When Charles Spurgeon was asked if he could reconcile the sovereignty of God and human responsibility, he said, “I wouldn’t try, I never reconcile friends.” The question asked of Spurgeon is understandable. Most of us want to know how we can make any difference in life when the timeline is set by God’s perfect knowledge of the future and His predetermined purposes. Scripture and our confessions of faith teach that God’s plans are eternal, and His purposes are perfectly performed. Yet, everything in our experience says: If it is to be, it is up to me.
This tension between God’s omniscience and human volition might be most acute when it comes to the issue of prayer. For instance, in his ridicule of orthodox Christian doctrine even the militant atheist Christopher Hitchens said, “The man who prays is the one who thinks that god has arranged matters all wrong, but who also thinks that he can instruct god how to put them right.” Obviously, Hitchens misrepresented the Christian view of prayer; but how do we understand and explain the visible distinction between a sovereign, immutable God and the power of prayer that changes things?
For starters, we need to answer a question: How do we know God is sovereign? We might say that we know because He’s all powerful, or because He’s the creator. While those affirmations about God are correct, they don’t answer the question about how we know God is sovereign. They only say something specific about what we know of His sovereignty in these instances – that He’s all powerful and the creator. But how do we know He is all powerful or the creator, or how do we know anything else we know about God?
How do we know? Because the Bible tells us so!
Southern Baptists agree in the Baptist Faith and Message that the Bible is the “the supreme standard by which all human conduct, creeds, and religious opinions should be tried.” In other words, the only thing we can know with certainty about God is what the Bible teaches us about Him. Understanding the relationship between prayer and God’s sovereignty, therefore, comes from only one source – not our tradition, or our feelings, or from Christian philosophy. Our only way to know for sure that God is sovereign is from the revelation of Scripture. Likewise, the same Bible that reveals the sovereignty of God commands us to pray.
Since God reigns in sovereign power and circumstance-altering prayer are both explained in Scripture, those of us who most loudly affirm the sovereignty of God must equally affirm that God commands us to pray to make a difference! The Bible rarely tries to reconcile God’s sovereignty and the importance of prayer. Instead, it simply and simultaneously affirms both truths.
Examples of God’s sovereign choices and desperate prayers for changed circumstances coexist side by side in Scripture. Remember, for instance, Elijah on Mount Carmel after the defeat of the prophets of Baal. It was revealed to Elijah that the three-and-a-half year drought was ending. It was an assured certainty, since on a cloudless day Elijah prophesied the “sound of the rushing of rain” (1 Kings 18:41). Still, even though “the hand of the Lord was on Elijah” (v. 46) and his understanding of the coming rain was clearly based on the promise of God, he still prayed with intensity and desperation for the rain to occur (vv. 42-45). God promised the rain, but Elijah still prayed for it!
James 4:2 says, “You do not have, because you do not ask….” In other words, according to Scripture, there are blessings withheld from your life, not because of limits imposed by the planned sovereign will of God, but because you’re not praying.
Jesus taught something similar. In Mark 9 when the disciples were unable to cast demons out of a suffering boy, Jesus made it clear that some things will not happen until we pray. “And he said to them, ‘This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.’” (Mark 9:29) Some problems continue in our lives not because God wills them to persist, but because nothing but prayer is powerful enough to overthrow them.
When God told Hezekiah, “Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover” (2 Kings 20:1), the sovereign purposes of God were clear. Still, against all odds, Hezekiah “prayed to the Lord” asking for more time (v. 2). Surprisingly, God said, “I have heard your prayer…I will heal you” (v. 5). In response to prayer, God gave the man 15 added years of life (v. 6).
Jesus saw the need for more workers in the ministry of evangelism, so He said, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” (Luke 10:2) This incident is one of the strangest and yet most revealing examples of God’s sovereignty and the power of prayer working together. God is called “the Lord of the harvest,” indicating God’s sovereign Lordship over the entire scene. He wants to call more workers into His fields of harvest.
So, why does Jesus instruct us to pray that God will do what He clearly wants to do and has the power to do in His own Harvest fields?
Here prayer and sovereignty cooperate to accomplish the purposes of God. Jesus teaches that our omnipotent God chooses to exercise His sovereign rule through the prayers of His people. Why else would Jesus instruct us to pray: “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,”? (Matthew 6:10) If God has the power to bring about His will on the earth as it is in heaven, then He certainly does not need us to ask Him to do it. Yet, in His sovereign plan He has chosen to allow some things – even important things at the center of His eternal purposes – to be accomplished only when His people pray. This is what E. M. Bounds meant when he said, “God shapes the world through prayer.”
God’s sovereignty and the power of prayer have no need of reconciliation. It is clear throughout Scripture that God uses prayer to accomplish His sovereign purposes in the Earth.
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