PRAYER-GOD’S WILL
We are trying
not so much to make God listen to us as to make ourselves listen to him; we are
trying not to persuade God to do what we want, but to find out what he wants us
to do. It so often happens that in prayer we are really saying, “Thy will be
changed,” when we ought to be saying, “Thy will be done.” The first object of
prayer is not so much to speak to God as to listen to him.
Prayers are
the nerves that move the muscles of omnipotence. Prayer is not an exercise in
futility because God's will, will be done in any case; prayer is the means by
which God's will is carried out.
John MacArthur
We need to
learn how wrong it is to think of prayer as a way of getting something from
God. People often think of prayer as a way of talking God into doing what they
want Him to do. This is what lies behind "name it and claim it"
Christianity, the idea that I can influence God by offering the right kind of
prayer. But that attitude ultimately leads to hell. As C. S. Lewis once
observed, "There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to
God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be
done.' All that are in Hell, choose it." Besides,
why would anyone want to change God's mind? The Bible says that His will is
"good, pleasing and perfect" (Rom. 12:2). Imagine what a mess our
lives would be in if God always did what we wanted Him to do! For unlike God's
will, our own wills are evil, displeasing, and imperfect.
Philip Graham Ryken
When You Pray, Crossway
Books, 2000, p. 94.
Don't pray to
escape trouble. Don't pray to be comfortable in your emotions. Pray to do the
will of God in every situation. Nothing else is worth praying for.
Samuel Shoemaker
Nothing lies
beyond the reach of prayer except that which lies outside the will of God.
Author Unknown
Every true prayer has its background and its foreground.
The foreground of prayer is the intense, immediate desire for a certain
blessing which seems to be absolutely necessary for the soul to have; the
background of prayer is the quiet, earnest desire that the will of God,
whatever it may be, should be done. What a picture is the perfect prayer of
Jesus in Gethsemane! In front burns the strong desire to escape death and to
live; but behind there stands, calm and strong, the craving of the whole life
for the doing of the will of God... Leave out the foreground, let there be no
expression of the will of him who prays, and there is left a pure submission
which is almost fatalism. Leave out the background, let there be no acceptance
of the will of God, and the prayer is only an expression of self-will, a
petulant claiming of the uncorrected choice of him who prays. Only when the two
are there together, the special desire resting on the universal submission, the
universal submission opening into the special desire is the picture perfect and
the prayer complete.
Phillips Brooks
He has told
us to pray, “Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven” (Matthew
6:10). And if we have ever prayed that
prayer and meant it – even once – we have ourselves shut the door on thousands
of things for which we might foolishly ask.
Tom Wells
A Vision for Missions,
Permission by The Banner of Truth Trust, Carlisle, PA.
p. 30.