Pray in order to be ready for His action

"We enter His Providence by prayer; we accept His will, sweet or painful, by prayer. We conform our wills to His by prayer and we learn to know His Mind by prayer. Prayer is the link between our finite spirits and God's infinite Spirit. Prayer is the window through which the Divine Light of God's Mind floods into the darkness of our finite minds. In prayer we learn that if we do not get our wills we will get His will which always works better. We may face disappointment in what we planned but if we accept that as His will, we will earn the most precious of all graces: the friendship of God.

Our prayer will not change His immutable will, but we know that in His wisdom He foresaw our future prayers and included them in the mystery of His dispositions of Providence. We pray not that we may change the Divine dispositions but that we may obtain what God has already ordained to be fulfilled by our foreknown prayers. Only God can change the course of events, but in any of the actions of Divine Governance, God has previously taken into account the prayers of His children and though certain things have been decreed to be from all eternity, the means of accomplishing them and the timing in history have been ordained to be dependent on the prayers of weak and fallible creatures. If evil appears to triumph, He is waiting for our prayer. If the course of action that we have pleaded seems to be at a standstill, He may be waiting for our dispositions to be changed as we pray in order that we be ready for His action when it comes... 'for we do not know how to pray as we ought.' (Romans 8:26)"

-- The Pathways of Prayer: Communion with God by Sr Immaculata, ocd