Wrapped in Trinitarian Love

Someone writes: I am confused. I have discovered the grace of God, that all things are freely mine in Christ, and then I hear you say that God does nothing on this earth except through prayer. Isn’t it just the old legalism all over again? If you do this, then God will do that? Is prayer just another way of saying that you earn all the blessings that come from God?

I do understand your confusion, but it is not where you think it is! The problem is in your understanding of what prayer really is. If we look at it from a self-centered point of view, we see prayer as a means of getting things from God for ourselves, or for those we care about. In His mercy, God answers us, even when we pray with that mindset.

Prayer must be understood as the method God has ordained to bring to pass on earth His desires for the creation. When we pray, we are not earning the right to have the desired blessing … we are not paying the price by so many minutes or hours spent in asking a reluctant God to release what we want. Prayer, in fact, does not begin with us, but with God. He reveals His desire for the human race through the Scripture, and then makes a particular part of that desire alive to us in our specific situation through the nudge of the Spirit in our hearts. “This,” He is telling us, “is what I will to happen now.”

We, as His representatives on earth, are to bring His will to pass on the planet, but are helpless to do so in and of ourselves. Prayer is our deliberate choice to take our place as a creature, helpless apart from the Creator, and to ask Him to bring to pass what He wills.

It is when we take the place of humility that asks, coupled with the faith that knows He is there and will do as He says, that He works His will on earth.

You may ask why He involves us … why He doesn’t just go ahead and do what He wants to do? It is all bound up with the incredible plan that lies behind His creating us in the first place. He made us to know His mind, to fellowship with Him, and to share with Him in the implementing of His will as the ages unfold. Prayer is learning how to function in that capacity.

And so, when we pray, we are not slavishly going through words that will purchase blessing. We are, rather, taking our place as co-laborers with God to bring His heart’s desire into being on earth.

This is clearly illustrated in the life of Jesus. He is the sinless man, who lives in perfect fellowship with His Father. Yet, He takes many hours out of His week to pray. He was not slavishly trying to extract some blessing from His Father; He was functioning as man was always intended to function, in humility and faith receiving into substance His Father’s will.

This question actually opens the door to understanding the whole nature of salvation. God come to us in grace, having redeemed us and brings us to know Him, so that we may begin to live the kind of life we were created to live.

Salvation restores us to normality and wholeness as humans … which means that we walk in fellowship with God and love one another. Prayer is part of that return to being normal functioning humans, working with the Creator in the running of His universe. Prayer is part of the “great dance” of the Trinity. Prayer is the adventure in which we walk hand in hand with God in life.