Prayer assumes the sovereignty of God. If God is not sovereign, we have no assurance that He is able to answer our prayers. Our prayers would become nothing more than wishes. But while God’s sovereignty, along with His wisdom and love, is the foundation of our trust in Him, prayer is the expression of trust.
Copied from Is God Really In Control? Trusting God in a World of Hurt by Jerry Bridges, copyright 2006, p. 69-70. Used by permission of NavPress – www.navpress.com. All rights reserved.
The faith exercised in prayer is faith in the God who sovereignly accomplishes His will. When we pray, our faith recognizes, explicitly or implicitly, the overruling providential purposes of God. We may at times be given insight into that will, enabling us to pray with absolute confidence in God’s plan to answer as we ask. But surely those cases are rare – more rare even than our subjective, emotional desires would lead us to suspect.
James, Eerdmans, www.eerdmans.com, 2000, p. 244.
Beware in your prayer, above everything, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what he can do.
Christian Reader, v. 32, n. 4.
Keep praying, but be thankful that God’s answers are wiser than your prayers (William Culbertson)!
Most Christians expect little from God, ask little and therefore receive little and are content with little.
Cultivate your trust and familiarity with the Lord in prayer now so that when the hammer comes down, when the dam bursts, and when the earthquake hits, the door to the throne room of God is well-oiled and will open easily when you run through it.
Strength in the River, 2016, Kress Biblical Resources, p. 45-46. Used by Permission.
