Why Do We Pray?
Seth also had a son, and he named him Enosh. At that time people began to call on the name of the Lord.
Genesis 4:26 (NIV)

Charles Spurgeon would describe it this way: true prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a mere vocal performance. It is far deeper than these. Prayer is a spiritual transaction.

The function of prayer is never to influence God; the purpose of prayer is to change the one who is praying. Everybody is looking for ways to live past pain and human loss. And they find that the best option is to pray, not to change the outcome of terrible events, but to change their own thinking with regard to them. They pray to change their emotions in response to it all, to change how they view life, how to process pain and make healthy choices after traumatic things have happened. In order to change, they need to pray.

It is a transaction between the Creator of Heaven and those on earth. Whoever Enosh and Seth are, what we are told about them is that they apparently saw value in the transactional benefit of prayer, the transactional benefit of calling on the name of the Lord. They engaged in prayer as a transaction with God. They express pain and praise, detachment and emergence, loss and replenishment, death and life. They exchanged what was stagnating their lives for what God gave them to keep on living.

We too have surrendered to a similar kind of exchange when we say: God, I’ll give You my weakness. I know You’re going to give me Your strength. I will give You my insufficiency because I know You’ll give me what has the capacity to make me more than sufficient. 

Maybe you have asked yourself, when did prayer become so convoluted? If you look at it originally, it is simple. It’s transactional. It’s an exchange: our human weakness and the decline of our human interaction for the sovereignty, grace, mercy, and power of our God.