#63 The Problem of Prayer: How It Works — and Why It Sometimes Doesn’t + Dr. Josh Waltman

Today, we are going to talk about the problem of prayer. This is going to go one level deeper. Like, how do we know that it's us causing these things that we're praying for?

And how do we know when it's Jesus? If God is going to do what God's going to do, why do we need to pray for something if he was going to do it all along?

So if you're saying that was already planned and accounted for by God, it makes it sound like our prayer wasn't the source of power.

God's will is big enough to encapsulate our choices. It's this Christian whiplash of like, so he opened the door because we opened the door, but he kind of knew we were going to open the door.

Prayer is power. It's a weapon in spiritual warfare. Oh my gosh. Yeah, absolutely. How often do we get to go this deep in prayer?

Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host.

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Thank you so much for listening. Now let's get to the show. Hello, hello. My name is Cassian Blino, and I am your host for Biblically Speaking.

Today, we are going to talk about the problem of prayer, and this isn't just how to pray so you can ensure that you're being heard by God or the proper way to make sure that it's getting to him or he's going to answer your prayers, kind of like a phone call.

How do we make sure it gets to the boss to actually hear the message? But this is going to go one level deeper. Like, how do we know that it's us causing these things that we're praying for?

And how do we know when it's Jesus? Did he wait on us to pray in order to act, or was he going to act all along?

And in the preparation for this call, it made me think of every time I'm trying to find a parking spot.

You know, I'm like, circling the parking lot. And I'm like, oh, oh,

God, you know, in Jesus name, will we find a park? And then we do. So it makes me always think, well, would I have not found a parking spot?

Or had I not prayed? Or, you know, had I found it five minutes earlier? Had I prayed right away? It's going to go into the power of prayer, how it works, what's stopping it?

And give us that Protestant biblical view with my guest today, Dr. Josh Waltman. You are always a favorite guest here.

And ever since we discussed divine hiddenness, I've been itching to have this call. So I'm really grateful for you.

For those that are new and have not heard any of our episodes with Dr. Waltman, go back, listen to them.

But if you're going to stay and listen, which you should, just a couple credentials that make you capable of speaking on this at this level is right now you're a professor of theology and apologetics at Liberty University.

You also have a PhD in theological studies with a concentration of apologetics from Columbia. And you've written your dissertation on Trinitarian theology, theistic responses to the problem of divine hiddenness, which is we spoke on last time.

And you're a lifelong Virginian. Welcome back, Josh. Thank you for coming back to the show. So good to be with you.

What a blessing. I love I love this show. I love your audience. Just excited for this conversation. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah. OK, so I have so many questions and this will be a great conversation. But how do you know so much about prayer?

How did you like it? Was it just books and books and books or was it personal? Like, how did you get into this? Wow. OK, well, you know, prayer is a spiritual discipline and spiritual disciplines are designed to draw us nearer to the

Lord that it's part of our sanctification process. And so it should be part and parcel of the

Christian life. If you will notice that the disciples, they notice that Jesus is uniquely in tune with his connection to the father.

And they don't. So far as we know, in biblical accounts, we don't see them come to Jesus and say,

Master, teach us how to preach or teach us how to perform miracles. So far as what's recorded in Scripture, what we see is them coming to Jesus and saying,

Master, teach us how to pray, because they recognize that this is so connected to his relationship with the father.

And so for me, you know, it's kind of a natural, practical question that comes out of studying the

Trinity. You know, if if Jesus is praying to the father that that begs all kinds of questions related to prayer.

And, you know, to be perfectly honest, sometimes theologians have this tendency to just kind of stay in their head and, you know, really just deal with the abstract.

And prayer is something that helps us to make sure that our affections and our heart and our our life is submitted to the

Lord, not just in the abstract and theoretical, but in the practical everyday life. You know, we're told to pray without ceasing.

And so this is something that's part of Christian maturity in that way. Absolutely. And pray without ceasing,

I feel like has been a heart posture that has changed for me throughout this process of like, well, what does that mean? I've had

Dr. Sarah Maple on and she was like, well, that means like throughout work, like before you enter a hard conversation, before you walk into a room, before you go on a trip, that's what praying without ceasing to her was.

And I thought that was a great way to just be like in those little moments throughout the day to pray to him and hand it over to him and be reminded of.

But just biblically speaking, you know, he they outright say how to pray and they say they are father.

And I think for me as a baby Christian, I was like, OK, so no other prayers are as powerful as that one or but also, you know, just on that same note,

I was speaking with somebody and they're like, I take that as like a framework of like our father who art in heaven.

Start with worship. Hallowed be thy name. Elevate his name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done.

You know, I submit to your will and just kind of using the our father to break down into a template. Do you take the same approach?

Yeah. You know, as we go through our day, I think we can have very directed and pointed focus, foci in prayer.

And that's certainly true. But as far as foci, yeah, the way that the way that we go about our day,

I think it's right. You know, whatever is going on right in front of us, we can pray about that. But as far as a template or a model, yeah, the

Lord gives us that because I think it is extremely well balanced. It's theologically informed. It's practical.

It gives us a launching point if we want to think of it that way. I think

I forget the speaker that you mentioned, but I think she was absolutely right. I tend to take each aspect of the model prayer and use that as a launching point.

You know, thy kingdom come on earth as is in heaven. Lord, please help me to manifest your kingdom in my life, in my household, in these sets of circumstances that are facing me right now.

And just to walk through each component of that and personalize it to the situation that I find myself in.

I find that extremely helpful. Certainly, you know, we're not we're told not to babble on like the pagans do.

So it's not about just, you know, developing incantations or some strange thing like that.

We don't have to just say words in order for God to hear. We're told to think deeply and to be thoughtful in our prayers.

And so, you know, if you have five minutes, spend the five minutes. If you have 50 minutes, spend the 50 minutes.

I don't think we need to be dogmatic about that, but certainly the model prayer is a good launching point.

Oh, we'll get to how dogmatic we can be, because I definitely have some questions that, you know, some people submitted from the audience.

My mother was even saying some of just like, is a nun's prayer more holy and better heard than my prayer cried out in traffic?

You know what I mean? So we'll get to that. But before we get in, let's just start with the baseline is why even pray?

And I'm really excited to have you introduce this because this was your idea of the problem of prayer. So if you could summarize for someone that's like, what do you mean there's a problem with prayer?

How would you describe it? Yeah, you know, there are a bunch of sort of rabbit holes we could go on on this, and we would call them problems or questions that people have.

And I think some of those are going to end up coming up over the course of the conversation. But typically the problem, as it's called, at least in theology, it's if God is going to do what

God's going to do, he's sovereign, he's in control, he's going to bring about his kingdom as he sees fit.

Why do we need to pray for something if he was going to do it all along? You know, and that's sort of the classic question here.

And certainly I think that that's something that befuddles a lot of people. You know, a lot of people stumble over this, and this has become sort of a pebble in the shoe.

And I think people will often even use it as a justification not to pray. Well, God, you're just going to do what you're going to do anyway.

It doesn't matter what I say or what I do in prayer. And certainly that is not biblical.

We are instructed to pray. We are instructed to fast. We're instructed to be involved in the spiritual disciplines because it's part of our sanctification.

And so that's the classic question. And it's a tension, you know, in our theology, I think, that we have to kind of wrestle through a little bit here.

OK, because it feels like what is the point of the prayer that everyone is saying is so powerful?

You know, there's power in prayer. Whenever someone's in the hospital, start praying. But then God is sovereign and God is all -knowing and God is omnipotent.

And so as a Christian, you don't want to choose. But from our human brains, you almost need to find that balance.

So how would you balance that? OK, a couple of a couple of thoughts here to help us with the conversation.

If I could, the first thing that I think I want to say with all of this, you know, the actions that we that we make in the world, the things that we do in the world matter.

You know, the world is ordered that way. There are consequences to the things that we say, think and do.

And so God's world is structured with cause and effect, with consequences for choices that are made and so forth.

But on the other hand, an imbalance. God is indeed in control. And so we have to affirm that.

I mean, there's no way to get around that fundamental principle that God is sovereignly orchestrating his will on the earth.

You know, the Ephesians 1 passage that God is accomplishing all the things that he seeks to accomplish according to the counsel of his will.

And so God is going to carry out his purposes, right? Something that I think is helpful here and just to jump right into the deep end.

I hope that's OK, but I think something that's helpful. There's a doctrine that doesn't get talked about way too much, but it's relevant with this question in particular.

It's called the doctrine of divine human concurrence or the doctrine of concurrence.

You ever heard of it? OK, so it basically says this, that we have the ability to make choices.

We are responsible for our choices, but God's will is big enough to encapsulate our choices.

And so if I were to say just to be very, very practical for a second, if I were to say, hey,

I was an angsty teenager, I became a Christian and started going to this church and joined the praise band because I like to play music and met my wife and we fell in love and we eventually got married, had kids, and that's how

I have the family that I do today. Can I say that that set of circumstances was part of God's plan?

Yes, I think so. Can I say that I made the choices along the way to start going to that church?

First of all, I'd become a Christian, then to start going to that church, then to start dating, then to get married and have kids and so forth.

The answer there is yes. It's both true that it was my choice and that God was sovereignly ordaining and orchestrating along the way.

So it's concurrently true, both entities, both the person and God are involved here concurrently.

And so if that's true, that has all these kinds of ramifications about God's will.

You know, we have a certain amount of agency. There's cause and effect on the basis of choices that we make, but also it is within the purview of God's will.

There's no part of his created order that falls outside of his sovereign plan.

And so, you know, we've got to kind of work through that a little bit. So that's the doctrine in a nutshell. Does that make sense? It does make sense.

I think it was, it might've been Tim, Tim Yance or somebody else that was like, you can't out sin

God's will. Like you can't, like, you're just a human. Like, what are you going to do as far as like,

I mean, I have a question that like you and I discussed of like, in what world are we going to outsmart God with some question that we have or sin that we have within a world that he created?

And I feel like with concurrence is why we have my actions and my choices, but all of it exists within the realm of God's control.

Right. So, so God's control. If you want to think of it this way, to give another biblical example, was it

God's will that Jesus be crucified? Yes. But was that an evil act?

Well, in the, in the fact that man was going to kill the son of God, that's a supremely evil act, right?

Are they responsible for their choices to do that? Yes, absolutely. But it was

God's will that that happened. So two things are true at once. God wanted it to happen.

And also man decided to make it happen, even though it was a terrible thing, right?

They're responsible for it. So God's world works like this, it seems to me. You know, he is orchestrating on a, to get a little philosophical here, if that's okay.

He is the primary cause, if we want to think of it like that. We would not exist if God didn't want us to exist.

We would not be here if God did not want us to be here. You know, all of these things, he caused all of this to occur.

And that happens on a macro level. And in some sense, it happens on a micro level. You know, he's calling me to himself as a

Christian, as part of his family. He's doing things in my life to lead me to pray.

But also we are a secondary agent or secondary cause within his created universe, the order of his world.

And so we're expected to play the role that he has in mind here. We're expected to pray, and that's going to lead to the enacting of his will.

And so this is where the rubber meets the road with prayer, I think. It's like, you know,

God knows what we're going to pray before we pray it. That doesn't mean he's forcing us to do it per se.

But certainly, he is sovereignly ordaining these things. And so he is the primary cause.

We are the secondary cause. And his maneuvering and his working out his will includes our choice to pray.

So to kind of tie a bow on this to the initial question, why should we pray if God was going to do that anyway?

Well, because God's will already included the prayer that we were going to offer.

So he took into account the exact timing that we asked for it as well. Correct. So that doesn't take away our real choice to pray.

We're still choosing to pray. But God knows all. He knows all variables.

He knows all circumstances. He knows what we're going to do given a set of circumstances. And so he actually takes into account the choice that we are in the future going to make when we pray, when he brings about his purposes in our lives.

So we would be kind of wrong for a Christian to be like, well, had I not prayed, then it wouldn't have worked out.

But since I prayed, it worked out. That would be the wrong posture for us to take, because it's like we are the secondary side effect of God's actions that have already been accounted for.

Our timing of prayer was accounted for by God and his ultimate planning of the universe. We did not cause anything to happen.

Well, I mean, we are a secondary cause. The Lord is the one that is ensuring that it happens.

If he did not, you know, if he was not sovereignly, if he wasn't sitting as the king of the universe in charge of all, then certainly none of this would come into being.

But he is. And so him being king over the future and the present and the past and knowing all things, he's able to take into account the decisions that I make.

And so, yeah, you know, when we come and intercede or petition in prayer, he's already taking that into consideration in terms of what his will is ultimately going to look like and how it's going to manifest.

OK, I'm going to I'm going to pepper you with this, because this is so intrinsic is when

I traveled the world, my mom was worried sick and she's like, you are so lucky that I've been praying for you, Castor, or else you'd be whisked away by some animal or wherever you were in the world.

And it makes me think that like my mother's prayers are powerful in protecting me and everywhere

I go. So it's one of those like or when someone's getting a surgery, it's like,

OK, let's start praying because prayer is powerful in that context of what you just said of like, well,

God's already taken into this, taken this into account, and this is already part of that process. Is it just God has taken into account the submission to him?

He already knows that this massive group of Christians called the Bellino family, whatever it is, has now he knows they're going to call out to him and he's going to bless them.

And that's already been planned for. I guess like maybe we just need to like break my brain because in my head, it's thinking because we prayed, the surgery went well, because we prayed, we got the really good parking spot, whatever it might be.

So if you're saying that was already planned and accounted for by God, it makes it sound like our prayer wasn't the source of power.

It was just an action that needed to take place. Do you understand what I'm saying? Or am I not saying it well?

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I don't think that we need to fall into the error of saying that our prayers don't matter.

They do. You know, God seems to be very interested in a relationship with us, a dynamic relationship with his people and responding to our prayers.

But, you know, you got to keep in mind too, like we are limited by what's in front of us. We don't know the future, at least not in specific terms.

God does. God already knows the future. God has already determined what the future will look like when his kingdom is manifest on the earth and things like that.

And so, yeah, from our perspective, you know, our prayer is triggering response if we want to think of it that way.

But God, even before the foundations of the world, already knew who we were going to be and the prayers that we were going to ask.

And he's taken that into consideration and how he's orchestrating the whole thing. So I just,

I think part of the issue is we're thinking of this in terms of, you know, our place in space and time, whereas God's already, you know, outsized transcendent of all of that.

And he's able to look at all of the data and information all at once in order to determine how this is going to play according to his will and purposes.

And that change of perspective, I think is where a lot of the confusion is coming from, because we can't get out of our limited perspective and get into his infinite perspective in order to understand it.

But we also, in the same way, we shouldn't say that prayer doesn't matter. We should also not be willing to say,

I think that something, you know, that God wanted to happen didn't happen or that God tried desperately, you know, to make something happen.

And, you know, man thwarted his will or something like that. We've got to hold those things in tension, it seems to me.

So it would be unhelpful for the Christians to think that their prayer can thwart the works of God.

Yeah. I mean, okay. So a couple of things there, and I don't want to jump, I don't want to jump over where you want to take us, but this might bleed over into some other questions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely think effective prayer has conditions tied to it.

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Thank you so much. Now back to the show. So sometimes when people talk about prayer, they'll say, well, the

Lord is going to answer your prayer one way or the other. You know, sometimes it's yes, and sometimes it's no, and you just may not like the outcome.

Right. I don't see that in scripture, actually. It seems to me like there are instances where prayer is rendered ineffective.

And so one of the criteria for an effective prayer, it seems to me, is that we're praying in accordance with the will of God.

And so we can't expect that we pray against the will of God and God to then bring it about.

So if we're praying in accordance with the will of God, then God, I think, answers that prayer.

At least scripture is giving us affirmation that that prayer will be answered. But if we're specifically trying to go against what

God wants, then he's under no obligation in terms of his word to give us an answer.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, what you were saying at the beginning there, it's like, well, God never says no. He says yes, or there's something better.

Is that what you're saying here? It's like, it's either like, we're praying with the will of the Lord or we're praying against it.

And God's like, yeah, I got something way better for you because my will is better than your will. Yeah.

Let me give you a couple of examples from scripture. So I think about, for instance, James four basically says, or at least alludes to the fact that if we're praying with the wrong motivations, that God doesn't necessarily listen to us.

We get this reference to Psalm 66. When we're cherishing sin in our hearts, our prayers are rendered ineffective.

So when we're praying in order to sin, then God isn't necessarily obligated to respond to that.

Isaiah one, God says, I hate your prayers. Like I don't receive them at all. I'm not,

I'm turning them off because you're worshiping, you're two -faced. You're worshiping these other gods.

You don't care about justice. You don't care about righteousness. I'm not going to just listen to your prayers because you give me lip service or something like that.

And then first Peter three, we get a reference to husbands treating their wives in a godly manner so that God will hear your prayers.

And so it's almost like the way that we're treating others also has an effect on whether or not we're being effective to be able to be heard by God.

The overall principle is that the righteous person is in the best position to make prayer requests before the father.

And, you know, of course, Jesus makes us righteous. But also if we're living in such a manner, even as a

Christian that is not consistent with the righteousness of the Lord, then, you know, there's no guarantee that the

Lord's going to respond to our prayers. Does that make sense? It totally makes sense.

However, playing devil's advocate here, you know, you hear those stories like Mariah Carey, Jesus, take the wheel, you know, like that, that whole song, you know, everyone has heard that of like,

I was going down a bad path until I finally threw up my hands and called out to the Lord. I was sinful.

I was agnostic. I was atheist. It was horrible. I threw up my hands and then God revealed himself. And like that, that totally tracks with what you just said, of like calling out to the

Lord and responding. But in the sense of like a more

Christian person versus a less righteous person, aside from the prayer of calling out for righteousness and calling out for salvation, those prayers of the atheist, those prayers of the agnostic, are you saying are less likely to be heard or less powerful?

Or, I mean, I want this to be a moment of encouragement, but also truth here of, you know, there's advantages of being in alignment with the

Lord, but I'm not a nun. I'm not the most holy person. Does that mean I just have like a weaker, quote unquote, prayers?

Yeah. Okay, man. I know that was so much. Yeah, that's great. Um, okay.

So yeah, I do think that anybody that calls on the name of the Lord will be forgiven, like genuinely is contrite and is repenting and is submitting himself before the

Lord in obedience and is seeking the Lord for salvation. I think the Lord hears that prayer.

Like, I think, I think I can demonstrate in scripture that the Lord will respond to that prayer, even on the part of someone who's an unbeliever.

Okay. That being said, if we're talking about someone that's sitting at home as an atheist and they're just, you know, talking out loud to a

God that they say they don't necessarily believe and asking for that deity to bless their kids.

Here's what I'm saying. I'm saying that based on scripture, God is under no moral obligation to hear that prayer.

That doesn't mean that he doesn't, that doesn't mean that he won't show grace. It's just, there's no promise that we can cling to in scripture that says definitively he will.

You know, when we, when we talk about prayer, I think at least strategies of prayer in my own life, apart from just going to the

Lord's prayer, I find myself claiming the promises of scripture. You know, there's a precedent for this in the

Psalms. You know, when we say, God, you've told us this, you've told us that if I do this, you will do this.

Here I am proclaiming that back to you. And I'm asking that you do that in my life. And so what we're doing in that prayer strategy is we are reminding the

Lord as if he already doesn't know, but we're reminding God of what he has said and that we're going to be, we're going to keep our end of the bargain in listening to God's word.

Whereas the atheist doesn't really have a leg to stand on because they're not in the family of God yet.

And so they, they first need to come to know the Lord in salvation in order to have those sorts of rights and privileges and promises that are guaranteed to God's people.

So that's, that's a qualification here. I think it's also true, you know, if we're all honest, you know, we all have periods in our life where we are not necessarily living in the most righteous way.

We may be our wayward, or we're allowing a certain sin to take, to take hold in our lives.

I think what I'd want to say is, if that's you, like as a father, what

I would encourage an other father, as an example, if they want to pray for their kids, they should first repent of whatever that sin is so that their heart is in a good place to be able to be heard by God when they pray for their kids.

Or if, you know, they just had a knock down, drag out fight with their wife, where they were less than kind or something like that.

I think they first need to work on repenting of that sin and asking for forgiveness and cleansing from God so that then they're in the right posture where they can come to God and, you know, offer their daily prayer, as it were, for all the other things going on.

So I think maybe the lesson here is, if that's you, it's not that God says he, it's not that God says that he will never hear those prayers.

You know, if you're someone that's living a sort of a wayward life. But I would encourage you, in order to claim the promises of God, you need to first repent of your sin so that you're in a place where you can offer effective prayers according to what scripture has said.

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I'm trying to really tie it together and like prep for my next question. This is naturally leading towards because it sounds like that prayer, that Jesus take the wheel moment was part of God's plan.

He knew it would happen before you were formed in the womb. At that moment, Carrie Underwood's heart posture was in full repentance.

I'm just going to use her. She was in a place approaching the Lord of ready to give him everything.

So the person that's just like slightly stressed out hasn't really approached the Lord with reverence and doesn't really plan on going to church next

Sunday, but currently needs help and is crying out to the Lord. They shouldn't expect the full glory that like a

Christian should, because God knows their heart, knows that this person isn't fully approaching the Lord with full,

I don't know, like reverence. They're not bowing down like full postulation. So that makes me think that the way that we approach the

Lord is more important. Like in that head space of repentance and giving everything over to him is more important than a lot of questions that the audience submitted with like, am

I too casual when I talk to the Lord? Is it more important that I come to God with a heart of, I can't do this without you and I'm repentant and I don't want to do this anymore versus the rituals of being in the room, speaking in a certain way, saying different words, saying specific words to acknowledge

I am praying now. Those are more legalistic, ritualistic terms or not.

Is there a proper way to pray? I'm just trying to make sure that I'm understanding like the priorities here. Yeah, man.

And so I think different folks from different traditions may answer this a little differently.

So that's what I'm keeping in mind. You know, I'm a Protestant Baptist. So you're going to get the

Protestant Baptist answer a little bit here. I don't think that we should think of prayer as a magical incantation.

I don't think that we need to think of it as a formula for God's blessing per se.

It's not like we say this direct thing and that's what's going to lead to God, you know, having to respond kind of thing.

I think we need to think of this as a dynamic sort of relationship with God where he allows us to participate with him in bringing about his will and in bringing about his kingdom.

And so, you know, when we do things to be more effective in prayer, I think about fasting.

You know, that's another spiritual discipline that's supposed to be done in conjunction with prayer. You know, we don't just fast for no reason.

It's not like this is somehow giving us spiritual superpowers or something like that. What that's doing is it's trying to force our bodies to recognize that we are submitted and fully reliant on God.

You know, we don't live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. And we're trying to learn that on a deeper level so that we're living a more righteous life so that our prayers can be more effective.

And so it's not that the, at least in my mind, it's not the ritual of fasting that makes it effective.

It's the fact that we are pursuing God with a whole new level of commitment to righteousness and submission.

And that then is responded to by God positively when we bring our prayers to him.

And so, you know, I think that's kind of where my head would go to there. Now, on the opposite end,

I think on a day -to -day basis, it is absolutely appropriate to start our prayer off with,

God, please forgive me of anything that I've done. Forgive me of my trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against you.

Or, you know, and I might go through the specific things that I know about that I've sinned against the Lord with my day and the things that I don't know about so that I will be cleansed and in the right position and posture before the

Lord to bring the rest of my requests to him. You would say that'd be more important to approach with repentance and forgiveness than worship?

Well, okay. I see those two things as going hand in hand. I think sometimes in Protestant circles, and it's a real shame, that people in their prayer life, they find themselves just beating themselves up as though grace wasn't enough.

You know, at the forefront of our mind is always the gospel. And the gospel tells us that Jesus loves us more right now or as much as he ever will right now.

And there's nothing that we can do to save ourselves. And there's nothing that we can do to earn our way back into his good graces on the basis of something that we did or did not do.

He already loves us. He already sent his son. We're already in right standing with him because of what his son did, not what we did.

And so I think some people take the idea of repentance and prayer and they equate that to let me beat myself up and wallow in the shame of it.

No, no. If you repent before the Lord in prayer, he's going to cleanse you.

He's going to forgive you. So receive that forgiveness. And that should put you in a position and a posture of worship.

Those two things go hand in hand. It goes back to your heart. Are you repenting just so that you don't feel ashamed again?

Or are you repenting so that you can worship the Lord because you love him? And so I see true repentance as going hand in hand with worship every single time.

And that goes back to your intentions and your heart. Yeah. Yeah. I used to pray in that sense of like, am

I holy enough to approach him? Like by no means. Am I praying the same way? And to me, like I'm just equating a nun with like the holiest of holies, like a woman that's always in church and always going to church.

But I've evolved to a point of like just approaching the Lord honestly, of just like, God, this is what

I'm struggling with. And I genuinely want to, I feel like that's just like my heart posture with this show of like, God, I know

I don't want this if you don't want it. But my prayer is that you show me why you don't want this.

And then I won't want it. And I won't be, you know, giving up this sin that I love out of compulsion. But because I like break my heart for what breaks yours is essentially what

I'm saying. But by no means am I eloquently speaking, like I'm just trying to show up honestly.

And I think the question that most people have is, is that disrespectful to speak to the

Lord casually? Oh, no, absolutely. Well, I want to say no, but you know, it depends on what someone has in mind.

I think it's like blanket. Yeah. Certainly there are moments in the

Psalms. The Psalms are giving us sort of model prayer for the believer's life in a lot of ways.

And there are moments in the Psalms where, you know, you'll see these sort of emotional outbursts and, you know, almost borderline disrespectful language that comes out in the speech of the

Psalmist. But I think what that's really telling us, it's like we need to be able to be transparent with the

God that knows how we feel anyway. So why are we trying to hide from him? He already knows what our feelings are.

He already knows what we're thinking. He already knows what we want to say. So it is OK, I think, you know, to respectfully,

I think, bring those feelings to him. Because otherwise, we're going to bottle them up.

You know, it's almost it's better to bring them out and recognize in bringing them out, this is how

I feel. Just telling you how it is. I need your help. So I say that.

But then I also want to say, you know, we get we get instances in Scripture, for instance, that we're told we can approach him as Abba Father.

We can enter into the throne room with boldness. We don't have to, you know, do all of the sort of pomp and circumstance and ceremony that we see in the old covenant in order to do that.

We can actually have confidence as his kids that the blood of Christ is enough to allow us entry into that throne room.

And so, you know, if we take that seriously, yes, you know, that should open the door quite a bit.

Now, to be candid. Yeah, yeah, I think we can be candid. I don't think it's disrespectful.

I don't think I don't think we have to come with, you know, really fancy language, things like that.

I don't I don't see that in Scripture. I see us coming to someone who loves us, but who is also the king of the universe.

So recognizing both of those things are true at once. It makes me think of the way

I approach my father, like my dad knows me and by no means am I an eloquent speaker. I am his daughter and he knows my personality, but I would never speak to my dad the way

I speak to my friends because he's not my friends. He's my father. And so I think it's like, of course, you don't want to give a blanket statement of like these are the words you do and do not say.

But it is a different approach than other people. Yeah, well, think about like this.

This is not us trying to manipulate God like the pagans try to do. The pagans think that if they can do

X, Y and Z in ceremony or say the right thing to appease their deity, that they can they can get their deity to do what they want.

That's not the kind of relationship that we have. We have the kind of relationship where the Lord pursued us and gave us his grace and he wants our obedience and we're told to submit in obedience.

And so here's what we were told in scripture. We're told in John 15, abide in me.

I'm the vine, you're the branches. Abide in me and then ask whatever you want and it will be given to you.

And so, OK, hold on a second. Ask whatever you want, because that what if I ask for a million dollars? Well, if you're abiding in Christ, that's not necessarily your priority, is it?

So if you're abiding in Christ, your desire is righteousness and the perpetuation of the kingdom of God and God's mission that he puts us on.

The fact that we get to be involved in ministry and serving others and submitting ourselves to him.

And so if that's where our mind and heart is and we're abiding in Christ, then ask whatever you want and it will be given to you.

And so, yeah, we're told to do that. But the condition is you're abiding.

OK, well, since you're here, we have to talk about the unseen realm. OK. I love all of your takes on this and it's really opened my mind.

But there is this element of powerful prayers. There's an element of can we pray for someone who's already passed on?

There's this element of what the enemy, can he hear us and can he interfere? Just before we kind of like,

I don't want you to answer all those questions, but like what what what should we be thinking about with the unseen realm as we start praying and then we can go from there with questions.

OK, so so first and foremost, let me state the obvious prayer is power. It's a weapon.

It's a weapon in spiritual warfare. Now, look, let me let me take this step back.

We don't have to convince God to do something that he that he, you know, was going to do otherwise.

And he already knows what's best. So it's not like we have to, you know, go and tell

God something that he doesn't already know about. So what's what's this all about? Like, how is this warfare then?

Well, it seems like the Lord is interested in us exercising choice and he allows us to be involved and to participate in with this cosmic conflict.

In the same way, like he didn't need us, but he gave us the garden, you know, Adam and Eve were put into the garden for relationship with him.

He didn't need us, but he wanted us to have an exercise choice on this on this earth.

And yet, you know, we've got evil and sin that enters into the equation. We've got a serpent that comes against God.

We've got fallen beings. And we see throughout the book of Genesis and throughout scripture, you know, so there's a there's a cosmic battle.

If you want to think of it that way, a war between these entities and God's purposes and God's God's side versus them, if you want to think of it that way.

And so throughout all of creation, all excuse me, all of the history of man, you know, we've been

God allows us to participate in this cosmic drama, if we were to call it that, this drama that's playing out on a grand a grand scale.

Prayer is one of the weapons that he gives us. It's a highly effective weapon because I can pray right now for a brother in Africa without ever having to be there.

And the Lord can hear my prayer and can act on the basis of that petition.

And so it's a very effective prayer. John Peckham, I don't know if any of your listeners know anything about him.

A great theologian. He's got this book out that came out last couple of years called

Why We Pray. And he's got a really cool take on this.

I'm not sure I'm all the way there, but it kind of speaks to your question. He says that God has sort of entered into this cosmic battle with rules of engagement, if we want to think of it that way.

He says, you know, he wants to have covenant relationship with us. He decides to restrict or limit the types of engagement that he has with us right now.

But part of the rules of engagement in the conflict is that when we pray, it opens the door for God to intervene on a whole new level.

And so he wants us to choose to pray as part of our covenant relationship with him.

And as we do so, it opens the door for God to, you know, according to these rules of engagement, it opens the door for God to do things that he wouldn't necessarily have done otherwise.

And I thought that was a pretty interesting take. What do you think? What do you think about that? I'm honestly trying to.

It brings me back to the beginning of our conversation, where it opens the door for God to act in places he otherwise wouldn't have.

Well, didn't he know he was going to act anyway since he, you know, so it's like, you know, it's this

Christian whiplash of like, so he opened the door because we opened the door, but he kind of knew we were going to open the door.

And I don't want to talk myself out of my faith. I'm trying to find this middle ground, but I also understand my limitations as a mere mortal and not the creation of the universe.

And just OK, so let's just move forward with this because there's only so many hours in the day that we can figure this one out.

Powerful prayer. Are there other prayers that are more powerful than others? Is it the prayer that I cry out in the hospital hallways more powerful than now

I lay me down to sleep, you know, that I say at night before I go to bed? Is there levels to this weaponry or is prayer prayer?

Well, James tells us that the prayers of the righteous man availeth much, you know, the prayers of the righteous man are effective, you know, so righteousness certainly seems to be one of the things that intensifies our weapon of prayer,

I think. Now, it could be that those powerful moments in the hospital, for instance, where you come to the end of your rope and you're exercising an extreme amount of submission and recognition that God is all that you have, you know, throughout the

Psalms. If you were to study the Psalms, it's theology, all 150 of them are painting the picture that a righteous man is one who is fully surrendered and submitted to God.

And so righteousness is submission and recognition that you're reliant on God for everything.

So in that moment in the hospital, where all you have is to call out to God, it could be that, yeah, that's an extremely effective prayer because you're exercising so much surrender in that moment.

So I'm at least open to that. Certainly righteousness is what makes, is what we can stand on in terms of a promise for our prayers to be rendered effective.

I think, I think too, that's, I mentioned before, that's why we fast is to exercise reliance on God.

Same principle. I think, I think also, if I maybe could mention this,

I'm open to the idea that some people have a unique prayer ministry.

The way that the spirit empowers certain individuals, I think about like the gift of faith.

There's a special spiritual gift reference to first Corinthians called the gift of faith. Of course, every

Christian should have faith, but some people are uniquely gifted by the spirit to exercise that in a particularly powerful and effective way.

And I can see as an extension of that, some individuals have a ministry of prayer that is incredibly effective because they've spent so much time doing it, because they've lived a life that, they're just particularly surrendered.

Like that famous, what was the movie, the Christian movie that came out? The War Room, I think it was.

It was something like that. So good. Yeah, it was really good. And The Forge also, I think that there's a cameo about that woman is really, really good.

But she had this ministry of prayer, right? And it was almost like in the movie, the way it was portrayed, when she prayed,

God listened. I'm at least open to that. There are some people that in the same way that God empowers certain individuals to preach, maybe

God empowers certain individuals to have a ministry of prayer. And so I'm open to something like that, even though every

Christian should be a praying Christian. So it could be something like that's going on. But theoretically, yeah,

I think, I think I'd want to say anyone who is praying a prayer that is consistent with God's will, they're abiding in Christ.

They are, they've been asked to be cleansed. They're following what scripture is teaching.

It's a biblical prayer, right? It's consistent with scripture's teaching. I think those are all, they should all be effective.

It's not like one is more potent than another if those criteria are met.

I think that's what I'd want to say. Okay. Yeah. I mean, you're the scholar, you're smarter than me.

No one expects you to know all the answers here though. I mean, you just studied it more, so I'm not going to take it for the hard truth, but I think it's a good perspective to hold, especially with even

The War Room is such a good movie. And I think just knowing about deliverance ministry and knowing about intercession and a lot of like my family's involved with that.

And so knowing the power of prayer, I just, I was curious, you know, for the lay Christian, if it's like a certain prayer that we should say.

This is worth keeping in mind too. There are times, one of the, one of the problems of prayer that we didn't really talk about too much is we just simply don't know what

God is doing. Like if I'm praying in an intercessory way for someone else, let's say

I'm praying for someone who is, you know, deathly ill and I'm praying for God to heal that person.

Well, it may very well be that it is God's will for that person to come home, you know, and so it's better for them to die than it would be for them to be healed.

And I don't necessarily have access to that information. Or it may be, if I'm praying for someone, let's say that they've fallen on hard times and I'm praying for them to get back on their feet.

Well, what if they've fallen on hard times and this is a form of judgment on them and God is going to use that judgment ultimately to get them to turn, like to turn back to him and they've got to go through more hard times before they're ready to do that.

And so it may seem like when I pray, hey, would father, will you please allow this person to get to get back on their feet?

And they don't. It may feel like the Lord is saying, I'm not listening to you.

But in fact, it could be that God is doing something bigger than what

I'm aware of in that person's life. And so we've got to keep in mind that God's purposes are much more complex than what we're asking for.

And certainly sometimes he heeds our request, but sometimes, you know, it's us saying, okay,

Lord, I trust you. Remember, that was the condition for an effective prayer to begin with.

I trust you. And that also needs to be the posture after a prayer. Lord, I trust you. Yeah, I was watching this stupid video.

It wasn't stupid, but you know, it's Instagram, so it's stupid, but it was a video and this woman's like, I'm going to pray.

And I always get weird about people filming themselves performing miracles. I just think that's a little public, but I'm glad that I saw it because it made me think of when this woman, she's like,

I'm going to pray over this homeless man to stand up because he's paralyzed or his legs are broken and everyone can speculate at stage, whatever.

She's praying over this paralyzed man. And then after she prays, she goes, now stand up. And I think for a long time,

I forgot when I prayed to then act in faith. And it's not just about like,

God, let your will be done. And I'm trusting you that this will work, but also walking in faith that it will.

And I think that that post prayer action was the manifestation of like my walking in faith and like trusting him with what

I've asked that, you know, he said, this is going to happen. And now I'm not going to like, wait for him to pull me up by my bootstraps and make me walk.

But I'm going to walk knowing that like my feet will go one foot in front of the other. So I think that, yeah, once we pray, having that trust afterwards, one like, you know, going back to the unseen realm is, do you think

Satan can hear our prayers? Yes, definitely. What do we do about that? Is that a bad thing?

Is that like, it comes with the territory or like we should be taking precautions? I think if we're praying to the father and we're one of the father's children, there's nothing he can do to take away the potency of our prayer.

You know, it really and truly, I think that's the secret to this whole thing. As far as spiritual warfare is concerned, we're getting

God involved when we pray. We're asking the Lord to intercede. You know, it's like, so what if the enemy sees us draw our sword?

Okay, what are you going to do about it? Just because he sees it happening doesn't necessarily, it's not necessarily a bad thing.

I suppose what could happen is someone exercise the spiritual discipline of prayer and they don't see the effect that they want to see.

Let's say that they pray for this person to be healed and they exercise faith.

Yeah, God can heal them and then it doesn't happen, right? Then maybe the enemy whispers in your ear, oh, see, that's because he's not actually there.

Or maybe the gospel isn't true. Maybe you got it wrong. Maybe you're not a child of God. So I could see that kind of thing happening.

But there again, we go back to a righteous man, relies on God, trusts in his word, listens to the voice of God, all the way through from start to finish.

Yes, God can heal. Let's use that example. God can heal that individual that you just prayed over.

Yes, he can. And he does not need to prove that to me. And I'm not going to not follow him just because he didn't do it when

I asked him to. And that's not a condition of my obedience and my affection for the

Lord. And so if I'm operating with that mindset, that disposition, that mentality,

I think the enemy is going to flee from us because he's not going to be very effective in his temptation.

But if I'm wallowing and I'm using prayer as sort of a test for my own spirituality or the ability to have a lot of Instagram likes or something like that, yeah, the enemy is definitely going to use it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I completely agree. Do you kind of like looking at the first chapter of Job, is there like an arrangement between Satan and God as far as like Satan's got free reign on us until we say that prayer?

Yeah, there's a lot of discussion and scholarship about what's going on in Job one, who is the

Satan, the adversary in that chapter. Not everyone believes it's the same figure as the serpent back in Genesis three.

But, you know, I happen to be one that thinks it is, you know, the enemy of God, at least an enemy of God.

It may not be the same figure as the serpent, but certainly it's precedent for us seeing that there are those in the heavenly realm that at times speculate that the only reason that us human beings are listening is because God blesses.

And so God proves himself right in that whole set of circumstances that Job was righteous.

And despite all of the trials that he ended up going through, he dealt with doubt, but he was faithful to the

Lord, did not curse God. And so, yeah, I mean, I think that would be maybe some precedent that we, or some biblical evidence that we might bring back to that John Peckham idea that the

Lord has rules of engagement, or there's some bigger cosmic purpose for why

God is choosing to restrict his limitations until we get involved and participate with prayer.

I think that there's some truth to that. I think there's some good reason to think that that's the case. If I'm going to like play

God and understand God here, which I shouldn't, but I'm just trying to like, you know, for the early

Christian of like, okay, God is going to interfere at his timing. He knows what's going to happen until he interferes.

Yes, we are susceptible to the enemy. And the Lord is aware of that timing and even allowing for this period of spiritual warfare in a way that brings us closer to God.

Because anytime I've been under spiritual attack, it did bring me closer to God. It sent me running back to his feet.

And at the end of the day, wish I didn't have to go through that, but it did bring me back to him. So zooming out, it all plays into that larger picture of it.

When I did pray, it was at the perfect moment after a period of spiritual warfare that God knew when and how all of that was going to play out.

Yeah, so in theology, we call we call this soul making this idea that that God is one of the reasons that God allows evil on the earth is that he's basically using evil to teach us things that we would not have learned otherwise.

So for instance, courage, you know, how would I ever learn about courage if I didn't have an adversary coming against me?

So, yeah, I don't think that's the only reason or even maybe the best reason for God to allow evil, but at least it's a reason.

And so it seems to me part of our sanctification even is God is God is using the evil kind of like what we see going back to the doctrine of concurrence, you know, talking about Joseph's life, what his brothers meant for evil,

God meant for good, you know, and so he's using the evil on the part of these falling demons, agents, you know, fallen beings and the and the struggle that they produce in our lives and spiritual warfare.

He's even using their junk, their stuff to teach us to be more righteous, to be more reliant and to trust him more for next time.

And so, yeah, I think that's all part of his plan. Again, the Lord's sovereignty for all of this is amazing.

What what what people meant for evil, what these fallen creatures meant for evil, God uses for good.

The Romans 8 passage is particularly powerful here. And so, yeah, soul making, he's turning our souls into something that is more

Christlike through this whole process. I think that's true. I just it seems to me one of the things that God is doing with that sanctification process, that soul making process, he is teaching us to be the kind of creature that exercises free will to love, worship and praise him.

And how do we learn that? What's different between us and Adam and Eve? Well, Adam and Eve, prior to the fall, they had never experienced redemption.

They had never experienced what God was doing to bring them out of this evil that they've fallen into.

In the garden, they were innocent, but they didn't experience redemption, the love that comes with redemption.

And so we know brokenness on a whole new level. We're experiencing evil on a whole new level.

But through that evil, through that brokenness, we come to a whole new understanding of the love of God because he's redeeming us through it, despite the fact that we don't deserve it.

And so when it comes to heaven, I think, yeah, we'll exercise choice once again.

But unlike Adam and Eve, we will have known what it was like not to follow God and all that it brings, all the evil that it brings.

And we will know the love of God on a whole new level. So I think that's part of why God allows it in the here and now.

My gosh, you just made me feel so much sympathy for Adam and Eve. I think I used to be like, they got it so good.

You know, they got the OG. If it's like, you're right, they didn't have any element of redemption that we get today.

Yeah, I mean, ultimately God redeems. I mean, I think they'll be in heaven with us. But prior to the fall, they knew

God. They walked with God, but they didn't know the depth of his love, at least not experientially the way that we did.

My gosh, Dr. Wellman, thank you. Yeah, absolutely. How often do we get to go this deep in prayer?

I mean, I do have a million more questions, but you did touch on everything. So thank you so much for your insight and just sharing all of the wisdom that you've accumulated over these decades, just to share with me on this channel and everyone listening.

So I appreciate you. Is there any way, I mean, it's summer right now, but any classes that people can get involved in, take from you, sign up for?

Absolutely, yes. So I teach online for Liberty University School of Divinity and also obviously residentially is kind of my bread and butter.

So if anybody's interested in studying a little bit more theology and apologetics, come and see us at Liberty.

Wonderful. Well, you're always welcome back. We'll find an excuse to bring you back, but thank you so much. Thanks for having me.