Can we affect salvation through prayer? #Salvation #Election #Predestination #christianty

that someone as theologically trained and knowledgeable as I am, I'm not trying to boast, I'm just saying, I don't know how it works.

And I just trust my Lord. And, you know, I just trust him with the people that I love.

And I ask him to save. And I say, you're the sovereign king. Please open their hearts.

Please speak into their hearts. Please grant them that repentance and that faith. And that's what

I do. And I know that my prayers are sanctified through Jesus himself. And I know they're heard.

I know they make a difference. And then in the process, I submit and say,

Lord, please help them. And this is a perfect opportunity to say something. This is exactly the place

I get to where I don't understand how it works. And I'm frustrated in that because I want to be able to have answers, but I don't know how.

I don't know how it works. And is it that man's free will is so vast that God just submits to it, but without submitting, because that means he's less than, does he let them have what they want and he chooses to?

There's just so many things I can't answer. That's where I'm at. That's why I say,

Lord, if they're not elect, please elect. Lord, I just throw my hands in the air. Just please save them.

That's what we do. You know, it's one of the things, you know, that I've studied and struggled with.

And I say I'm Reformed because I believe it answers most of the questions, not all.

No man -developed system of theological analysis can answer every objection in Scripture.

And I know that there are some I've talked to who say, well, we could answer that. You know, whatever question we might be talking about at the time.

I'll ask them questions about their answers sometimes and show that, well, there's some problems there. But every now and then, someone will ask me a question dealing with the sovereignty of God, election, predestination, which are taught in Scripture and man's choices and how they interact from eternity past and God's ordination.

And I just can't figure it out. I've tried. I think

I came close once and I was talking, thinking about it. And all of a sudden I heard a in my head and I lost about 12

IQ points. So I gave up and I just don't know how it works with God.

But I know this. I know God's good. And I know that, that he listens to the prayers of his people because all of us who have trusted in Christ, who depend on the blood of Christ Jesus to cleanse us forever.

We ask through that blood, through that sacrifice of Christ, we pray to the father and say, father, would you please save so -and -so and so -and -so.

You please grant them the same mercy you've given to us. And these are good prayers.

These are wonderful prayers. And this is what we must do as Christians.

As someone told me, he says, we're in sales, not production. We're trying to get people to be convinced and we can use arguments and we can use the truth.

We can do whatever we can, but it doesn't mean that everything that we do will have a one -to -one correspondence.

Well, I prayed, gave him the truth, therefore they should be saved. It doesn't work like that. There are things that God has not revealed.

Why is it he doesn't grant faith to everyone? I don't know. Why is it he hasn't chosen everyone?

Because he could do that. I don't know. If you go to Acts 9 and there's

Paul the apostle on his way to kill Christians, he's committed to working against the things of God and against the people of God.

And then Jesus knocks him off his horse and saves him.

And people say, well, he was sincere in his heart. Who are you?

He didn't even know. Who are you? I'm Jesus who you're persecuting. He had to blind him, knock him off his horse.

And why doesn't Jesus do that to everybody? We all have our horses we're on.

We all have our moments of pride. We all have things that we look to, that we consider as important in our lives as reasons for this or reasons for that or not, or whatever it is.

God has no problem just knocking us down, knocking us off our high horse, as the expression goes.

And he can save us. Why doesn't he do it more often? I don't know. You know, when

I got saved, I had an incredible experience of the presence of God.

I mean, incredible, not just, ooh, I feel it. I mean, just wailing, weeping on the ground, the presence of holiness, the power that was there resulted automatically and naturally in my conversion.

Why doesn't God do that to more? I don't know. I don't know.

Is it because people's hearts are wicked and some he'll pick and some he won't because of something in them?

It doesn't make sense. Look at Paul the apostle. He was wicked. I look at my own life.

Oh man, I was involved in some bad stuff back in the day. So why does

God not do this more often? I don't know. And I have to throw my hands up in the air and just say,

I don't know. He's not revealed it in scripture. He's not revealed it to me.

And I don't know of anybody else he's revealed it to. So what we do is we live by faith and we trust

God. And in the meantime, what we can do is pray and we can ask the Lord, Lord, I submit to your will.

I don't know how it all works, but I asked Jesus that you would save.

You pray for somebody, please reveal them to your grace.

Please reveal to them, Lord, the repentance that they need faith in you. Please be merciful to them.

Beg the Lord to save others, intercede for them. Ask Jesus to save them.

Ask God to work in their hearts. He will hear your prayer because your prayers are filtered through the very blood of Jesus himself.

And so you are cleansed. So therefore our prayers have an influence with God, but I just don't know how it all works.

I don't know. I don't know. And I wish I did. I wish I had great answers, but I don't.

So what I do is I just trust in my Lord. I just trust in my

Lord. And I ask God to heal. I ask God to forgive. I ask

God to save. And I trust him. That's what you have to do. That's what we all have to do.

May the Lord bless you by his grace. We'll be back on the air tomorrow and we'll talk to you then.