Latest / Pastor John Piper's answers / Should Confidence in Sovereignty Make Me Prayerless?

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Should Confidence in Sovereignty Make Me Prayerless? · Pastor John Piper's answers

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  We've been talking about God's sovereignty in recent episodes. Does his sovereignty and salvation
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  make him unfair? When it was last time in Apga twenty twenty eight,
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  and we talk about God's sovereignty over our suffering next Monday in Abja twenty thirty
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  one. Today, though, should God's all sovereignty make us less prayerful since
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  we can resign all things into His hands? Questions from a listener named Jen
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  your pastor John. I have listened to ask Pator John for years. The
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  truth of your mantra that God is most glorified in us when we are most
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  satisfied in Him is something that resonates deep in my spirit. My question for
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  you is this, do you think that a person can be so satisfied in
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  God that it leads to prayer lessiness? What I mean is a circumstance in
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  which you feel so confident and satisfied in God's purposes and designs in your life
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  and others, that you lack a desire to petition Him even when things seem
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  to be going wrong. I tend to feel deeply that praise, rather than
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  petition, is on my heart. I often praise the Lord in thanksgiving,
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  which I considered be a kind of prayer, but rarely ask or seek intervention
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  from God. And for Samuel, when Israel begs God for a king,
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  God warns them against their prayer, but as they persist, he eventually tells
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  Samuel to listen to the people and give them a king. That's for Samuel
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  eight verses seven and twenty two. So prayers can mask desires that are opposed
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  to God's desires that haunts me? Would what I pray to change even be
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  a holy desire to begin with? Bottom line, I guess I feel safer
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  and happier accepting in faith whatever the Lord brings about in my life, rather
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  than asking for him to change those things. Is this a wrong approach to
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  life? Well, yes, it is a wrong approach to life, but
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  maybe not for the reason you think. I'm not disagreeing that you have said
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  several very true, very important things. For example, you say that prayers
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  can mask desires that are opposed to God's desires. That's true because James chapter
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  four, verse three says you ask, you pray and do not receive because
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  you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions. So clearly we can treat
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  God like a bell hop with prayers, and as the bell goes off and
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  we send up our prayer, we tell him to bring us things that we're
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  going to misuse. So that's right, that's a crucial observation. You also
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  say that there are circumstances in which I feel so confident and satisfied in God's
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  purposes and designs in my life and others, that I lack a desire to
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  petition him. Well, yes, there are moments in life when that's exactly
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  how we should feel. When Christ has made it clear to Paul that the
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  thorn in the flesh was God's will, he stopped praying for the thorn to
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  be removed and said, quote, therefore, I will boast all the more
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  gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
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  But the problem with your approach to prayer is that you have framed the
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  question of prayer in such a way that it treats prayer only as a response
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  to what happens to you, rather than treating prayer also as an empowerment of
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  what you should make happen for others. For example, you say, I
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  feel safer and happier accepting in faith whatever the Lord brings about in my life
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  than asking him to change those things. So you have framed the question entirely
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  in terms of you as a passive recipient of God's bringing things into your life,
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  rather than framing the question of prayer also in terms of you being an
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  active person in the world seeking to fulfill God's gracious will as you love other
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  people. So let me try to get at it like this, ask this
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  question is prayer? I think all of us should ask this question of our
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  lives. Is prayer a wartime walkie talkie or is it a domestic intercom to
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  call the butler for another pillow? Now, if prayer is mainly a domestic
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  intercom to call the butler to bring another pillow, your approach to life makes
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  sense. Namely, leave the butler alone and be content with the pillow he
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  brought yesterday. Right, that's good. But if prayer is a wartime walkie
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  talkie designed to call down divine power from the military headquarters to give you the
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  ability to defeat the devil and overcome temptation and take godly risks for the sake
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  of love, and spread the gospel in dangerous places and rescue the spiritual prisoners
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  from behind demonic lines, and establish justice and do acts of mercy. Your
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  approach to prayer is totally inadequate. So the big question is what's prayer?
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  What is it? Mainly in the Bible, mister Jesus said in John fifteen
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  sixteen, I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit.
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  Sow that that's a crucial phrase, so that whatever you ask the Father
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  in my name, he may give you. Huh. In other words,
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  I put you on a fruit bearing mission so that you'd get answers to prayer.
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  That's the life of that verse, which means prayer is for the empowering
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  of the mission that you have been given from headquarters. Prayer is a wartime
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  walkie talkie, not a domestic intercom. Mainly, Paul said, brothers,
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  my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved.
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  Speaking of his Jewish skinsman, prayer is for the salvation of lost souls,
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  and there's lots of lost auls in the world. Oh my goodness.
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  It's for the invading of Satan's domain and the delivering of captives. He said
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  in Ephesian six. Paul said in Ephesian six, take the sword of the
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  Spirit, which is the word of God. Comma praying at all times in
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  the spirit. So take the sword, praying, Take the sword praying.
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  Prayer is for the empowerment of the wielding of the sword of the Spirit,
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  which is the word of God, as we do battle with the evil one.
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  Jesus said, pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest, to send
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  out laborers into the harvest. In other words, prayer is a wartime walkie
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  talkie to call headquarters and say, reinforcements, Please, reinforcements. We got
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  a mission to do, and we don't have enough people to do it.
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  God send the reinforcements. Jesus said, if you, then, who are
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  evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more
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  will your Father, who is in heaven give good things to those who ask
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  him? And others pray, He'll give you good things. And then he
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  says, therefore, another crucial phrase, Therefore, whatever you wish that others
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  would do to you, do to them. What's the meaning of that.
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  Therefore, prayer is a wartime walkie talkie to call down all necessary empowerment to
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  treat others the way we would like to be treated. So I would encourage
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  you to reframe the way you think about prayer. The question is not mainly
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  can I be content as a passive recipient of the circumstances God brings. Rather,
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  the question is do I have within me all the power necessary in order
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  to do all the things I'm commanded to do in the Bible. And the
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  answer is you do not, and I don't either. None of us has
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  in us the power needed to do what we're told to do in the Bible.
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  We must have God's power, and he has taught us to ask for
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  it. We don't have the power to hallow God's name. We must ask
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  for it. We don't have the power to seek his kingdom first, we
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  must ask for it. We don't have the power to do His will the
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  way it's done in heaven. We must ask for it. We don't have
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  power even to feed ourselves. We have to ask for daily bread. We
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  don't have power to forgive those who trespass against us. We have to ask
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  for that grace. We don't have power to escape temptation. We must ask
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  for it. In other words, don't be afraid that you're going to ask
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  for the wrong thing when you're asking for divine help to do what God told
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  you to do. And virtually everything that He has told us to do we
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  cannot and should not do in our own strength, but in the strength that
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  He supplies, and He has ordained that he supplied that power in answer to
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  prayer, which is why Paul said, pray without ceasing. Because we got
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  things to do at every moment of our lives that we can't do, and
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  He expects us to lean on him to to do it. So let's be
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  a people who all day long are using this indispensable wartime walkie talkie for the
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  help we need to fight the good fight of faith. Yeah, I think
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  Pastor John Prayer is our wartime walkie talkie. And if you want more on
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  this concept, if that's new to you, see two other episodes in the
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  archive, episode sixteen forty nine and eighteen oh two. Find them in the
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  archive at Askpastor John dot com and just search for the episode numbers sixteen forty
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  nine and eighteen o two. They are essential listens. I would call them
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  on prayer as a wartime walkie talkie. Next time we look at one of
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  the questions you have asked about Pastor John's Providence Book. Come Tony Rank,
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  I'll see you on Thursday for that