Trying on a new attitude as we pray to a sovereign God
Arthur Pink, in The Sovereignty of God, corrects the common thinking that prayer is our way of getting God to act.
He writes that prayer is designed "not that God's will may be altered, but that it may be accomplished in His own good time and way. It is because God has promised certain things, that we can ask for them with the full assurance of faith."
What are you praying for? Does it line up with a promise God has already made? There are of course so many promises in Scripture—if we listed them all, they'd fill a book.
Pink points to Christ's own prayers asking for God's promises to be fulfilled. Jesus asked the Father to exalt him after his resurrection (Jn. 17:5), which he already knew would happen. He also knew that none of his people would perish, but he still asked the Father to "keep" them (Jn. 17:11).
Pink writes, "The popular belief reduces God to a servant … doing our bidding, performing our pleasure, granting our desires. No; prayer is a coming to God, telling Him my need, committing my way unto the Lord, and leaving Him to deal with it as seemeth Him best. This makes my will subject to His, instead of … seeking to bring His will into subjection to mine."
When we receive blessings and answers, it is not for the sake of our prayers, Pink adds, but "it is for His own sake, and of His own sovereign will and pleasure."
Finally, he returns to the question of the purpose of prayer, since God will do his will no matter what we ask. Here are two more reasons we should still pray:
1. It is the "means God has appointed, for the communication of the blessings of His goodness to His people." (He still wants us to ask Him for such blessings!)
2. "Real prayer is communion with God, so that there will be common thoughts between His mind and ours." (As we see in Is. 55:9, where his thoughts are higher than ours.)
Pink ends the chapter with this summary:
"Prayer is the taking of an attitude of dependency upon God, the spreading of our need before Him, the asking for those things which are in accordance with His will, and therefore there is nothing whatever inconsistent between Divine sovereignty and Christian prayer."
What a challenging perspective for our prayers.
His will,
Tom Harper
Founder, BiblicalLeadership.com
LinkedIn profile | Books
 | Tom Harper is publisher of BiblicalLeadership.com and executive chairman of Networld Media Group, a business-to-business publisher and event producer. He has written five books, including Servant Leader Strong: Uniting Biblical Wisdom and High-Performance Leadership (DeepWater Books, 2019) as well as the Christian business fable Through Colored Glasses and its sequel Inner Threat (DeepWater, 2022). Learn More » |
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