Prayer isn’t our work, it’s God’s

  Apr 12, 2017 issue

To put it more bluntly: Isn’t it ridiculous (and maybe even idolatrous) to think that through our supplications we can persuade God into doing something God might otherwise not do? You might be surprised to hear that I take it as self-evident that the answer to that question is yes.

 The God of Job isn’t a god we can manipulate—by spiritually sanctioned means—to do what we want. Too often when people tell me they’ll pray for me, the implication left unsaid is that God is otherwise not already with me or at work in me and that if I’m not healed then somehow their prayers didn’t work. Such an understanding of prayer is incompatible with the God of the book of Job, a God who is at every moment the reason there is something instead of nothing.

read more at https://www.christiancentury.org/article/prayer-isn%E2%80%99t-our-work-it%E2%80%99s-god%E2%80%99s 


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