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

1. Prayer is a Profound Privilege

   1. With Respect to Who God Is
      As one ponders all these truths about prayer and who God is, one cannot but fall down in worship. God, the Unsearchable (Job 11:7), the Incorruptible (Rom. 1:23), the Eternal (Ps. 90:2), the Only-wise (Rom. 16:27), the Most High (Ps. 83:18), the Holy One (Rev. 16:5), can be approached, and conversed with in prayer! How is it, that the Lord who does all things after the counsel of his will (Eph. 1:11) interact with our own desires that we express in prayer – what is the relationship between the ultimate purpose of God, and our human desires? I do not know. And even beyond this mystery, how can it be, that the Lord of the universe would incline his ear toward men? This is the true mystery of prayer – for there is absolutely no reason in us that God should chose to hear us. Yet he does. What an awesome privilege!

   2. With Respect to Who We Are
      As sinners, we are separated from God, and deserve nothing but eternal death (Rom. 3:23; 6:23), and yet as Edward Bickerateth so rightly put it that prayer gives us, “every day, yes, every hour, this great privilege of access to the King of kings and the Lord of lords, to the Most High and the Most Holy, and this with the utmost freedom and confidence; the access not merely of a servant to a master, or a subject to a king, but of a child to a tender parent” (Edward Bickersteth, A Treatise On Prayer, p. 8). Though our sins were as scarlet, by the blood of Christ we are washed clean – through his great gift, we have this profound privilege. Let us now pray all the more fervently, for God is sovereign, and through Christ, we have access to the throne room of grace (Heb. 4:16).