22.11.06

Prayer in the Shorter Catechism (3): Things Agreeable to His Will

Posted in Shorter Catechism on Prayer at 4:06 pm by dowboy

Christmas time beckons and children are busy dreaming up what they want from Santa Claus. Santa is a remarkably accommodating chap, but even he struggles sometimes to answer the letters he gets at this time of year. Parents are either unwilling or unable to get what their children want. We, earthly parents, know what is best for our children and sometimes we just know that what they want isn’t good for them, and so we don’t give it to them. We only give them things which we want them to have. The same law applies in prayer - we may ask for a thousand different things, but God will only give us those things which He wants to give us - in the language of Answer 98 of the Shorter Catechism, the answer we have been studying this term, He will only give us those things which are agreeable to His will.

Simply put, to pray for things ‘agreeable to His will‘ means to search out and to discover God’s priorities for us in prayer - it means to pray for those things God wants us to pray for. It means that we make every effort to understand what God’s will is and then to pursue it relentlessly in the way we pray and in what we pray for. Having said that, there are three questions I briefly want to reflect upon to try and fill out what we mean by praying for things, ‘agreeable to His will’.
 

[A] Why Should We Pray for Things Agreeable to God’s Will?
We live in a society pervaded by what John Stott has called ‘an anti-authority mood’. Nobody likes being told what to do - so, what gives God the right to command us to pray for things which are agreeable to His will? There are 4 answers to this question:
 

1.       He is God - last time I checked, God was eternal, infinite and unchangeable and we are but temporal, finite and changeable human beings. He is limitless, we are frail and limited. If the God of the Universe, the God who created everything and from moment to moment maintains all things in being and motion; if the God whose power is so vast that He can in an instant destroy enemy armies and control global weather systems; if the God who lives in unapproachable light and infinite power - if that God commands me, a frail, limited, sorry excuse for a human being, to do something, then we should do it. And God, in 1 John 5:14 we are told, commanded even, to pray according to the Will of God. Shouldn’t we then obey this great and mighty God?
2.       He Knows Best - when I was a child, my parents would often command me to do something or not to do something - and sometimes they wouldn’t tell me why. Now I suppose I could have thrown my hands up and gone on strike until they gave me an explanation, but when they did tell me, I came to realise that they were only acting on my best interests. For example, if my fingers strayed too close to a hot pan, they would shout at me to get away from the cooker - and they were doing that because they knew best and they only had my best interests at heart because they love me. God loves us infinitely more than our parents do, and He knows what is best for us infinitely better than we do. Sometimes God does not give us what we ask because what we are asking is not good for us - He knows it and He loves us too much to let us hurt ourselves. His will is best for us - He knows best, He loves most - and therefore, even if we don’t understand fully, we must rest secure in what He wants and doesn’t want for us.
3.       He Will Give us What we Ask - we have the promise in 1 John 5:14 that “if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we asked of him.” There’s the promise from God’s Word - and as we know, all God’s promises and yes and amen in Christ Jesus. God makes us a promise that He will give us all we pray for in His will - we can take that promise to the bank of faith and cash it in every time we pray and as we pray according to the will of God we can plead this promise of God. It was Matthew Henry who said, “God’s promises are to be the guide of our desires in prayer.” By contrast, in Chapter 4 vs. 1-3 of his book James paints a picture of people praying not according to the will of God, “You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.” Struggle therefore to pray for things agreeable to God’s Will, for in praying, the promise is that you will receive.
4.       We Want to Be More Like Him - the whole of the Christian life is a growing more like the Lord Jesus Christ - it is becoming more like God. That should be our chief desire - that we be more like Jesus - and that means we must seek to make God’s priorities our priorities - that we must value and cherish the things God values and cherishes. We must strive to adopt the same attitude Jesus had when He prayed to His Father, “not my will, but yours be done.” In prayer we do not seek to change God’s mind and will to bring them into conformity with ours, but that through prayer God changes our minds and will to bring them into conformity with His.
 

So for these four reasons, ranging from the infinite power of God to the infinite love of God and from the unbreakable promise of God to the ultimate purpose of the Christian life, we must pray for things agreeable to God’s Will.
 

[B] How Do We Know what is Agreeable to God’s Will?
How can we find out what is important to God and therefore what should be important to us. The answer should be clear - we listen to what He tells us in His Word, the Bible. Deuteronomy 29:29 tells us that “the secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may follow all the words of this law.” That verse tells us that the will of God works at two levels - first, the secret things - the things of providence - the things concerning our circumstances and situations - things we can do little or nothing about - things which belong to the Lord and should be left with Him. I’ve heard tell in the past of someone believing it was God’s will that they marry this particular person, and they are so sure of it they pray and act as if God’s secret will for them was something they had access to; but the problem is that the other person didn’t think it was God’s will for her to marry that man. So we should be very careful about delving too deeply into the secret will of God and praying for things God hasn’t revealed to us in His Word. Rather, we should stick to those things He has revealed. The Bible is full of instruction about what God’s priorities are - it is full of what is important to Him and what His will is for us. In particular, I would direct your attention to four sources where we can discover the will of God for us so that we can pray for things ‘agreeable to God’s will.‘
 

1.       The Psalms - the Book of Psalms, as we have discovered, could equally be called the Book of Prayers. They are the prayers of David and the other psalmists regarding the circumstances which they are facing from day to day - they record for us the reactions of a godly man as he encounters opposition and pain and the joy as this godly man reflects upon the tremendous ways in which God is working for and through Him. But more particularly, they record for us the things the psalmists prayed for in these situations and I believe God wants us to use these psalms as model prayers for our own lives, reflecting the priorities of the psalm writers in their various circumstances. For example, Psalm 51 shows us the importance of repentance, confession and forgiveness - things all agreeable to the will of God.
2.       The Lord’s Prayer - the disciples came to Jesus and asked Him, “Lord, teach us to pray“, and in response, Jesus gave them what we call the Lord’s Prayer in which we read and learn what is of primary importance to Jesus in prayer. Broadly speaking, we can divide the Lord’s Prayer into two sections - first, requests for the glory of God and the expansion of His Kingdom; secondly, requests for our own physical and spiritual good. These are the priorities and will of God for us in prayer, that we model our prayers on the prayer Jesus gave His disciples in Matthew 6.
3.       The Life of Jesus - the life of Jesus is a lesson in itself about what is of primary importance to God and therefore what His will is for us. We see Jesus living a perfect life, resisting Satan’s temptations and the legalism of the Jews - we see Jesus caring for the needs of others and showing compassion towards the poor and helpless; we see Jesus placing such a premium upon the forgiveness of our sins that He was went to the cross. Study the life of Jesus and there see the will of God in beautiful, living operation.
4.       The Prayers of Paul - the prayers of Paul are not the only prayers recorded in the Bible, but they are perhaps the most helpful to us in understanding what are the key issues involved in praying according to God’s Will. Paul prayed for increased knowledge of God, increased love towards God and other people - simply put, Paul’s prayers are, as Don Carson calls them, “A Call to Spiritual Reformation“. Study them and you will find your mind being moulded into the heart and will of God for your growth and development in grace. Pray your way through them and you will be praying things agreeable to God’s will.
 These are not the only areas where, in the Scriptures, we find the will of God described and lived out - there are others, but these four are a good place to start. If therefore you would pray as God would have you pray, for things agreeable to His will, you must use the Scriptures intelligently.
 [C] What Prayers are Agreeable to God’s Will?
One legitimate question which you may have at this stage is, does this mean that we only have a few things to pray about? If we are only to pray about those things which are agreeable to God’s will, does this mean we will be stuck for things to pray about? Not at all - Ephesians 3:20 tells us that the will of God and His promises contain more than we are able to ask or think. When we pray according to God’s priorities, we find ourselves sailing on an ocean of possibilities, each one in itself opening out to another sea of prayers. Having said that, I want to suggest to you that among the ocean of prayers we can offer which are agreeable to God’s will, there are 4 that stand out:
 

1.       The Glory of God - the Glory of God is the primary purpose of our existence and therefore must be the chief subject of our prayers. We pray for God to be glorified and for His name to be hallowed. Remember the Lord’s Prayer where God’s glory and the hallowing of His name comes before all things! So often we pray for our own glory, but God’s priority for our prayer lives are that we plead and strive for His glory above all else.
2.       The Welfare of the Church - In Psalm 122:6 we are commanded to “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem” - we are commanded to pray for the welfare and the good of the people of God - the Church. It is through the Church that the glory of God is primarily seen in the world. Jesus gave Himself for the Church and in His High Priestly prayer in John 17 prayed for the Church.
3.       Our Own Good - we are to pray for our own good, physical, emotional and spiritual. We are commanded to pray for our daily bread - for everything we need to live and glorify God with our bodies. We pray for the forgiveness of our sins and for God to fill us with His Spirit so that we may live lives which are pleasing to Him. We pray for God to control and influence our minds, hearts and decision making processes. In that vein, I think it is a dangerous prayer to ask God to make us holy - dangerous because God will honour that prayer and will answer it often through painful situations which force us to rely upon Him. But its also a prayer we need to make as Christians if we are serious about getting to know Christ better.
4.       The Good of Others - we are commanded in Psalm 125:4 to pray that God would do good to others - that just as He has cared for our spiritual, emotional and physical needs, He would care for the needs of others. We are commanded by Jesus to pray for our enemies. Time and time again in the letters of Paul, we read of the Apostle praying for other Christians that they would know God better.
 Again, these are just four things which are agreeable to the will of God - but remember the promise we have in 1 John 5 - “if we ask anything according to His will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us - whatever we ask - we know that we have what we have asked of him.”
 But at the end of the day, there is something even more important than asking for things which are agreeable to the will of God and that is that we are living lives which are agreeable to the will of God - in other words that we are living lives which have God at the centre. The Puritan Thomas Vincent wrote, “the incense of prayer must be offered upon the altar of a holy heart“. Psalm 66:18 tells us that “if I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” And so, holy living and holy praying - these two were the secrets of the spiritual success of Jesus and they will be the secret of our success too. AMEN

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