Let me ask you something. Why do we pray? We pray because we cannot do life on our own. We need help. But I also believe that that’s also the reason that we don’t pray. We don’t pray because we don’t really feel that we need any help. You see, for most of us, we only think about praying when we are up against something that we cannot do or cannot figure out. And that’s good. That’s exactly what God wants. But the problem is this. We end up reserving prayer for the stuff that we can’t do, and we don’t pray about the stuff that we think we can do. And therein lies the problem.

The problem is thinking that we can do anything without God. In John 15:5, Jesus said that apart from him we can do nothing. Now, Jesus wasn’t using a figure of speech there. He wasn’t exaggerating. He really means that we can do absolutely nothing without him.

Folks, you don’t take a step without God’s involvement. You don’t breathe your next breath unless God makes it so. Now, I think most of us accept this. Most of us believe that God is in control of all things and that our life is in His hands. But if we left it there, God would seem distant and impersonal, and that’s not who God is. He is our heavenly Father, who is concerned about every single aspect of our lives, because he wants every single aspect of our lives to bring him glory. And we bring him glory with every single aspect our lives when we feel dependent on him in every single aspect of our lives. And if we feel dependent on God for every single aspect of our lives, we will pray about every single aspect of our lives.

Why don’t I pray before I crank up my car and head off somewhere? It is because driving is so natural to me that I think I can do it without any help—and yet people die on the roads every day. Now, when I sit down to write a sermon, I’ll pray, because I feel how important that is and I know that I need help. But you know, I have been preaching a long time now and there are a lot of times when I’ll just dig right in without praying. I’ve grown accustomed to writing a sermon, I’m experienced, I know what I’m doing, I know the process. Often, it’s only when I can’t figure out how to say something or when I can’t figure out what a passage means that I’ll stop and pray. Do you see the fallacy that I’m driving at here? Our problem in prayer is that we pray about the hard stuff, but everything else we tackle on our own. Basically, what we are telling God is this. “When I run up against a brick wall, I’ll holler at you. Otherwise, I got this. I think I can take care of everything else by myself.”

You see, the funny thing about God is that he really needs to be needed. Now he’s not co-dependent. He’s anything but that. In fact, he’s completely self-sufficient. I like to put it like this. The only thing God needs from us is our need for him. When we tell God that we need him, it is called worship. It’s called faith. It’s called love. God needs to be needed because it is the truth. We need him. What did Jesus say again? “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

Now what does this have to do with prayer? It has everything to do with prayer. When we feel we need God’s involvement in every single aspect of our lives, then we’ll pray about every single aspect of our lives, not just the hard stuff. We’ll talk to him about every single aspect of our lives. You see, the parts of our lives that we don’t talk to him about are the parts where we foolishly feel self-sufficient. The parts of our lives that we don’t pray about are the parts where we say to him, “I think I can take care of this myself.” Prayer really is a measuring stick of our dependence on God.