Prayer and God’s Sovereignty (Part 4)

Let’s consider a 5th and 6th reason we pray alongside of God’s sovereignty.

5. God expects us to pray

Not only does He command us to obey, but He also expects us to pray. Consider Matthew 6. Matthew 6 is in the middle of one of Jesus’ great sermons, which we call the Sermon on the Mount. And beginning in vs. 5, He discusses the issue of prayer. And he ends this discussion with a model prayer– the Lord’s Prayer or the Disciples Prayer. Read with me in verse 5-8 – “SLIDE.” Notice the repetition of the word “”? It repeats 4x.

God expects us to pray. In fact, He assumes a genuine child of God will pray. Christ is giving us guidelines because He knows that we will pray. He says “” you pray … do it in this manner. Despite the fact that He know what we are going to pray even before we do, He still expect it from us.

6. Prayer does change the one doing the praying.

Prayer changes the person. This was one of the points C.S. Lewis made about the discipline. I want to illustrate this by looking at one O.T. example and one N.T. example.

For the O.T., consider how prayer changed the man Hezekiah (II Kin 20). Hezekiah was the 13^th king of Judah and he is a testimony to the grace of God, because his father – Ahaz – was a wicked king and Hezekiah was one of Judah’s godly rulers. How a godly son came from a wicked father could only be the goodness of God.

Hezekiah was part of a time of some drastic, religious reforms in the land. In the 1^st month of his reign, Hezekiah re-opened the Temple doors that his father had closed. He assembled the priests and Levites and commissioned them to sanctify themselves for service and to cleanse the Temple. And there was much rejoicing as a result. He also helped reunite the twelve tribes of Israel spiritually. Read verse 1 towards the end of his life where Hezekiah comes down with a terminal illness and I want you to observe how prayer changed this man – “Essentially, Hezekiah is being told to prepare His last will and testament.

” (II King 20:1-3). Now we don’t know what sickness Hezekiah had, but it must have been life threatening, otherwise he wouldn’t have prayed in desperation like he is here.

And also God wouldn’t have given Him fifteen more years on his life like He will do next. Read vs. 4-6 – “.’” This is an example of how prayer changed Hezekiah physically. It was because of Hezekiah’s prayer that his life was extended. And we should have every reason to believe that Hezekiah lived the rest of his life with renewed vigor for the Lord. Prayer changed the outcome and outlook of the life of Hezekiah.

Now let’s observe a N.T. example of how prayer changes a person. Look at the example of Paul in II Corinthians 12:7-9. No one I know of in history faced more pressures in life than Paul. This man went through shipwrecks, beatings, stonings, jail, starvation, no sleep, etc. And throughout all those trials he had something else that was testing him – “” (II Cor 12:7-8).

This messenger of Satan that was Paul’s thorn was probably a demon-possessed man who followed Paul around harassing him. Could you imagine having a guy always follow you yelling at what you are saying and trying to distract every movement you make? This was what Paul had to deal with. And he prayed that God would take this messenger away, but God didn’t because He wanted Paul to learn a lesson.

How did Paul’s prayer change Paul? Look at verse 9 – “.” This messenger of Satan challenged Paul and changed him. Paul realized through his pleading with God in prayer that the source for his strength came from God. And where Paul was weak, God was strong. This was a lesson he learned as a result of his prayer and it changed his life. Paul understood that as a weak instrument of God he needed God’s grace and strength even more.

Prayer does this. Prayer doesn’t God but changes us. John Calvin once wrote, “Prayer is not so much for His sake as for ours … Even the benefit of the homage which we pay Him rebounds to ourselves.” Prayer has this type of effect; it changes the person. If you have never seen yourself change in this way, than it is quite possible you don’t pray nearly enough.