RPM, Volume 13, Number 14, April 3 to April 9, 2011

The Sovereignty of God in Prayer




By John Reisinger

Overview



The author tells us what prayer is NOT:

Prayer never makes God my servant to give me everything I think I must have in order to make me happy. God is not a "heavenly bellhop" who carries my suitcase of selfish desires any place I command.

Prayer never allows me to either dictate my will to God nor to make God in any way change His mind.

God has a fixed plan and His plan is the best plan. God is determined to carry out His plan, and neither our sin nor out "believing" prayers are going to derail or in any way change God's ultimate decree's (Job 23:13).

The author also tell us what real prayer IS:

True prayer is a frank admission that God is sovereign. When we really pray we admit that the thing is in God's hands alone. We are saying that tomorrow, and all it brings, is not under our control but under His control. It is in His hands and not ours.

Prayer is a joyful surrender to God sovereign purposes. We are acknowledging that God has the right and power to do whatever seems good to Him. We are saying that regardless of what God does tomorrow, we know it is part of the "all things" in Rom. 8:28.

Prayer is earnestly pleading with God for grace to glorify Him regardless of what He does. We are really saying, "Father, give me grace to trust you and act like your child whether you say yes or no."



This article is provided as a ministry of Third Millennium Ministries (Thirdmill). If you have a question about this article, please email our Theological Editor.

Subscribe to RPM

RPM subscribers receive an email notification each time a new issue is published. Notifications include the title, author, and description of each article in the issue, as well as links directly to the articles. Like RPM itself, subscriptions are free. To subscribe to RPM, please select this link.

http_x_rewrite_url /magazine/article.asp?link=http:^^reformedperspectives.org^articles^joh_reisinger^joh_reisinger.SP.000.html&at=The%20Sovereignty%20of%20God%20in%20Prayer thispage server_name reformedperspectives.org script_name /magazine/article.asp query_string link=http:^^reformedperspectives.org^articles^joh_reisinger^joh_reisinger.SP.000.html&at=The%20Sovereignty%20of%20God%20in%20Prayer url /magazine/article.asp all_http HTTP_CONNECTION:Keep-Alive HTTP_ACCEPT:*/* HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING:gzip, br HTTP_COOKIE:ASPSESSIONIDCCBDQBBT=MMCKPMPCDKNPKDNMNFEPCHJM; viewport=ltab HTTP_HOST:reformedperspectives.org HTTP_REFERER:http://reformedperspectives.org/magazine/article.asp/link/http:^^reformedperspectives.org^articles^joh_reisinger^joh_reisinger.SP.000.html/at/The%20Sovereignty%20of%20God%20in%20Prayer HTTP_USER_AGENT:Mozilla/5.0 AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko; compatible; ClaudeBot/1.0; [email protected]) HTTP_CF_RAY:8e2e7d8818981cf4-ORD HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY:US HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR:3.135.193.179 HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO:https HTTP_CF_VISITOR:{"scheme":"https"} HTTP_CF_CONNECTING_IP:3.135.193.179 HTTP_CDN_LOOP:cloudflare; loops=1 HTTP_X_REWRITE_URL:/magazine/article.asp?link=http:^^reformedperspectives.org^articles^joh_reisinger^joh_reisinger.SP.000.html&at=The%20Sovereignty%20of%20God%20in%20Prayer HTTP_X_ORIGINAL_URL:/magazine/article.asp?link=http:^^reformedperspectives.org^articles^joh_reisinger^joh_reisinger.SP.000.html&at=The%20Sovereignty%20of%20God%20in%20Prayer