the way that the life of God in us is nourished.” Its purpose, he wrote, was not “getting things for ourselves” but “that we may get to know God Himself.”

Read More