Prayer and a Sovereign God

         Did you know that there are 650 prayers listed in the Bible and 450 recorded answers to prayer?  Yet, there are those who question if God is sovereign (all things are in his control) then why should we pray, isn't He going to do what He wants anyway.  

        Jerry Bridges in his book, Trusting God says, "Prayer assumes the sovereignty of God."  "But while God's sovereignty...is the foundation of our trust in Him, prayer is the expression of that trust." (p. 107)  I have no problem reconciling in my mind the belief in a sovereign God and my responsibility to pray.  I believe that I am also responsible to do the next thing.  At this season of life we are planning for the future, even though I know that God ultimately controls the future I still must pray for His guidance.

        Elizabeth Elliott said, "All our problems are theological ones, William Temple said. All of them have to do with our relationship to God and his to us, and this is precisely why it makes sense to come to God with them."  Prayer is my key to a relationship with God.

        So in this new season when I find myself anxious about the future I must pray! In order to align myself with God's will for me.  Mentally, I was not ready to retire. I feel my mind is sharp and I'm still learning new things on how to teach reading.  However, my physical body is showing the strain of nine years of constant pain.  Therefore, I must learn these lessons on sovereignty and prayer.  Elizabeth Elliott said it best,  "This hard place in which you perhaps find yourself is the very place God is giving you opportunity to look only to Him, to spend time in prayer, and to learn long-suffering, gentleness, meekness - in short, to learn the depths of the love that Christ Himself has poured out on all of us."

        I may not know where life is going, but like David said in Psalms 57:2, "I cry out to the God most high, to God who fulfills His purpose for me."