07 October 2008 | 3 comments

Why pray? Gordon Cheng

David McKay07/10/2008 04:37 PM

I like Dan Phillips of Pyromaniac’s summary of what he was saying about prayer at the end of his article “Prayer and the might *not* have beens”:

  • God gives believers’ prayers a significant place in His plans.
  • We should never downplay the importance of approaching God in prayer, Biblically understood.
  • It is the height of folly to let circumstance or human reasoning discourage us from bringing our petitions to God. In other words ...
  • Let God say “No, I have a better plan,” rather than, “Since you did not ask (James 4:2b) ...”
Russell Williams08/10/2008 12:06 AM

Hi Gordon,

Thanks for the thoughts. The only other comment I’d make is that although our society doesn’t think this way because we can’t see prayer’s effect, praying is no different to working.

That is, the Bible says God provides our food, and yet often he provides our food by making our work effective. Similarly, God provides our food and yet often he provides our food in answer to my prayers. It’s not a one-to-one correlation in either case. But I ask a lot fewer questions about why I should work than about why I should pray.

Praying is the way God does things in the world. He moves in the heart of his people, prompting them to ask for things that he might be kind enough to answer. I think that’s cool.

Thanks for the post.

Russell

Jean Williams08/10/2008 05:18 AM

I’d add one thing, Gordo, lover of esoteric theology that I am: that our prayers are part of God’s sovereign plan for his world.

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Paul is one of the Staff Editors at Matthias Media. He is married to Cathy and has three fantastic kids. He loves student ministry, reading, writing music and playing the saxophone, and is looking forward to meeting Jesus face to face.

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