Teach Me to Pray - Week #21: Prayer in Harmony with the Person of God

John 11:41, 42 "Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me..."

In this chapter Andrew Murray speaks of the value of asking theological questions that naturally arise about prayer as one grows in a life of prayer...questions such as "How can God grant to prayer such mighty power? How can the action of prayer be harmonized with the will and the decrees of God? How can God's sovereignty and our will, God's liberty and ours, be reconciled?" The honest pondering into such mysteries leads us to adoring worship of God.

In essence Murray says that the key to understanding the place and power and privilege of prayer is in the mystery of the Trinity. "If God were only one person, shut up within himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on Him. But in God there are three persons...When eternal Love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the second person a place next to himself as His equal and His counselor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of God itself."

In Psalm 2 we see that the Father gives the Son power and place to influence Him. "The Father determined that He should not be alone in His counsels: there was a Son on whose asking and accepting their fulfillment should depend." Jesus lives forever to pray/intercede, and throughout eternity He will accomplish the will of the Father through asking, through prayer.

This is very important for us to understand, because our prayer on earth is meant to be a reflection of this same reality. The Father has opened Himself to be influenced by weak humans who will dare to ask Him in the name of His Son to do things that otherwise would not happen!

I'm beginning to touch this a bit, but I long to take a stronger grip by faith on the wonderful truth expressed in the following words by the author:
"God's decrees are not an iron framework against which man's liberty vainly seeks to struggle. God Himself is the living Love, who in His Son, as man, has entered into a tender relationship with all that is human. God through the Holy Spirit takes our humanness into the divine life of love and frees himself to give every human prayer its place in His government of the world. (Eph. 2:18)"

Wow! Unlike all other gods, our God hears us and allows Himself to be moved by human prayer. "...the Father-heart holds itself open and free to listen to every prayer that rises through the Son..." We have a real role in the governing of the world through prayer! When this begins to sink in even just a little, we are empowered to invest in prayer as the primary means to accomplish His will and live in simple obedience to whatever He may ask of us in prayer.

"This simple view of prayer is seen throughout Scripture: God hears us."

"Everlasting God, the Three-in-One, in deep reverence I would worship before the holy mystery of your diving Being. If it should please you, most glorious God, to unveil anything of that mystery, I would bow with fear and trembling and meditate on your glory...Blessed Jesus, in whom as the Son the path of prayer has been opened up, and who gives us assurance of the answer, we beseech you to teach your people to pray. Each day let this be the sign of our own sonship; that like you we know that the Father always hears us. Amen."