Prayer and the Sovereignty of God

Prayer is one of the marks of Christians. To be a Christian is to be one who prays. When Paul was converted, one of the very first things that was said about him was, "Behold, he prays." It is just part of our experience as Christians to be in prayer.

Yet, while that is true, it is also true that many of us find a certain level of frustration with our prayer life, such that many would say that, "I wish I prayed more", or "I wish I prayed better." On the one hand, prayer is one of the chief characteristics of a Christian, and on the other, it is often one of the chief areas of frustration in the Christian life.

In response to those two observations, there are two principles which can be suggested. The first is this: that prayer is informed by our understanding of who God is, and the more we know God, the more conversant we are about God, the more our prayers reflect God's character, the more biblical our praying will be, the more God-honoring our prayer will be, and the more our prayers will be like the prayers God would have us pray.  And that is just a long way of saying that theology is for life; that what we know about God influences how we pray, how we go about this very ordinary and yet, extraordinary activity of the Christian life; that prayer is informed by our understanding of God and the more we know about God, the more our prayers reflect who God is, the more biblical our praying will be. That is the first principle.
The second is this: that prayer is not to be viewed as a means whereby we change God, but instead, often times in prayer it is God who is changing us.

With those two thoughts in mind, these three articles will seek to explore those two thoughts by examining three distinct conundrums we encounter in prayer. We might express those areas of tension with a series of questions. First, how is the sovereignty of God related to praying? Second, what do we do when prayers seem to go unanswered? Third, what is God doing in us as we pray? And to think about the first question, that of the relationship of God's sovereign will to our praying, we turn to Ephesians 1. This is not a text that perhaps jumped to your mind as you were thinking about prayer, but it does teach very clearly one characteristic of God that we need to work through as we consider prayer.
 
 "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, to the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus:Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of his will, according to he purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.

In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, who is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory."

The opening chapter that Paul writes to the Ephesian Christians is taken up with the blessings we enjoy as God's people; that of being united to Christ, to being adopted by our Heavenly Father, being believers in Jesus Christ. There are certain things which are ours and Paul lists those various things. We have the forgiveness of sins. We have redemption. We have adoption. We have a whole host of blessings. In fact, Paul can say, "You have every spiritual blessing." And he will work through those things describing those blessings which we enjoy as God's people.

But what under-girds that discussion, what to Paul is the foundation of that discussion, what is our hope in that discussion is this grand doctrine of God's sovereignty, of His rule and His reign, His control over all things. Paul will say in a variety of ways in the first 14 verses that God is in control. And because God is in control, you can be assured that these blessings which are being described, which He has promised to those who are in Christ, shall indeed be realized. That is the hope by which these blessings are promised. Paul can say it in a variety of ways, but perhaps most clearly in verse 11: "that in Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will".
 
Paul is telling us that everything is in God's control; that everything not only is in His control, but is part of His will, part of His desire, part of that plan which He set before even the beginning of our time, even before He set about to create. He decreed a plan. Before we come to Genesis 1, God has laid all of these things out in His own mind. There is a will, a providence, a care, a control. Our catechism will say, "It is a control over all His creatures and all their actions" and it is that truth, that underlying truth which stands in the background of all these spiritual promises which are for God's people.
 
But that which ensures the promises does also seem to do violence to the thought that our prayers matter. After all, if God is in control, and that control predates everything which we encounter in this world, then what is the place for prayer?

Let me illustrate this in the most mundane of ways: when I got up this morning to get dressed, I looked in my closet and I picked out a particular tie. I had a variety of choices from which to choose, and from among several options, I chose this particular tie I am now wearing. It was influenced by a couple of things. I knew that I was going to be wearing a white shirt, and so I knew I had to match to a white shirt, which is a relatively easy thing to do. But I still had to make a choice. I had to pick out this particular tie and put it on. I was trying to do it in such a way that I would not embarrass myself or my family by the way I appeared and I would not be a distraction to those whom I would encounter throughout the day. Beyond that, I really did not give it much thought. I probably spent half a second picking out a tie and yet, we could also say that before the foundations were set, before the world was spoken into existence, God decreed that on this particular day, I would be wearing this tie.

Now, there are a variety of things that go into this tie selection. There had to be this tie in my closet when I went to pick it, which means somebody actually gave this to me. If memory serves, I think it was my dad who gave me this tie a Christmas or two ago. In order for my dad to give me this tie, we had to have a relationship such that he would be moved to give me a tie at Christmas. In order for my dad to give me this tie, of course, he had to go out and buy this tie. I suppose he went to a store and purchased this tie. And so, this tie had to catch his eye as he was walking down the aisle and he had to think, at least on some level, "That's a tie I'd like to give my son." But for him to be able to afford to purchase such a thing, he had to have a job and a means to earn income to be able to have the money in his pocket to buy the tie to give to me. And for him to able to pick out that tie, it had to be in the store. And so a buyer at the store went out and saw this tie and thought it was a good tie and thought he could market it, and he could sell it in the stores, and that tie had to be put on a truck and shipped to the store and put out on display for my dad to see it. And even before that, somebody had to make this tie. This particular tie is made of silk, and I think that means it comes from a worm, which means there had to be a worm who spun a silk web that I doubt came out with the exact color and pattern I now observe, so somebody had to dye the thing and cut the thing and process the thing, sell the thing, have it in the store for my dad to pick out in order to give me for Christmas so that this morning when I got up, I was able to choose this tie from one among many.  And at the same time, we can say that before the foundations of the earth were set, God decreed in His will that on this particular day I would wear this particular tie. And it is that reality that has a lot to say about our efforts in prayer, because at face value, the doctrine of the sovereignty of God seems to argue against the efficacy of prayer. How does God's providence, God's care, God's will, God's establishing His will in this world before it was even started, before it was even spoken into existence, how does that truth impact the way we think about our own praying?

I think we can say three or four things very quickly before we move into three other lines of thought. The first is this: that when we pray, one thing we are not doing is telling God something that He does not already know. It simply cannot be that there is something that has slipped past His attention, as if there was something which He was unaware of or that perhaps He knew for a while, but had lapsed in His memory and that had gotten away from Him; that His attention needs to diverted back into an area where it had lapsed. We are not telling God or reminding God of something that He does not already know.

By the same token, we are also not setting out to change the mind of God, as if that plan which He established before the foundations of the earth were set were somehow in need of our advice; that there would be a situation where God had willed, and yet, we would come to prayer and say, "God, have you thought of it this way?" and God would say, "Wow, if only I had that information before I created everything, well, perhaps I would have done it differently. I need to go back and change that."

Well, not at all. God is not like that. There is nothing that we would be able to bring to God that would change His mind on a matter. It is not as if He did not know something, or there was something where He was deficient in thinking something through, or there was a line of thought that He had not had that necessitated us coming along and correcting such a deficiency. We are not telling God things He does not already know.  

Thirdly, we are also not trying to move God to love people more. This is a particularly hard truth, especially when we find ourselves interceding for difficult situations, or interceding for people whom we love very much who are going through circumstances which break our hearts. It is easy to fall into the temptation to think that one of the things we are dong in that prayer is helping God love our loved ones more. We may not formalize such a thought or speak it out loud, but such a sentiment can lurk in the background, and cause us to have unhelpful views about the relationship among ourselves, our loved ones and God.
When we go to God in prayer, when we are mystified by His providence, when we cannot figure out what God is doing, and when it seems as if our concern for suffering outweighs His, we need to be reminded that we do not love others more than God loves them.

When we pray for those whom we care about very, we do not do so because God has forgotten them and we do not do so because His will was not good for them and we do not do so because we somehow love them more than He does. Those things are foundational and they stem from the fact that we love and serve a sovereign God. And yet we can also say at the same time that we are not in the business of just spinning our wheels as we pray. We are not wasting time. We are not engaged in some activity which God has given to us to amuse Himself. That is to say, that while God is entirely sovereign, such absolute control does not make prayer unnecessary or superfluous or redundant. But how can this be?

Consider the events in Exodus as the people of God received the Ten Commandments, after which time Moses and the Lord went up Mount Sinai and the people are left at the base of the mountain. And Moses is, to their mind, delayed too long in bringing back the word from God. The Ten Commandments are still ringing in their ears and they come to Aaron and say, "You know that guy, what's his name? He's been gone a really long time. Maybe he's forgotten about us. It may be time for us to move on. Maybe Aaron, you could take our earrings and form them into new gods and we'll worship them."

So Aaron does that and he forms two golden calves. And you remember that God and Moses came back down to the camp and find them worshiping these golden calves. And the anger of the Lord burned against them.

Well, the psalmist records these events in Psalm 106 and this is how he describes those things:

"They made a calf at Horeb and worshiped a metal image.
They exchanged the glory of God for the image of an ox that eats grass.
They forgot God, their Savior, who had done great things in Egypt, wondrous works in the land of Ham, and awesome deeds by the Red Sea.
Therefore he said he would destroy then--had not Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him, to turn away his wrath from destroying them."

The psalmist can say, "Had not Moses stood in the breach, he would have destroyed them." And how was it that Moses stood in the breach? What was the activity Moses was engaged in? Moses prayed and he asked God to spare them, even though they deserved to be destroyed. The people were in danger of incurring the just wrath of God for their treacherous behavior, and the Psalmists tells us that the danger was real. The threatened wrath was real. But Moses, the scorned leader, the quickly forgotten mediator prayed that God would spare them and the Holy Spirit could record that had not Moses prayed, God would have destroyed them.

On the one hand, we have a God who is sovereign, in control with a plan, and on the other hand, had not Moses prayed . . . There is the rub, isn't it? What do we do with prayer in light of a God who is in control, who has providentially ordered all things that come to pass? Let me suggest three or four lines of thinking that stem from the relationship of prayer in light of the knowledge that God is sovereign.

The first thing is this: that the God who set His plan in stone before the earth was created included prayer in His plan to accomplish His will. The same God who decreed this plan even before creation, included prayer in His plan to accomplish His will.

There is a sense in which prayer is like the other means we might know; like the silkworm or the manufacturer or the salesman or the job--one of several means which God uses to accomplish His will. None of those means are outside of God's plan. And in one sense, prayer is counted as one among several means God uses to bring about the things which He has foreordained to happen.

But even such a recognition is probably not a sufficient way to consider prayer. To merely count prayer as one of innumerable secondary causes is to do a disservice to prayer itself, because God does not view prayer as merely one of several means to accomplish His plan. In fact, the Bible teaches that it is the means closest to His heart for carrying out His will. In Revelation 8, John is in the midst of seeing a series of visions that really began in the 4th chapter of Revelation. He has seen a whole host of events which stem from the breaking of the seven seals, and as we come to the 8th chapter, John is seeing the end of this particular set of visions which are describing the conditions on earth from Christ's first coming to His second coming. The end of the age is now in view, the period of time before Jesus returns. And John can say this:

"When the Lamb opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. Then I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. And another angel came and stood at the altar with a golden censer, and he was given much incense to offer with the prayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne, and the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, rose before God from the hand of the angel. Then the angel took the censer and filled it with fire from the altar and threw it on the earth, and there were peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning, and an earthquake."

And you almost expect the next sentence to read, "And Jesus came back again." But did you see what immediately precedes the end of this age? John does not look out and say, "And I saw the church had developed some wonderful evangelism tools which spread the gospel from pole to pole." Instead, what John sees are the prayers of the saints ascending to God on High which then brings about the end of this age and a second coming of Jesus Christ; that the single most important event that is yet to happen in human history will occur as a result of God's people praying for it; that prayer is one of the means closest to His own heart for carrying out His own will. That is one thing we could say about prayer in light of God's sovereignty.

The second thing is this: that far from being an impulse not to pray, God's providential rule, in fact, helps us with our direction in prayer. We could think back to Daniel: consider the life of Daniel, a man full in prayer. And at one point in Daniel's praying, we are told in the 9th chapter, that Daniel is having his quiet time. He is reading his Bible and he comes to the book of Jeremiah where he reads that God's people will go off into captivity and will be there for 70 years. It is a promise that God gave to His people. It was not a wholly pleasant promise, but a promise none the less. And Daniel comes across that promise and he reads that promise and he is there in captivity and he realizes that the captivity is going to last 70 years. And so what does Daniel do? Daniel gets on his knees and he prays that the people will be able to return to Jerusalem. Daniel sees God's pre-proclaimed will, and he takes that as an occasion to pray for that will to unfold as promised, because Daniel knows that God has established prayer to carry out His will.

When he comes across a promise in the Bible, Daniel views it as an invitation and instruction for his prayer life. He prays that that promise would come true. That is why our children's catechism can define prayer as "asking of God things that He has already promised to give us," which is one very practical way that the idea that God is sovereign helps us as we go to Him in prayer. Because God is sovereign, and because He has recorded His promises to us, we can scour the pages of Scripture to find promises which are given to us, and which we are to pray back to God that He would keep. One of the things the example of Daniel teaches us and encourages us to do is when we come to a promise that the almighty and sovereign God has given, we would find that as an occasion to pray for it, so that God might use those prayers to bring about the blessings of those promises.

One of the ways God applies promises, fulfills those promises in our lives is when we pray for them. That is one very practical way that sovereignty impacts our praying. In fact, far from being a reason not to pray, the sovereignty of God is actually an encouragement to pray. You would not want to pray to a god who was not in complete control. You remember the line that Ronald Reagan used--the nine scariest words in the English language are, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

We have all had experiences that make us question the effectiveness of getting help from an unwieldy bureaucracy. But God is not like that. He is not incompetent or incapable or unwilling, but because He is in control, and because He listens to our prayers, we can go boldly to Him with our request, not in order to tell Him something He does not know, but because He has foreordained to use the prayers of His people to accomplish his will.

Jeremy Smith is the Executive Editor of reformation21 and Senior Assistant Minister at First Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS.


Recommended Resources
A Method for Prayer by Matthew Henry
Praying by JI Packer and Carolyn Nystrom
The Secret Key of Heaven by Thomas Brooks