Audio Transcript
A week ago, we looked at how to break free from prayer ruts — getting free from what happens so often when we get stuck in a loop of praying for the same daily needs and stresses. Today, we look at your prayers’ purposes in God’s plan, because it’s a question that stops a lot of people right in their tracks. If God is truly in control of everything (and he definitely is), and if he already knows everything about what is going to happen according to his decree (and he does), then why should we ever bother asking him for things? Doesn’t an all-knowing, all-sovereign God render all of our prayers pointless? Today on Ask Pastor John: God’s plan for your prayers.
The question is from an anonymous listener to the podcast: “Pastor John, I have a question which, as I write it out, may seem really basic to you, but it’s a very new insight for me. In 1 Chronicles 29:10–20, [which is coming up soon in our Bible reading], David offers a hugely important and powerful prayer that acknowledges God’s absolute sovereignty over all things. He says, ‘Yours, O Lord, is the greatness and the power and the glory and the victory and the majesty, for all that is in the heavens and in the earth is yours’ — very powerful (1 Chronicles 29:11). He just states this fact. David doesn’t focus on his own achievements or on Israel’s wealth. Instead, he humbly recognizes that everything they give has first come from God’s hand. ‘For all things come from you, and of your own have we given you’ (1 Chronicles 29:14). His words overflow with reverence, gratitude, and dependence on God. So, how important is God’s sovereignty in shaping the content of all our prayers?”
In Ezekiel 36, God says to the people of Israel,
Thus says the Lord God: This also I will [be sought by] the house of Israel . . . to do for them: to increase their people like a flock. . . . So shall the waste cities be filled with flocks of people. Then they will know that I am the Lord. (Ezekiel 36:37–38)
Now, earlier in the chapter, God had promised he would do that (Ezekiel 36:10). He would multiply the people. He would fill the cities with his flocks, his people. But now in Ezekiel 36:37, he tells them how he’s going to do it: namely, “I will be sought to do it.” Now, that’s my literal translation of the Niphal form of the Hebrew verb darash, “to seek.” I think it says in the ESV, “I will let my people seek me,” or something like that, which is fine, but he’s telling them, “Here’s how I’m going to do it. I will be sought by you to do it.” That means “I will be prayed to.” “This also I will be sought, I will be prayed to, by the house of Israel to do for them.”
Sovereign over Means and Ends
That is one of the instances in the Bible — one of the clearest, I think — of how God’s purpose to do a thing and his way of doing it are brought together; namely, he purposes to do a thing, and then he aims to do it through our prayers. “I plan to do it, and so I will be sought by them to do it. I’m going to ordain the thing — I’m going to ordain the prayer — that will cause me to do what I have ordained to do.” That’s the fundamental relationship between the sovereignty of God and human prayer. God plans something, and then he ordains what the means will be that he will use to bring it about — and one of those means is prayer.
And you can see it again in Matthew 6:7–8:
When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
And I think that means, at least in part, that our Father in heaven knows what’s good for us and has a plan to do it through our asking, so that our asking does not need to be eloquent or long-winded, as if we need to twist his arm to do what he as a good Father aims to do for us.
“Our Father in heaven knows what’s good for us and has a plan to do it through our asking.”
But let’s not make the mistake of drawing the false conclusion. People think it’s a logical conclusion. It’s not. It’s not a logical conclusion. It’s false logic — namely, that because God is sovereign and things are going to happen the way he intended, because they’re going to do that, you don’t need to pray; it’s pointless to pray. That’s false, ungodly, unbiblical logic. That’s not the way it works. It’s not always the case, because God often plans that the human means are not decreed, and so neither is the result decreed. As soon as you realize that outcomes and means to those outcomes are both in the mind of God, then you won’t fall prey to that false logic of saying, “Well, since God is sovereign, it doesn’t matter whether we pray or not.”
Ask the Father
In fact, James 4 makes sure that we don’t make that mistake. In James 4:15, he says, “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” So, he’s clearly a total believer in the sovereignty of God — meticulous sovereignty. “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” That’s sovereignty and providence.
But in James 4:2, he says this: “You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.” Wow. Could the value of prayer be elevated any more highly than for an inspired biblical spokesman to say, “The reason you don’t have is because you didn’t ask”?
Things don’t happen because we don’t ask for them to happen. That’s true. That does not mean that everything you ask happens. We’re not God. He’s a good Father. Good fathers don’t do that. They don’t give everything to their children that they ask for. He gives good things. If we ask for bread, he doesn’t give us a stone. If we ask for a fish, he doesn’t give us a snake (Matthew 7:9–11; Luke 11:11–13). What does he give? Jesus says he gives good things — good things — to those who ask, like every good father does, only much more. If a child asks for something harmful, a good father gives him something beneficial.
Reverence and Worship
I think there are two basic things that we can say in answer to this question about what the sovereignty of God does to our prayers. First, it provides a tone and conviction of submissiveness and reverence and worship. And second, it provides a deep confidence that nothing is too hard for the Lord, so nothing can stop him from answering our prayers when he sets himself to do it.
You can see the first effect of sovereignty in the prayer of the church in Acts 4:24–33. It starts like this: “Sovereign Lord, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and everything in them” (Acts 4:24). And then it goes on to quote Psalm 2 about the futility of the nations raging against the sovereign God. And then it goes on to testify to God’s predestining Pilate and Herod and the Jews and the Gentiles in the killing of Jesus. So, it’s just an amazing prayer.
Only after all of that acclamation of God’s sovereign rule over the world does the prayer finally, in verse 29, get to a request: “And now, Lord, look upon their threats and grant to your servants to continue to speak your word with all boldness.” That’s an amazing way to pray, and it’s all shaped by the sovereignty of God. More than half of the prayer is simply exulting before God in the absolute rule of God over his enemies. So, that’s the first effect of the sovereignty of God on prayer: It gives a tone of submissive reverence and worship and exultation in God.
Confidence and Hope
The other effect of the sovereignty of God on prayer is to give us a strong confidence that nothing is too hard for the Lord. Job says in Job 42:2, “I know that you can do all things, and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
And when the disciples were dismayed that Jesus said the rich can’t get into heaven (or at least, it’s hard for the rich to get into the kingdom of heaven), they were just blown away, and they said, “Who then can be saved?” And Jesus responded, “With man this is impossible [namely, to save people], but with God all things are possible” (Matthew 19:25–26). That’s our confidence in prayer for people who look impossible to save. In fact, Paul said that the hardness of the Jews in his day was owing to God’s sovereign decree, but he prayed for them anyway (Romans 11:8). “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1).
So, I would encourage all of us to pray without ceasing for the things that seem to be impossible, because they’re not impossible for God, because God is sovereign. The sovereignty of God is the great ground of our hope for answered prayer.
