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James 5:13–16
… pray for one another, that you may be healed. The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much (James 5:16b).
It is supplication or intercession, the presenting of our requests to God, that can seem most useless in light of God’s sovereignty. If God knows what is best and has determined that that is what will happen, why should we bring our petitions to Him? Scripture answers that we should do it because prayer changes things—in a sense.
Augustine of Hippo, the great fourth-century theologian, affirmed that all things are ordered or willed by God. But he noted that God can cause His will to be worked out through some means, or He can accomplish it directly and immediately (without mediation). The Westminster Confession of Faith states that “God in His ordinary providence maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at His pleasure” (V, 3, emphasis added). This is simply a way of saying that God normally works in certain ways to cause His will to come to pass. For instance, He provides bread for the people of the earth through the means of rain falling on fields, sunlight shining on wheat plants, roots drawing nutrients from the soil, and so forth. These are ordinary processes. Of course, God could provide bread apart from the use of any means, just as He did when He gave the Israelites manna for 40 years in the desert. But He normally chooses to accomplish His will through non-miraculous means.
It is very often the case that our prayers are the ordinary means that God uses to bring about His sovereign will for our lives. Being sovereign, He has determined not only the ends but the means by which the ends will occur. If, for instance, He has determined that we are to grow in the virtue of patience, it may be that He has determined that we will achieve such growth only by asking Him for His aid, and if we do not ask we will not grow. Therefore, when God “answers” one of our petitions, it is because He sovereignly pre-determined to do the thing and sovereignly pre-determined that our prayers should be the means by which He would bring it to pass.
Our prayers cannot change God’s mind. He is indeed sovereign; His will is set and must come to pass. But prayer does change things. Somehow, in ways that we cannot fully understand, our prayers are His ordained means for accomplishing His ordained ends. Therefore, the prayers of righteous people do indeed accomplish much.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
It is the height of presumption for us to question God’s ordained means for bringing His will to pass. If He chooses to work through the means of our prayers, that is the best way for His will to be achieved. Thank and praise Him today that He is sovereign, ordaining both ends and means, and that prayer therefore is not a worthless exercise.
For Further Study
- Numbers 11:2
- Job 22:27
- Psalm 65:2