Prayer and The Surpremecy of God

For the past couple of days I've been thinking about prayer. I had alot to unlearn from my past experiences about prayer because I had gotten caught up in the Word of Faith false teachings. In a previous post here, I talked about the false teachings of the name it/claim it, or Word of Faith crowd. One of the things I said was this:

"Aside from the fact that the name it/claim it teaching is false, there are dangers in believing it as well. The danger comes into play when a person believes that God has promised certain things, such as healing, a restored marriage, children who never go astray, financial blessings, and the like. When the healing doesn't come, and a loved one dies, the marriage is still not restored, children rebel, and you are poor, it destroys that person's faith, and they blame themselves for whatever reason. Most of the time they believe they lacked the faith to believe God could do what they think He has promised."

The dangers of this teaching was evident yesterday in a chat room when an atheist asked about this verse:

Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

He said that he had had an aunt who had cancer, and that many Christians had prayed for her, yet she died anyway. One person in the chat room said, regarding this verse, that you have to have faith to believe. I'm not positive, but I think I had heard him say another time that he had been a Christian at one time, and that he was raised in a Christian home. He was very nice in what he said, and had many questions, yet it seemed to me like he was angry at God for not answering the prayers of those who prayed by healing his aunt.

This morning I finally began to understand something regarding this verse, and prayer itself. You would think I'd have known this already, but 13 or so years of believing falsehood doesn't go down without a fight.

I know that we pray because God commands us to, because there are too many verses to post, I won't post them here. I used to think that when we prayed for something, it changed the course of events. Since becoming Calvinistic in my theology, I found out quickly that what I believed was false, but I could never figure out the reason why we prayed, other than God commanded us too. I also could never understand how we were to pray with faith.

While reading A. W. Pink's Attributes of God, Chapter 4, on the Supremecy of God this morning, I began to understand. Here are the paragraphs that helped me understand:

"The absolute and universal supremacy of God is plainly and positively affirmed in many scriptures. "Thine, O Lord, is the greatness, and the power, and the glory, and the victory and the majesty: for all in the heaven and all in the earth is Thine; Thine is the Kingdom, O Lord, and Thou art exalted as Head above all. . . .And Thou reignest over all" (1 Chronicles 29:11, 12)—note reignest now, not "will do so in the Millennium." "O Lord God of our fathers, art not Thou, God in heaven? and rulest not Thou over all the kingdoms of the heathen? and in Thine hand is there not power and might, so that none (not even the Devil himself) is able to withstand Thee?" (2 Chronicles 20:6). Before Him presidents and popes, kings and emperors, are less than grasshoppers.

"But He is in one mind, and who can turn Him? and what His soul desireth, even that He doeth" (Job 23:13). Ah, my reader, the God of Scripture is no make-believe monarch, no mere imaginary sovereign, but King of kings, and Lord of lords. "I know that Thou canst do everything, and that no thought of Thine can be hindered" (Job 42:3, margin), or, as another translator, "no purpose of Thine can be frustrated." All that He has designed He does. All that He has decreed, He performs. "But our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever He hath pleased" (Psalm 115.3); and why has He? Because "there is no wisdom, nor understanding, nor counsel against the Lord" (Proverbs 21:30)."

NO purpose of His can be frustrated. What that tells me, along with many verses about His decrees, is that He has decreed all things, and my prayer does not cause God to do something He had not planned to do already. What prayer does is humble us because it shows us how utterly dependent we are upon Him for every single thing. When we don't pray, and I have been guilty of not praying many times, we are telling God that we can handle things on our own. We'll pray if we need His help. What I say with my lack of prayer when I don't pray is that I don't need His help, I don't need Him right then, when the truth is I desperately need Him every moment.

When we pray, we CAN pray with faith, believing that He WILL answer, not that He will answer us in the way WE want Him too. We are to conform our will to His, He doesn't conform His will to ours. He is God, and we are not. When we pray in faith, believing that we will receive an answer, we can trust Him for whatever the outcome is.

And the verse the atheist quoted:

Matthew 18:19 Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.

WILL be answered, and they will receive whatever they ask IF they are praying for God's will to be done. His will is going to be done in whatever situation we are praying for.

And that my friends, gives me great hope and comfort.