Why pray?

Why do we pray to the God who has sovereign power over all things and who acts to bring about everything he has planned to achieve? Why ask him for anything when he will achieve everything anyway?
It's right that we have a high view of God's sovereignty. But that can lead to prayerlessness - I believe that God will do the right thing at the right time in the right way. So I just need to trust him.
This was the issue Don Carson was addressing at the Evangelical Ministry Assembly today (many hundreds of church ministers gathered at St Helen's, Bishopsgate to be taught & encouraged).
And the answer to this very real problem (for me, anyway) is to hold together, all at once, all of God's attributes. In other words, we must not allow God's sovereignty to overshadow the fact that he is relational. For all eternity, God has been the Trinity in which Father, Son and Holy Spirit love and communicate and enjoy each other. And now, having made us in his image, he loves us and communicates with us and enjoys us - and we are to love him and communicate back to him and enjoy him. And we do that in prayer. Prayer has been described as 'answering speech' - God speaks to us in Scripture and we talk back (I was going to write, 'we answer back', but that might be misunderstood!).
So when I'm tempted not to pray because I know God is sovereign, I will also remember that he is personal - relational - and this is every bit as much a part of him as his sovereign power.

More good stuff tomorrow, no doubt.