Prayer vs Sovereignty

RonJohnSilver

RonJohnSilver

Well-Known Member
I'm wading through this conundrum for my James study. Help me out please.

In Scripture, asking "in faith" always means one of two things. It means either believing God will do what He has promised, or, if He has not promised it, believing that He can do what the person requesting is asking.

How do we reconcile a faithful prayer and God’s sovereignty?

14 And this is the confidence that we have before Him: If we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
15 And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we already possess what we have asked of Him.
1 John 5:15

In order to pray according to Gods will, we have to know what Gods will is.
What a person prays for, while in accord with the Bible, may not be God's will. How do we know?

So, how do we reconcile a faithful prayer and God’s sovereignty?
 
Kaatje

Kaatje

My soul waits for the Lord, and in His Word I hope
God doesn’t need our prayer to fulfill His plans, but as the loving Father He is, He wants them anyway.
I can’t wrap my mind around this, but it is true.

On more than one place in the Bible this is stated for instance: Ex. 32:11-14, Job 42:8, James 5:16,17.

Our prayers are like incense, ascending up before the throne of God. (Rev. 8).
And the Holy Spirit helps us, for we know not what we should pray for as we ought:
but the Spirit itself makes intercession for us, with groanings which cannot be uttered.

And God hears our prayers, and acts upon them.
Not always in the way we would like it, but we never know the whole picture.
God does, and all things will work together for good to them that love Him.
(Romans 8:28).
 
Salluz

Salluz

Aspiring Man of God
Narrow Path said:
Count me in as someone who struggles with this paradox. The predestination-freewill duality is frustrating. The other mind blower is trying to figure out when taking a certain action is an act of trusting or testing God.
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Predestination or free will doesn't bother me, but I struggle with the second one in my actual life.

What does it even mean to test God?
 
Narrow Path

Narrow Path

Active Member
Salluz said:
What does it even mean to test God?
Click to expand...

Well, I've spent most of my working days in lousy, unfulfilling, soul sucking jobs. I have never been able to zero in on a career path that I felt would make my work and compensation satisfying. I've prayed numerous times over decades for Him to lead me to such a vocation. Never felt like he answered me. Now about 10-15 years out from retirement I feel like I finally "know what I want to be when I grow up". I'm having ideas of moving to the country and starting a niche business raising pastured pork and chicken. My parents came from farming backgrounds, but I have no practical experience with it, or starting an enterprise. If I pursue it, I'll be relying largely on research, self education and God. Is this venture my idea or God pointing me in that direction? I don't know.

So that's the question.... if I take such a leap into personal uncharted territory, am I trusting God to provide to keep me from going bust and endangering my families' welfare. Or am I testing God by trusting in the passages that say to put it all on Him? I have always been conservative with a low threshold for risk. Although I never felt like I heard an answer to my prayer, over the past year, the thought has occurred to me that perhaps I have had such a dissatisfying work life because I have not trusted God enough to take more chances. But jumping into this farming endeavor also feels like I would be testing God as in.... "OK, you said you would take care of it, so here goes, its up to you to keep me from failing miserably."
 
Salluz

Salluz

Aspiring Man of God
Narrow Path said:
Well, I've spent most of my working days in lousy, unfulfilling, soul sucking jobs. I have never been able to zero in on a career path that I felt would make my work and compensation satisfying. I've prayed numerous times over decades for Him to lead me to such a vocation. Never felt like he answered me. Now about 10-15 years out from retirement I feel like I finally "know what I want to be when I grow up". I'm having ideas of moving to the country and starting a niche business raising pastured pork and chicken. My parents came from farming backgrounds, but I have no practical experience with it, or starting an enterprise. If I pursue it, I'll be relying largely on research, self education and God.

So that's the question.... if I take such a leap into personal uncharted territory, am I trusting God to provide to keep me from going bust and endangering my families' welfare. Or am I testing God by trusting in the passages that say to put it all on Him? I have always been conservative with a low threshold for risk. Over the past year, the thought has occurred to me that perhaps I have had such a dissatisfying work life because I have not trusted God enough to take more chances. But jumping into this farming endeavor always feels a little like I'm testing God as in.... "OK, you said you would take care of it, so here goes..."
Click to expand...

I don't have the life experience to back my idea here up, but I think testing versus trusting may come down to our heart attitude toward what we are doing.

If a man quit his job just to see God provide in other ways because he knew God promised to provide, that sounds like testing.

It sounds like you want an outcome and would be trusting God to get you.

I think that might be the difference, whether there is a goal in mind or not. A person just wanting to see God move for the sake of it might be testing, and a person who has a reason to want God to move would be trusting.

Just my 2 cents, but due to inflation my 2 cents might be worth less than the 2 cents of someone older/wiser :wink
 
Kaatje

Kaatje

My soul waits for the Lord, and in His Word I hope
Salluz said:
What does it even mean to test God?
Click to expand...
What does it mean to test God?
Question: "What does it mean to test God?"

Answer: In the Bible, there are examples of both an acceptable and unacceptable kind of testing God. It’s acceptable to “test” God in regard to tithes and offerings, for example, but unacceptable when the test is rooted in doubt.

Malachi 3:10 says, “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this,’ says the Lord Almighty, ‘and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it.’” This is the only situation given in the Bible in which God tells His people to “test” Him. Interestingly, the Hebrew word used for “test” in this verse is bachan, which means “to examine, scrutinize, or prove (as in gold, persons, or the heart).” Just as gold is “tested” with fire to prove its quality, God invites Israel to test Him in tithes and offerings and see that He proves His faithfulness in response.

There is another Hebrew word for “test” used elsewhere in the Bible. Nacahmeans “to put to the test, try, or tempt.” It is used in Deuteronomy 6:16, where God commands Israel to not test Him: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test as you did at Massah.”

This second, unacceptable kind of testing is when doubt leads us to demand something of God to prove Himself to us. Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 6:16 in the wilderness, in response to one of Satan’s temptations. “The devil took him to the holy city and had him stand on the highest point of the temple. ‘If you are the Son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down. For it is written: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.” Jesus answered him, ‘It is also written: “Do not put the Lord your God to the test”’” (Matthew 4:7–10). Essentially, the devil was telling Jesus to “prove” God’s Word was true by forcing God’s hand—if Jesus was in peril, God would have to save Him. Jesus refused to test God in such a way. We are to accept God’s Word by faith, without requiring a sign (see Luke 11:29). God’s promises are there for us when we need them; to manipulate situations in an attempt to coerce God into fulfilling His promises is evil.

The occasion where the Israelites tested God at Massah is found in Exodus 17. As God was leading Moses and His people toward the Promised Land, they camped at a place where there was no water. The Israelites’ immediate reaction was to grumble against God and quarrel with Moses (Exodus 17:1–3). Their lack of trust in God to take care of them is evident in their accusations toward Moses: “They said, ‘Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?’” (Exodus 17:3). The Israelites were obviously in a situation where they needed God to intervene. The point at which they tested God, though, is when doubt and fear overtook them and they came to the conclusion that God had abandoned them (see Exodus 17:7). They questioned God’s reliability because He was not meeting their expectations.

The difference between these two kinds of testing God is faith. “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and the assurance about what we do not see” (Hebrews 11:1). The Israelites at Massah tested God because they lacked faith in Him. The Israelites in Malachi’s day were invited to test God because they hadfaith in Him.

Faith, by definition, takes risk. When true faith is present, obedience follows. It is that faith-inspired action of obedience that God loves. As seen in the example of Israel’s tithes and offerings, when we give out of our faith in who God is, He proves Himself to be faithful. By contrast, when we view God through our doubt and demand something of Him as a way of determining whether or not He can be trusted, we’re in danger of testing God (see Mark 8:11–12).

https://www.gotquestions.org/test-God.html
 
Brother Albert R.

Brother Albert R.

Jesus loved us and said we should Love our enemies
What I find amazing is when I read in the scriptures that God changed His mind in response to proud people humbling themselves. On this side of eternity it seems as though God changed His mind, when in reality He knows the beginning from the end. He searches the hearts and minds of all people and is patient toward all, not willing that any perish. God is awesome...
Now I have a request that I believe goes along with this topic but also deals with our choice, please comment on the next two verses that talk about our responsibility to remain/continue in Him in order to be saved...
ROMANS 11:22 AMP
Then appreciate the gracious kindness and the severity of God: to those who fell [into spiritual ruin], severity, but to you, God’s gracious kindness—if you continue in His kindness [by faith and obedience to Him]; otherwise you too will be cut off.

John 15:6 AMP
If anyone does not remain in Me, he is thrown out like a [broken off] branch, and withers and dies; and they gather such branches and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.

PS I hope RonJohnSilver forgives me for adding my question on to His thread.

God bless,
Brother Albert
 
RonJohnSilver

RonJohnSilver

Well-Known Member
I forgive you Brother Albert, but I have found at least one answer to my initial question, that is, how can we reconcile what God can do with what God will do.

I'm taking the free, online course on James taught by the late Dr. Stanley Toussaint. In the class, he asked, almost word for word, what I asked. His answer was very direct. Praying by faith is recognizing God's ability, that is, what He can do. He references Matthew 8:2-3 and 5-10 and more specifically, Daniel 3:18, the story of the three men in the furnace. Their answer to the king was clear, "Our God can deliver us, but even if He doesn't....." So, praying in God's will, then, is praying for things that we know are not contrary to Scripture and recognizing that while God has the ability to grant our request, He may, for His own reasons, choose not to.
 
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