Audio Transcript

We’ve been talking about God’s sovereignty in recent episodes. Does his sovereignty in salvation make him unfair? That was last time, in APJ 2028. We talk about God’s sovereignty over our suffering next Monday, in APJ 2031. Today, though, we ask, Should God’s all-sovereignty make us less prayerful, since we can resign all things into his hands? The question is from a listener named Jenn.

“Dear Pastor John, I have listened to Ask Pastor John for years. The truth of your mantra that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him is something that resonates deep in my spirit. My question for you is this. Do you think a person can be so satisfied in God that it leads to prayerlessness? What I mean is a circumstance in which you feel so confident and satisfied in God’s purposes and designs in your life and others’ that you lack a desire to petition him. Even when things seem to be going wrong, I tend to feel deeply that praise, rather than petition, is on my heart. I often praise the Lord in thanksgiving, which I consider to be a kind of prayer, but rarely ask or seek intervention from God.

“In 1 Samuel, when Israel begs God for a king, God warns them against their prayer, but as they persist, he eventually tells Samuel to listen to the people and give them a king (1 Samuel 8:7, 22). So, prayers can mask desires that are opposed to God’s desires. That haunts me. Would what I pray to change even be a holy desire to begin with? Bottom line: I guess I feel safer and happier accepting, in faith, whatever the Lord brings about in my life, rather than asking for him to change those things. Is this a wrong approach to life?”

Well, yes, it is a wrong approach to life, but maybe not for the reason you think. I’m not disagreeing that you have said several very true, very important things. For example, you say that “prayers can mask desires that are opposed to God’s desires.” That’s true, because James 4:3 says, “You ask [you pray] and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” So, clearly, we can treat God like a bellhop with prayer, and as the bell goes off and we send up our prayer, we tell him to bring us things that we’re going to misuse. So, that’s right. That’s a crucial observation.

You also say that “there are circumstances in which I feel so confident and satisfied in God’s purposes and designs in my life and others’ that I lack a desire to petition him.” Well, yes, there are moments in life when that’s exactly how we should feel. When Christ made it clear to Paul that the thorn in the flesh was God’s will, he stopped praying for the thorn to be removed and said, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me” (2 Corinthians 12:9).

Passive and Active Prayers

But the problem with your approach to prayer is that you have framed the question of prayer in such a way that it treats prayer only as a response to what happens to you rather than treating prayer also as an empowerment of what you should make happen for others. For example, you say, “I feel safer and happier accepting, in faith, whatever the Lord brings about in my life, rather than asking him to change those things.” So, you have framed the question entirely in terms of you as a passive recipient of God bringing things into your life rather than framing the question of prayer also in terms of you being an active person in the world, seeking to fulfill God’s gracious will as you love other people.

So, let me try to get at it like this. Ask this question (I think all of us should ask this question of our lives): Is prayer a wartime walkie-talkie, or is it a domestic intercom to call the butler for another pillow? Now, if prayer is mainly a domestic intercom to call the butler to bring another pillow, your approach to life makes sense — namely, leave the butler alone and be content with the pillow he brought yesterday. Right. That’s good.

“None of us has in us the power needed to do what we’re told to do in the Bible. We must have God’s power.”

But if prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie designed to call down divine power from the military headquarters to give you the ability to defeat the devil, and overcome temptation, and take godly risks for the sake of love, and spread the gospel in dangerous places, and rescue the spiritual prisoners from behind demonic lines, and establish justice, and do acts of mercy, your approach to prayer is totally inadequate.

Mission-Minded Prayers

So, the big question is, What’s prayer? What is it mainly in the Bible? Here’s what Jesus said in John 15:16: “I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit . . . so that [that’s a crucial phrase] whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.” Huh. In other words, I put you on a fruit-bearing mission so that you’d get answers to prayer. That’s the logic of that verse. Which means prayer is for the empowering of the mission that you have been given from headquarters. Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie, not a domestic intercom mainly.

Paul said, “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). He’s speaking of his Jewish kinsmen. Prayer is for the salvation of lost souls, and there are lots of lost souls in the world. Oh my goodness. It’s for the invading of Satan’s domain and the delivering of captives.

Paul said in Ephesians 6:17–18, “Take . . . the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, praying at all times in the Spirit.” So, “take the sword . . . praying.” Prayer is for the empowerment of wielding “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God,” as we do battle with the evil one.

Jesus said, “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest” (Matthew 9:38; Luke 10:2). In other words, prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie to call headquarters and say, “Reinforcements, please! Reinforcements. We’ve got a mission to do, and we don’t have enough people to do it. God, send the reinforcements.”

Jesus said, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11). In other words, pray. He’ll give you good things. And then he says, “Therefore [another crucial phrase] whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them” (Matthew 7:12). What’s the meaning of that therefore? Prayer is a wartime walkie-talkie to call down all necessary empowerment to treat others the way we would like to be treated.

Reframing Prayer

So, I would encourage you to reframe the way you think about prayer. The question is not mainly, Can I be content as a passive recipient of the circumstances God brings? Rather, the question is, Do I have within me all the power necessary in order to do all the things I’m commanded to do in the Bible? And the answer is that you do not. And I don’t either. None of us has in us the power needed to do what we’re told to do in the Bible. We must have God’s power, and he has taught us to ask for it.

• We don’t have the power to hallow God’s name. We must ask for it.
• We don’t have the power to seek his kingdom first. We must ask for it.
• We don’t have the power to do his will the way it’s done in heaven. We must ask for it.
• We don’t have the power even to feed ourselves. We have to ask for daily bread.
• We don’t have the power to forgive those who trespass against us. We have to ask for that grace.
• We don’t have the power to escape temptation. We must ask for it.

In other words, don’t be afraid that you’re going to ask for the wrong thing when you’re asking for divine help to do what God told you to do. And virtually everything that he has told us to do, we cannot and should not do in our own strength, but in the strength that he supplies. And he has ordained that he supply that power in answer to prayer, which is why Paul said, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Because we’ve got things to do at every moment of our lives that we can’t do, and he expects us to lean on him to do it.

So, let’s be a people who all day long are using this indispensable wartime walkie-talkie for the help we need to fight the good fight of faith.