How does God's sovereignty mesh with prayer? | askTheocast.com

Hi, this is Jimmy. On today's episode of Ask Theocast, I'm going to seek to answer a question from one of our listeners, Raven, who asks, how does God's sovereignty mesh with prayer? In other words, it's the whole idea of if God is sovereign, if he can do all things, then why does he ask us to pray for things?

The Lord’s Prayer and “Thy Will Be Done”

A few short weeks ago, our church was in a series on the Lord's Prayer, and we see that one of the petitions that Jesus gives to us as his church, as his disciples, is we pray, he invites us to pray, thy will be done.

And here is what I said to our church. I said this, when we pray, when Jesus invites us to pray, thy will be done, we are actually recognizing that God is sovereign. It teaches us to recognize that God is sovereign.

Prayer as a God-Instituted Means of Grace

And what happens is when we pray, our hearts and wills are aligned with God's heart and will. What I want us to see is that prayer is not something that people have made up, but rather it is a God instituted, God ordained thing, it's a means given to us as his people, as an outworking of our faith, it draws us outside of ourselves to look to God as the giver of gifts, the giver of needs, the things that we need in everyday life.

In other words, we do not pray because God is unaware of something, that we need to make him aware of something. We do not pray because God needs to know something that he doesn't already know. But rather, why do we pray?

Well, we pray because God is aware. We pray because God does know, and we pray chiefly because God is sovereign. God is the one who has invited us to ask, to seek, to knock, to petition him in prayer.

Romans 11 and the Sovereignty of God

This drives us to see that God is a sovereign God who blesses and gives good gifts to his people. Paul says this in Romans chapter 11, beginning in verse 33. He writes this to the church in Rome. Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom of the knowledge of God.

How unsearchable are his judgments and inscrutable his ways. Who has known the mind of the Lord? Who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? Or who has been his counselor? For from him and through him and to him are all things.

To him be the glory forever. Amen. Right there, Paul says in a declarative way that from God and through God and to God are all things, to him be the glory forever, that doesn't sound like an unsovereign God, but rather a completely sovereign God.

Prayer Changes Us and Reorients Our Hearts

And so what I want us to see, and hopefully this is helpful, is this. Does prayer change things? Absolutely. Prayer does change things, but sometimes the greatest thing that changes in prayer is us, as God reorients our heart and our will and our ideas and our minds to his, his will, his heart, his idea, his mind, that we see that God is sovereign.

It changes our perspective on whatever given circumstance that we are in. Prayer then serves as a means of grace that God has given us as an outworking of our faith in Christ to see that God's ways are better than ours.

Job, Mystery, and Humility in Prayer

As Job declared at the end of that book, that no purpose of God's can be thwarted. I think we also have to embrace the idea of mystery here, that God has clearly given prayer as a means to be an agent of change in this world, that God invites his people to pray.

But ultimately, why I think he does this is it creates a humility in us as his people, that it shifts our hearts and wills to his heart and his will. So hopefully this answer has been helpful to you. You can check out more resources like this at theocast .org.

Thanks for listening.