Prayer and Providence

Prayer and Providence in Genesis 24

Well, we're going to spend some time in Genesis 24, not only this morning in verses 1 -28, but also next week. And what I'd like to do is focus more practically on verses 1 -28 this morning. Not that there's not always some level of theology, even in the most practical and mundane matters, but that's just to say next week's going to be particularly theological as we complete the rest of the chapter, as we consider why the longest chapter in the book of Genesis, one of the most detailed narrative passages in the book of Genesis, why that has borne theological significance throughout Christian interpretation.

We go back and read with the church through the centuries and we see just how significant Genesis 24 is in light of God's plan and purpose of redemption. So we're going to unpack that a little bit next week, which is to say, as you've read through this very long chapter, and you're thinking, what is the significance of this?

How is this theological? It would be good to meditate and reflect on these things in preparation for next week. But we want to consider some practical matters this morning, and that's mainly prayer and providence.

Not as two separate topics, but really as one interrelated topic. Prayer and providence, the way these things weave together in our lives, in our Christian experience. Now, on our way to there, we begin, of course, with the context of Genesis 24, beginning in verse 1, Abraham being old, well-advanced in age, and the Lord having blessed him in all things.

He's come through that great trial of the faith. He's buried his wife in the hope of the promise. He's continuing to exercise his faith in God's covenant promise, even in his advanced age. And so he calls his servant, we read here, the oldest servant.

This could be, though unnamed, this could be Eleazar of Damascus. Some older interpreters simply just state that as fact, that this is Eleazar. Of course, Eleazar was set up to be the heir when Abraham was under the impression that he was going to remain childless.

And he said, see, in his great complaint to the Lord, Eleazar the Damascene is my heir. And so perhaps this oldest servant, this chief servant from among Abraham's household is indeed Eleazar, which is to say, someone who's been with Abraham through thick and thin.

And also, therefore, someone who has seen God move in miraculous ways, in profound ways like his mistress, Sarai, giving birth when she was well past the age of childbearing. And that's also giving us a glimpse of Abraham as a discipler within his household.

Of course, household to the ancient mind would have never just been blood relatives. Household would have been all that were under the domain of the master of the house, all that were under the roof and contributed to the economy of the house, the oikonomos, that's.

Where we get the word, house rule.

And so servants were family members, servants were part of the household. Heirs worked alongside servants. They did the same work, they ate the same meals, they shared in so many of the same blessings and privileges, they bore each other's burdens.

The difference between the heir and the servant would have only been what they would have received, what they would have gone on to inherit, but they would have been plowing the same fields together, eating at the same table.

It's not perhaps our understanding of household. So this oldest servant is well trusted. This oldest servant is one who has been discipled, one who has experienced the covenant promises of God unfolding in Abraham's life.

And Abraham calls him over and he says, please put your hand under my thigh and I will make you swear by the Lord, the God of heaven and the God of earth, that you will not take a wife for my son from the daughters of the Canaanites among whom I dwell, but you shall go to my country and to my family and take a wife for my son Isaac.

So Abraham is continuing to pursue the Lord's covenant promise and now he makes his servant basically enter into a covenant with him.

Put your hand under my thigh.

This is an enigmatic way, it was actually a gesture of forming a bond of taking an oath. This isn't the first nor the last time we've seen this particular form of oath taking and scholars are not necessarily finding a consensus about the significance of grasping the under.

Thigh.

It could be a euphemism for the genitals and in that sense, there's a way of saying it has to do with progeny or inheritance. That might be the significance of this particular oath form. There's other ways of taking an oath and this one seems to be connected with inheritance.

We'll see it again later in Genesis in a very similar context about inheritance and progeny. Abraham will go on to make two demands of this servant. First, as we read, his son's wife must come from among his relatives, which is to say Isaac needs to be married and Isaac must not marry a Canaanite woman.

He must not marry with those who dwell in the land. He must be set apart. He must remain steadfast to the Lord's calling that he will indeed inherit this promised land and therefore he cannot compromise with those who are not heirs but rather stooping in the land as it were.

Now, of course, Abraham's concern here is not racism pure and simple, it's spiritual. It's covenantal. The reason Abraham cannot tolerate a Canaanite woman for Isaac is all about the idolatry and immorality of the Canaanites within the land and the negative impact that would have upon Isaac.

So notice in his old age, Abraham is laser focused on the spiritual dangers that are ahead of his son Isaac. He's gotten to the age and he's been through enough of those dangers to say, I don't want my son to stumble where I've stumbled.

I don't want him to go after Egypt. I don't want him to do what my nephew did and go after Sodom. I want Isaac to be well prepared and protected and the most important thing I can do for him is make sure that his spouse, his help meet, his one flesh union is with someone who has not given over to the idolatry and immorality of this land.

The basis for his decision we have in verse 7, the Lord God of heaven who took me from my father's house and from the land of my family who spoke to me and swore to me saying, to your descendants I give this land.

He will send his angel before you and you shall take a wife for my son from there. That's a very interesting statement for Abraham to make. He could have just simply said what he says at the very end.

The Lord will send an angel before you and you will take a wife for my son from there. That's the only necessary information. So why give this whole preamble about Abraham's calling and Abraham's experience?

The Lord, the God of heaven who took me from my father's house and from the land of my family who swore to me saying, to your descendants I give this land. And that's the God that will lead you to find the wife for my son.

So Abraham is viewing this covenantally in light of God's calling. And that calling now is not only upon Abraham but on the seed of promise. Every action that Abraham has made continues to be on the basis of what God has revealed, his purpose and promise for Abraham in the land that he caused him to dwell.

His plan to make Abraham a blessing for all of the nations. And Abraham knows that cannot happen if Isaac intermarries with the nations. He'll no longer be able to be a blessing in the fulfillment of that great promise.

And so this servant must swear he will not allow Isaac to have such a bride from among this pagan peoples but that he goes among the own relatives and that Isaac marries in.

The Lord, so to speak.

Of course this is a theme that develops throughout scripture.

It plagues Israel.

We saw that when we were in Ezra and Nehemiah and the great lament that came over the intermarriage of the people again and again. Foreign intermarriage turned away the hearts of the kings of God's people.

And of course Christians are called to marry only in the Lord. Christians are called to be equally yoked. So this is developed and taught as a command in 1 Corinthians 6 and 7. But right here in Genesis 24 we have a biblical principle of marriage in the Lord, of not intermarrying with those who reject the Lord.

That was the first requirement.

The second requirement is that Isaac must not return to his homeland, his ancestry. The woman is to be brought to him. He's not to go back to his homeland. He's not to return and settle outside of the land.

And so this is a, for lack of a better phrase, a mail order bride for Isaac. Isaac is not to leave the promised land. He must understand, though it seems like such a far off fulfillment, that this is indeed his inheritance.

And therefore he must stay in the land, settle in the land, be rooted in the land. He must not seek that which seems more promising, which seems more comfortable, which may just seem temporary for the time being.

Abraham knows from experience the dangers of leaving the land. So if Isaac were to go back to Babylon, so to speak, the chances are it would be difficult for him to reenter the land, perhaps undesirable for him to enter the land.

Perhaps he will be like Esau will come to be and despise his birthright in light of the immediacy, in light of the urgency. So even here we see Abraham discipling his son, protecting his son, guiding his son in the promise of the Lord.

And of course we also see Abraham understanding the weakness of the flesh.

He's an old man.

He knows from experience just how secure and stable and solid you think you can be until.

The circumstances change.

Abraham has been called out of the world and in light of his experience and his struggle, he does what he can to protect his son from going, as it were, into the world, from being saturated by the ways of the world.

He does what he can to protect Isaac. And Christian parents, we all know Christians, of course, who have reentered the world, as it were, spurned their faith, left their promised inheritance. Christian parents can learn from Abraham's example here.

Christian grandparents can learn from Abraham's example here on how to do what they can to protect their children from the influence of immorality and worldliness. So we see, as Derek Kidner says, to the very end, God's will for Isaac continues to make a demand on Abraham's faith.

Abraham still is walking by faith in what God has promised. And we can ask the question, this is called counterfactual history, what if Abraham wasn't.

Walking by faith?

Been there, done that, I did the whole thing on Mount Moriah, you know, I've been through it all, now I can retire, I can just let things be. I fought my fight, Isaac's going to have to be his own man and make his own decisions.

What if Abraham had done that? And Isaac had settled in with a nice Canaanite girl? How would history have been impacted? There wouldn't have been a redemptive history that followed. It came on the providence within Abraham's faith through his own household, through his care for his son.

So all of redemptive history is hinging on these kinds of steps and decisions that Abraham is making under the will and power of God by his grace. We perhaps don't feel that we're in the same position, but we recognize even just as Americans in light of what we celebrated perhaps this past week, how little decisions within families, a decision like getting on a boat and coming into a new world for the sake of protecting from worldly influence, how in four centuries' time that can remarkably impact the flow of human history.

Family decisions matter. God's providence in family decisions as simple and mundane as marriage matter. They carry a redemptive historical weight because God is always at work through the lives of His people.

What if the servant, as we'll come to see, hadn't persevered in the task? Again, redemptive history would have shuddered. This loyalty, this obedience, this trust in God's providence propels God's purpose for.

The world.

And so we see Abraham being faithfully obedient to what God had revealed. And then we see the servant being faithfully obedient to what his master had revealed. And there's this cascading, beautiful glimpse of obedience, and that's interwoven with the sovereign providence of God.

What we notice about Abraham is this. Even in his old age, even with his wife buried now in the caves by Machpelah, he doesn't sit back and just say, well, God's going to have to do it. He doesn't become presumptuous.

He doesn't think, well, God's going to have to find a bride and drop her out of the heavens and then we'll just know that this is who Isaac is to be married. He undertakes to pursue a bride for his wife.

He exercises faith and dependence upon God. This hasn't necessarily been revealed to him. He makes the servant take an oath, but as we'll come to see, he also releases her from that oath. If she doesn't want to come back with you and this plan is totally frustrated and failed, then you're not bound by this oath anymore.

He doesn't know necessarily that this will be the case. And so here is Abraham at the very end of his life, and with eyes of faith, he's looking ahead of himself, even ahead of his son. Remember that God had told him that he's going to have offspring and they'll be taken into a land of Egypt for 400 years.

Abraham's looking ahead, covenantally, and he's concerned about his son and he's concerned about his son's marriage and the offspring from that marriage and the offspring that are all part of God's unfolding purpose.

Abraham is thinking generationally, and it's a sad thing when we can get to the last stages of our lives and still not even think of the next generation. Abraham's thinking way ahead of that. He's thinking generationally of the inheritance within the land.

He's thinking of God's covenant promise. He wants to see this blessing through the world fulfilled. And so the generations to come were, of course, people that Abraham never would know. He can't control that.

He trusts in the Lord for that. But where he has influence, where he can have some effect, some impact, he acts. I may not be able to have any influence on my offspring's offspring's offspring, but I can have influence on my son and on the woman he marries and the kind of woman she.

Is.

I can protect and I can guide and I can discipline and disciple. I'll do what I'm capable of doing and I leave the rest to the Lord. And so here we see this concern. He's giving us an example to follow.

This is what believers do.

We do what we can and we leave the rest to the Lord. Where do we have a sphere of influence? Where do we make an impact? Where can we exercise control? Here we act by faith, according to God's grace and the abilities he's given us.

We act for the sake of the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God moves generationally. It moves covenantally. And so the calling to fulfill these little household rules, Ephesians 5 and 6, Colossians 3, these little household rules, it's no different here.

These little decisions, these little acts, these influences, this impact, it propels the kingdom of God and God's work in this world. Everything believers do ought to be with an eye toward the advancement of the kingdom of God.

And we tend to think that the kingdom of God only advances with mighty movements and mighty men and we miss the fact that it's often rolling in situations like this. It was the influence over a marriage.

It was that guidance when that marriage was just beginning. It was that godly instruction in child rearing. It was a multi-generational vision. That's what we see here in Genesis 24. But moving beyond this, we actually begin to see prayer and providence interwoven.

Beginning in verse 10.

The servant departs.

He takes ten of his master's camels. These might have been multi-generational camels. These might have been the offspring of camels that Pharaoh had gifted Abraham back when Sarah was finally released from his harem.

Ten camels, that's a lot. Remember we said a camel's like an exotic car.

It's like a Tesla.

It's advanced technology in the ancient Near East. So much so that it used to be the claim of some skeptics that the biblical account couldn't be trusted because there was no archaeological evidence of camels this early in Egyptian.

History.

And since then, of course, we've found all sorts of decorations with camels and remains of camels and whatnot. So that's been shot down. But that's just to say camels are high tech. Camels are exotic.

We're going to go on to see the jewelry that's brought out. Abraham is, as he was said, a mighty prince among the Canaanites. He was a man of great wealth, great might. The servant takes ten camels. That's just showing off.

He doesn't need ten camels to travel, right?

He needs one.

So why take nine more? Why nine more camels to water and to feed? It's a show of luxury and extravagance and wealth. It's meant to impress this potential bride-to-be. All of his master's goods, we read, were in his hand.

And he arose and went to Mesopotamia, to the city of Nahor. Remember, that's Abraham's brother. Most likely this is named after him. And he made his camels kneel down outside the city by a well of water at evening time, the time when women go out to draw water.

And then here we have this beautiful prayer, beginning in verse 12. Oh, Lord, God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day. Show kindness to my master Abraham. Behold, here I stand by the well of water.

And the daughters of the men of the city are coming out to draw water now. Let it be that the young woman to whom I say, please, let down your pitcher that I may drink. And she says, drink. And I will also give your camels a drink.

Let her be the one you've appointed for your servant Isaac. And by this, I will know that you have shown kindness to my master. So Abraham clearly is not the only man of faith in Genesis 24. This servant, perhaps Eleazar, this trusted chief servant, is also a man of faith.

He says, oh, Lord, God of my master Abraham. In other words, he understands that God is in this covenantal relationship with Abraham. And therefore, he prays to the God of Abraham, to the God of Isaac.

It turns out to be one of the great acts of faith in Genesis, that this servant brings the bride to the seat of promise. And so this act of faith, it's not only recorded for us here, but then we have it in the remainder of Genesis 24, because the servant recounts everything to Laban.

And so you get it twice. And that's just an amazing amount of emphasis for Hebrew narrative. The fact that this chapter is as long as it is, largely because of the servant's actions and words. And then his recounting of that says, this is vitally significant.

This servant has a central role in his act of faith, is celebrated in the history of God's redemption. Now, a little bookmark for next week, this has important theological significance for what this chapter presents theologically.

So we'll touch on that next week. I don't want to give away the thunder, so to speak. But it's very beautiful once you see it. This servant's act of faith literally bridges God's purpose of redemption.

And he has a plan, and he recognizes that this plan has to be bathed in prayer. And we have that prayer. It begins, right? Lord God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day. And success, in light of the context, is, please lead me to find the bride that I swore I would take back for my master.

And then he asked God to identify the one. There's all of these young women now from Mesopotamia, and it's heading toward nighttime, and so they're coming out to draw water for the evening. And he says, God, help me identify the one.

And how am I going to do that? How am I going to identify the one? And he, as it were, lays down a fleece. He sets up a test, as it were. And he says, let it be this way, that the one that I say, please let down your pitcher, and if she offers to give my camels drink, let her be the one.

And we'll see that even this, even if this encounter goes to plan, he still is going to be discerning. He's still somewhat cautious and guarded. That's very, very helpful and instructive. But don't miss the fact that in his prayer, he's praying very specifically.

He's praying for God to answer this test, this means of identifying the potential bride-to-be. And then we read, and this is just beautiful, even before he had finished praying, Rebecca's walking to the well.

And we think, well, you know, if my prayers could be answered that immediately and that self-evidently, I would pray specifically all the time. We tend to pray generically to guard our hearts. So we don't want to be disappointed or feel that somehow we're lacking the faith that God requires.

And of course, we all have times that we wish God would speak to us. Apparently, God had not spoken this to Abraham. Apparently, God had not spoken to the servant. They're praying in light of what they do not know.

They're praying specifically and acting in faith. The servant knows I may return empty-handed. Abraham knows that. He says, if you do, you'll be released from my oath. But they're acting in faith and they're praying in faith.

There's no angelic visitation here. There's no direct message from a prophet. He's praying and he's saying, Lord, I need help. I'm here now. This is the time and I need your help to identify this woman.

And I think that's a common experience for us. Rarely do we feel so prompted by the Lord, so assured of his guidance or will for us. It's usually something like this. We know there's something we're trying to do, a direction we're trying to go, and we need help.

We need help, Lord. What would you have me do? Help me narrow something down. Would you have me be in this relationship? Would you have me pursue this opportunity? Should I be in this line of work? What would you have me do in light of this situation and the news that's come down or how my management is viewing me, Lord?

What am I going to do? We tend to pray generically, don't we? Well, how ought we to pray? I think there's four things that we can put together here from how this servant prays, four things. And the first thing is something we notice throughout, not only here, but in every time the servant speaks, we see this God-centeredness.

So the first thing, his prayer is God-centered. It's God-centered. In a sense, whose prayer isn't God-centered, right? You begin by addressing God, but it's amazing how easily and how quickly our prayers become rather self-centered.

And what we see in this man's demeanor is that every turn where he can honor God or give credit to God or worship God as a result of answered prayer, we find this note of God-centeredness, this adoration.

I think the fact that he responds in worship to answered prayer is already signaling that to us. It's a sad phenomenon that rarely do Christians worship for answered prayer. Now, of course, when you pray for something in the midst of a crisis, you pray for someone who's terribly ill, and then they're finally healed, and you're so thankful, and you worship God in light of that.

But I mean the mundane prayers, the prayers that we pray generically, that we're supposed to pray, but we're not actually praying with faith. We're not praying with any real vital recognition that God is acting or granting or moving.

And so we don't worship when that prayer is answered. We just think this is the way things naturally developed. Things would have happened this way with prayer or not. Prayer is just this token duty. So the response of worship is almost a litmus test to say, am I really God-centered?

Am I really praying with faith that God is intervening and acting, that God is moving, that prayer is effective? Or is it just a token? How you respond to answered prayer will be your answer. How you respond to answered prayer.

This servant's prayer is God-centered. He doesn't just acknowledge who God is covenantally, right? Oh Lord God of my master Abraham. He also acknowledges throughout his prayer that God is sovereign and able to do this.

God, you are able to so coordinate a young woman to respond to my question and to offer something. So let it be this way. That's an amazing trust of God's sovereign control over all that takes place. So this is not a general prayer at all.

And that's the second point. Not only is it God-centered, but it's specific. This is specifically what I need. This is the mission that I'm on. And this is what I need in order to fulfill that mission.

There's an old maxim and I think it's true. General prayers receive general answers. All right, general prayers receive general answers. There's a way of praying and we can do this day by day that is utterly indifferent to the reality of lived life.

We can pray so generically, so vaguely, that there's nothing specific for God to answer at all. We might as well pray a lot. Lord, let the day be as the day would be. Let meals and health come as they will, you know.

Let my work go as it usually does. Lord, be distant as you often seem to be because that's how I pray to you anyway. This is not how the servant's praying. God is present, He's active. Because He's the God of Abraham, He's going to be intervening for the sake of His promise to Abraham.

The servant's already seen that. If God can cause Sarah to have a baby, He can cause a woman at the well to give the right response. That's this man's perspective. And so it's a specific prayer. We pray something generic like, Lord, guide us, lead us, and we're not giving any recourse for that prayer to be answered.

Of course God is guiding and leading us. Do we ever pray a little more specifically than that? Now, it's interesting to me. I mean, I didn't have enough time this week to look into it. But it's interesting to me that it wasn't just in the Old Testament that believers cast lots.

There were different moments at different times, and you can read certain Christian biographies where pivotal decisions were made by casting lots. One of the great theological minds of the turn of the last century, Hermann Bavink, he, with his family, cast lots when deciding which school he should pursue his training in as a young seminarian.

He ended up at the liberal school of the day, speaking in the Dutch Reformed world, Leiden University. But in God's providence, he ended up having to so defend the faith against all that liberal onslaught that he became one of the greatest apologists of his day, of his generation.

And still his works are being translated from Dutch into English for the benefit of the Reformed faith. That was all from casting lots. I think of another Dutchman going back a few centuries prior, Theodor Frulinghuizen, who is in the Netherlands, and a senior minister in the area said, you know, there's an assignment for you to consider.

And I don't remember the name of the town, but he mentioned a town, and it was a well-known town within the Netherlands. And so he said, yes, I will accept that. However, the minister hadn't been speaking of that well-known town in the Netherlands.

He had been speaking of the similar named town in Pennsylvania, here in the colonies in the New World. But the way Frulinghuizen understood God's providence was, well, I said I would take it. I was under the wrong impression at the time,.

But this is God's will.

And so he came to Pennsylvania. And there's a great biography of Theodor Frulinghuizen called The Forerunner of the Great Awakening, because God used him mightily to sow the seed of God's word in order that when later men like Whitefield and Edwards began to preach, a great awakening broke forth.

And that was largely from the seed that had been sown from this man. Who understood this is how God's providence works. And perhaps you've read biographies where there's all sorts of occasions like this.

Things that were unclear at the time. And a specific Christian prayed specifically. They looked for concrete guidance. They needed help. They wanted to pursue God's leading. And so the challenge here for us is to discern, are we safeguarding our prayers in a way that we would not recognize God's intervening and we don't actually need to exercise faith in praying?

If you're anything like me, it's so easy to check prayer off as a token duty. And to even think you're praying with faith because you're praying sincerely or genuinely with a full heart, but you're not actually praying with faith because you're not praying specifically.

And you're not praying with faith because you're not responding in worship to answered prayer. You don't know if the prayers have been answered. You're praying too generically. You're praying too vaguely.

Of course, you can't have the response that the servant has. Third, notice that he's not presumptive, right? As we'll go on to see, even when Rebecca meets that request, he's still kind of squinting. He's observing to see if this is what the Lord has willed.

That just again shows you he's not anything like these so-called name it, claim it, which is a false theology of prayer. That you can speak something into being. That you have creative power. That your prayers are rhema, as they would say.

That you can be like Creflo Dollar and say, money coming, money, you know, claim it. And it's like an arena full of the brokest people in the city all saying money's coming, money's coming. No, no, no, there's no place for that.

There's no place for presumption or spiritual arrogance. Here we see the servant, he's God-centered. He's praying specifically and he's not presumptuous. Okay, God answered that very specific prayer.

Now I'm still gonna be discerning. You know, I don't trust myself. I don't trust my heart, you know. It's not that uncommon for someone to offer a drink to a stranger. So I gotta be a little more careful than that.

And so he doesn't pray presumptuously. So this is the real balance. We are far more afraid of praying presumptuously than we are of praying specifically than we are praying presumptuously. Reformed Christians, those who have the highest view of God's sovereignty are often the most scared.

To pray as though God were sovereign.

Isn't that an interesting phenomenon? Charismatics who think that their will is what affects their relationship with God. Pray with more faith than most Calvinistic Christians. Something is wrong with that picture.

And so that's the fourth point. The servant prays in faith. He prays in faith. He expects God's going to answer. He's God-centered.

He's specific.

He's not presumptuous. And he's praying with faith. I had a seminar a few years ago with a professor, Greg Allison. He's a systematics professor down at Southern. And somehow a question came up about the prayer of faith that brings healing in James.

And he's an elder at his church there in Louisville. And he said, whenever we've gone as elders to pray for someone who's been sick, we have a practice of before we enter in and kind of be with that person, we kind of stop and we come around and look at each other.

And one of us will ask, is there anyone who does not have faith that God is able to heal? And it's not meant to be a gotcha question. It's not meant to be kind of a, oh, shame on you. And we're gonna have to talk about this later.

It's just saying like, for whatever reason, the state they're in or the way things have been going, or do you just, in your heart, if you're being honest, you're like, well, I'm gonna pray, but really there's, then they say, you should stay outside and just pray for us while we pray.

And that really struck me.

It struck me.

They're saying, we need to pray with faith that God is able and we have to examine our hearts. Do we really believe that this is so? Now it's interesting because James, in that very passage, it's wisdom literature.

It's not a letter, it's wisdom literature. And he uses a very specific verb there that as a result of the prayer of faith, God will raise them up. And that's the verb that you would use of resurrection.

It's not typically the verb you would use for bodily healing, but it's the typical verb of the New Testament for resurrection. So even James is not saying, if you have enough faith mustered up within you, healing is gonna be the result.

We're not going in that direction. Even James is saying, one way or another, God's gonna answer that prayer, whether they'll be lifted up physically as a result of it now or physically later, but God's gonna answer that prayer.

But at the same time, I'm struck by this call to examine our hearts in prayer. Do we pray with faith that God is able? Do we pray with expectation? And that expectation is, Lord, prove me wrong. Prove me that you have something different that you're doing because I'm praying with faith and therefore it's gonna happen unless you have a better reason, a higher purpose not to do it.

And I don't think we actually ever get there. I think we tend to pray as if, well, we don't really know your will and we're just assuming things are gonna go the way they're going, which is not praying with faith.

It's praying with statistics. It's praying with the experience of how things typically go in a fallen world. That's not praying with faith. And so please notice the difference between this name it, claim it, this faith healing false theology.

We're not taking a step toward that at all, but we're also not giving ourselves a pass. If we really believe God is sovereign and able to intervene and that he does so as a result of his people being humbled and praying with faith, do we actually pray in this way?