I once heard a story, I'm not so sure if it's true or not, about a missionary who came home from a mission trip to a closed nation. He had just lost his family to persecution. He stands before his congregation and says that God told him that he lost his family because his congregation failed to pray for protection.
After hearing that story, one must ask a few questions:Does God truly withhold simply because we do not ask? Is a starving child deprived of a meal because he did not pray for one? Is prayer really necessary to receive the grace of God?
The starting point for understanding prayer is the grace of God and His sovereign will. In Matthew 6:9-10, Jesus templates the opening of a prayer as, "Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven."
The starting point of prayer is understanding that even before we pray, God already knows what's good for us and is ready to give what is needed by everyone -- Christian and non-Christian alike. This concept is called the common grace of God.
The common grace of God is the reason why there are non-believers who do not starve and Christians who experience God's discipline. Because of His common grace, provision and protection are given even when people do not ask for it.
When Jesus says in Matthew 7:7, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you," it's not that He says, "I won't give you what you want unless you ask for it," but that he implies, "If you ask for anything according to my will, it's as good as yours."
Because God is loving, He will choose to feed and protect even when ignorant and forgetful people fail to communicate needs to Him. If that wasn't the case, there would be more hungry and dead people in pews than there are today because -- admit it or not -- we all fail at some point to pray for our needs.
But that's the beauty of the unmerited favor of God that He blesses us according to His goodness and not ours.
Of course, that doesn't give us reason to devalue the importance of communicating with God through prayer. Jesus makes it extra clear how privileged we are to now come to God freely as if our sins were not a hindrance. When God tore the veil as Jesus breathed His last breath, He now makes us able and qualified to come into His presence freely through the washing of sins by Jesus's blood.
That is a privilege that I, personally, wouldn't want to miss out on, and that I believe no Christian would want to miss it as well. But that doesn't mean that God will stop blessing and protecting us because we forget to take the spiritual perks.
Romans 5:2 says, "Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God."
