Magnificent Prayer #291
Magnificent Prayer #291
Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications with fasting, sackcloth and ashes.
Daniel 9:3
From the first moment of human history even to the last—God’s will shall be done!
Even though it may come through a seeming catastrophe or a crime—there may indeed be secondary causes and the action of human evil—but behind every event remains the great first cause.
If we could imagine that one human action in history has eluded the predestination or knowledge of God, we could suppose then that all human actions might also do so—that all things may drift rudderless to sea, at the whim of every wave, a victim of every tempest and hurricane.
One leak in the ship of Providence would sink her, one hour in which Omnipotence relaxed its grasp and she would fall to atoms.
CHARLES HADDON SPURGEON
Pray About It: Make no mistake—we can never thwart God’s will though our prayers. Instead, our prayers validate and usher God’s will into existence. Prayer is God’s chosen method of directing human events in the way that He wills.
This is, to the human mind, a great mystery. One that will never be fully grasped this side of heaven. To try to figure it out is counterproductive. A child never tries to figure out why a parent blesses him so, he just trusts that parent. Consider Isaac who traveled with his father, Abraham, unaware that, unless God intervened, he would be sacrificed to God. Isaac trusted his father Abraham. Abraham trusted his Father God.
And He is trustworthy. Nothing happens without His knowledge or outside of His will. Ever.
So as we pray, we can trust that God is weaving the perfect tapestry of our lives through the threads of our prayers. We will pray His will and it shall be done. No exceptions. Our prayers become the vehicle through which God accomplishes that which He wants to do—His perfect will.
That our prayers for the execution of the very things God has decreed to happen are not meaningless, is clearly taught in the Scriptures. Elijah knew that God was about to give rain, but that did not prevent him from praying for the promised rain.
Daniel understood by the writings of the prophets that the captivity was to last but seventy years, yet when these seventy years were almost ended, we are told that he “set his face unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting and sackcloth and ashes” (Daniel 9:2–3).
God told the prophet Jeremiah, “For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the Lord, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end”; but instead of adding, “there is, therefore, no need for you to supplicate me for these things,” He said, “Then shall ye call upon me, and ye shall go and pray unto me, and I will hearken unto you” (Jeremiah 29:12).
Here then is the design of prayer: not that God’s will may be altered but it may be accomplished in His own good time and way. It is because God has promised certain things, that we can ask for them with the full assurance of faith. It is God’s purpose that His will shall be brought about by His own appointed means, and that He may do His People good upon His own terms, and that is, by the “means” and “terms” of prayer and supplication.
A. W. PINK
From the book
