The Power And Purpose Of Prayer
We've been taught that prayer changes things. In view of God's sovereignty, what is the role of prayer in a Christian's life?
First of all, we need to establish that it is the sovereign God who not only invites us but commands us to pray. Prayer is a duty, and as we perform that duty, one thing for sure is going to be changed, and that is us. To live a life of prayer is to live a life of obedience to God.
Also, we must understand that there is more to prayer than intercession and supplication. When the disciples said to Jesus, “Lord, teach us to pray,” they saw a connection between the power of Jesus and the impact of his ministry and the time he spent in prayer. Obviously, the Son of God felt that prayer was a very valuable enterprise because he gave himself to it so deeply and passionately. But I was surprised that he answered the question by saying, “Here’s how you ought to pray,” and gave them the Lord’s Prayer. I would have expected Jesus to answer that question a different way: “You want to know how to pray? Read the Psalms,” because there you see inspired prayer. The Spirit himself, who helps us to pray, inspired the prayers that are recorded in the Psalms. When I read the Psalms, I read intercession and I read supplication, but overwhelmingly what I read is a preoccupation with adoration, with thanksgiving, and with confession. Take those elements of prayer, and what happens to a person who learns how to adore God? That person is changed. What happens to a person who learns how to express his gratitude to God? That person will now become more and more aware of the hand of Providence in his life and will grow in his sense of gratitude toward God. What happens to the person who spends time confessing his sins? He keeps in front of his mind the holiness of God and the necessity of keeping short accounts with God.
But can our requests change God’s sovereign plan? Of course not. When God sovereignly declares that he is going to do something, all of the prayers in the world aren’t going to change God’s mind. But God not only ordains ends, he also ordains means to those ends, and part of the process he uses to bring his sovereign will to pass are the prayers of his people. And so we are to pray.
©1996 by
R.C. Sproul. Used by permission of Tyndale.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. ©1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
5 comments:
But what about when God was going to destroy the Israelites and make a nation out of Moses, Moses interceded, and God relented. Did Moses' prayer change things?
Craig
Craig,
Moses prayer did not change God's mind. Moses was brought to the place he needed to be as mediator between God and the nation. As it says in the book of Acts: "all of His works are known unto Him from the foundation of the world."
God declares the end from the beginning and yet He relates to us "on our level" and according to our moment by moment experience of living as finite creatures of time.
God made all things from nothingness and knows every atom and molecule perfectly and the actions and reactions of man in any given situation. But we don't relate that way so we see language in scripture that presents the account as man experiences it, otherwise we would, in a sense, have no real interaction with an omniscient God.
Also, if God "changed His mind", that would denote an imperfection,wrong decision or error in God. This cannot be. There is no variableness in God, He is eternally the same.
AMEN and AMEN!!!
brother tom,
Very good points, if God changes than he is not God. This topic made me think of how Christ being God took on flesh and communed with the Father as a human does but perfectly. He prayed as a man and petitioned the Father as a man. Christ never prayed for things to change but for His Father's will to be done.
just some thoughts,
brother WC (bill)
Bill,
Your comments run parallel with the words of John in his letter where he speaks God's will being the determining factor of whether He heareth us when we ask.
God is perfect in His knowledge and in all His ways and allows us to go through this conforming process that draws prayer and petition out from our hearts and brings us in line with His purpose and plan.
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