The Sovereignty of God and Prayer

Matt Weymeyer, pastor of Community Bible Church in Vista, California and graduate of The Master’s Seminary, has contributed a four-part series to Pulpit Magazine entitled “If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray?”

My purpose here is to examine the Bible’s teaching on the sovereignty of God and the prayers of man with the goal of answering the question, “If God is sovereign, why pray?” This will be done by briefly defining what it means that God is sovereign and then by offering five answers to the question of why people should pray.

After discussing the biblical teaching on God’s sovereignty in the first post, he gives these five answers in posts 2–4:

1. God has commanded us to pray.
   God has commanded us to pray, and our response to this command must first and foremost be one of obedience. Even if we never reach a clear understanding of the relationship between the sovereignty of God and the prayers of man, the fact that God has commanded it should be enough to move us to pray. . . .
2. Jesus modeled a life of prayer.
   If the followers of Christ are to be imitators of Him and “walk in the same manner as He walked” (1 John 2:6), they too must be characterized by fervent prayer for themselves and for those around them. Knowing that Jesus prayed as a way of life may not clear up the tension that exists in believers’ minds between the sovereignty of God and the prayers of men, but it should motivate them to imitate the One who Himself saw no disparity between His own prayers and the sovereignty of His Father.
3. God is able to respond to our prayers.
   Rather than hindering the prayers of believers, the sovereignty of God ought to motivate them to pray. . . . Put another way, if God does not reign in sovereignty over His creation and is not able to accomplish whatever He desires in and through it, why bother requesting of Him what He is unable to deliver?
4. God actually does respond to prayer.
   The fourth reason that believers should pray is that God not only can, but actually does change the course of history in response to prayer.
5. God has ordained prayer as a means by which He accomplishes His eternal purposes.
   At this point, some may wonder how it is that Scripture can teach both that God providentially brings all things to pass in conformity with His eternal purpose and that the prayers of men can have a significant affect in the unfolding of world history. The seeming contradiction between these two truths vanishes, however, when one realizes that “the same God who has decreed the end has also decreed that His end shall be reached through His appointed means, and one of these is prayer” (The Sovereignty of God, 167). In other words, God in His infinite wisdom was pleased to ordain prayer to be a means through which He accomplishes His good pleasure in and through His creation.

The posts are well written and worth reading.

Here are the four posts in the series:

• If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? (Part 1)
• If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? (Part 2)
• If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? (Part 3)
• If God Is Sovereign, Why Pray? (Part 4)

See also John Piper’s recent sermon in his series on the sovereignty of God: All Things Were Created Through Him and for Him.

Like this post? Subscribe to our feed .