Second Principle Drawn From God's Sovereignty in Relation to Prayer

1. Prayer is Effective Because God's Will is Not Influenced by Humans

   1. God is Not Divided
      When a person prays and asks God for something, that prayer does not alter the will of God. If it did, God would not longer be sovereign, because his will would no longer be supreme, but rather, God would be doing the bidding of a mere human. It is foolish to think that prayer changes the will of God, for people have many different and conflicting wills. One person may pray for rain, another sun and therefore if God's will was affected by humans, he would be a walking contradiction (Hunter, p. 61). As Jesus said, “If a house is divided against itself, that house will not be able to stand” (Mark 3:25). When talking about God's sovereignty, no one would claim that if there is a conflict of interests between his or her will and God's that his or her own will would prevail. (Robert C. Sproul, "Does Prayer Change Things?", Tenth: An Evangelical Quarterly, 6 (July, 1976), 53). God is God and therefore is not influenced by human will.

   2. A Never Changing Sovereign God
      In addition, if God's will was influenced by human prayers, then he could not be working “all things after the counsel of His will” (Eph. 1:11). There can be no changing the purposes of God, for his purposes are “eternal” (Eph. 3:11). What chaos there would be if God's will changed to match the will of humans, having one mind yesterday and another today (Pink, p. 207). God never changes (Jam. 1:17) and therefore his will is not changed by men, but rather he is constant, immovable. This truth builds trust towards God and to pray because God's will does not bend to the suggestions of mere men but the Lord does as he pleases and will accomplish everything that he desires.