Prayer

The File Cabinet has a folder called Prayer. Please open that folder for articles on this topic by various authors.

Here's one of the articles:

Brother Andrew on Prayer

Some time ago I heard two Christian women discussing the plight of hostages being held by Middle Eastern terrorists.

“I feel sorry for those poor men and their families,” one of the women remarked, “but really, this is God’s problem, not ours. We have to remember that He has already decided how their stories are going to turn out.”

The other woman sighed. “Yes,” she said, “but it’s frustrating! It seems we’re all being held hostage by the evil people in the world—the terrorists and dictators, the drug dealers, the criminals.. . . “

The first woman smiled and patted her friend’s arm. “Well, that’s how it looks,” she said comfortingly, “but we know God has His reasons for allowing these things. Even when we don’t understand those reasons, we can be sure that nothing happens outside His will.”

As I listened, I felt indignation rising within me. I could barely control the urge to turn to them and say, “What’s the matter with you? Why are you talking this way? You’re not helpless! God has given you the power to change that situation! Why don’t you use it? Why don’t you pray?”

But sometimes I know when it’s pointless to open my mouth, and this was one of those times. Those women wouldn’t have understood what I wanted to say. Even so, I couldn’t get them out of my mind, and their conversation continued to trouble me because it illustrated perfectly a problem that has caused a tremendous weakening of the Body of Christ in our time.

These two very devout women were steeped in a false doctrine that has infected the thinking of an alarming number of Christians in our time. I call it—for lack of a better term—Christian fatalism. Without realizing it, those women had succumbed to a spiritual error that had all but neutralized their effectiveness as believers. If I had asked them, “My dear ladies, have you considered joining Islam?” no doubt they would have been outraged and offended. But the truth is, their beliefs about “God’s will” would have fit very nicely into the Muslim religion, and into a number of other fatalistic religions, too, like Hinduism and Buddhism. There is, however, no place for fatalism in Christianity. Quite the opposite!

The Bible is full of powerful illustrations that prove it. In these pages we will highlight a number of them, because I believe that in our determination to submit to the sovereign will of God, too many of us have lost sight of a powerful truth: God never created us to be puppets. He made us in His own image, endowing us with the ability to make independent choices. In doing so, He in a sense restricted His own omnipotence by allowing us to say yes or no to His Will.

From Brother Andrew’s book, “Prayer Works”