Last week I began asking some simple and yet not so simple questions about prayer. I’m doing this not because I doubt the importance of prayer, but because I feel that asking such questions can both spur us to pray more deeply while at the same time help us to be honest about the struggles we have with it. And yes, it is okay to struggle!
The question about prayer that I brought up last week was,
“Does anything happen when we pray? The complication of answering this question comes when we face God’s sovereignty. We know God is control (whatever that means) and so as a result, if nothing can thwart his plan, then what good is our prayer? He’s going to do what he’s going to do, right? (I realize this is not the only way to think about God’s sovereignty…and personally…not a healthy way to think about it.)
I have a few comments about this way of thinking. (And yes, I guess you could say I’m still working through last week’s question). First, I realize that this question concerning God’s sovereignty and prayer is not necessarily one the Bible is asking. For the Biblical writers, the truths that God was in complete control of everything and that humanity had true freedom to do as they wished was not seen as a problem. So does prayer change the course of history? Of course! Does God control all of history? Of course.
Second, when I think about God’s sovereignty, I’m not viewing it as something in which God is stiff-arming his creation to get it to do what he wants. There is a relationship that God has with what he has made. He loves us. So I think there is a relational aspect to God’s sovereignty as there is a working together of God and us as his image bearers to make this earth “as it is in Heaven.”
Third, we have to be okay with a bit of a mystery as to the workings of God and how he holds all things together and yet gives us freedom to live as we please. There has been much ink used in discussing God’s sovereignty and our free will. I’m glad there are those who have the intellect to tackle this issue. But I think each of these folks who dove into the depths of this subject will say at the end of the day that there is still quite a bit of mystery.
Historian and theologian N.T. Wright remembers facing this question of God’s sovereignty and prayer when he was quite young. Though he didn’t have a complete answer for it in his teens, he still believed that God answered his prayers and thus, felt his prayers changed things. As he has aged and given this question a bit more thought, he says…
As I've gotten older and have thought about Genesis 1 and the role of human beings in creation and bringing that forward into Jesus' teaching about the Kingdom of God and Paul's appropriation of that, it looks as though what Scripture is trying to tell us is that God who made the world made it in such a way that some of the most important things he wants to do in the world would happen through human agency. So the mystery of prayer is that when we humbly come before God with our requests, there seems to be something there that delights him.
As always is the case in these short posts, much more could be written. And perhaps it will. Also, it could be that what I have typed here as only caused you to ask more questions (of which I would be delighted). But can we end with the most incredulous thought that, regardless of where you land on the question of how God’s sovereignty and the voicing of our prayers to him relate, God delights in our bringing ourselves and requests to him. Think on that for a bit. Oh what a privilege it is to come before him. Oh with what love does God bend his ear toward us. Blessed be his name!
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