Thoughts on Prayer (3)

"The LORD will perfect that which concerns me; Your mercy, O LORD, endures forever; Do not forsake the works of Your hands." (Psalm 138:8)

• Prayer, providence, and predestination work together. Prayers are intimately, integrally, and organically connected to God's will as a secondary means that He designed to produce His will in and through us (predestination). God tells us to pray because His presiding guidance works (providence) all things that concern us toward full relational communion equivalent to that which the Father, Son, and Spirit have enjoyed throughout eternity past, present and to come.

  
  

• Prayer is not a weapon used to convince God to destroy our enemies. But the fact is, your enemies will never fall around you until God rises in you: and God arises by prayer. That’s why at so many times the enemies of God have earthly supremacy over God's people (2 Chronicles 20:12). It's one way God confronts us with our inadequacy, moving us to call on Him so that we receive all the necessity He provides. We learn that having God with nothing else, is enough. And that having anything else without God, is never enough. Enemies or no enemies notwithstanding.

• God says ask, seek, and knock so that the door to the Kingdom is opened. (Matthew 7:7-8) In light of God's election and reprobation one might ask, "if asking, knocking, and seeking is the action that opens the doors of salvation, is the asker, seeker, and knocker the initiator of salvation? Those that are asking, seeking, and knocking in prayer, are already being called by Christ, already being worked on by the Spirit, and in fact, already coming to Christ. Reaching the door and entering in simply makes one cognizant of all that has already happened.