“God Is In Control” So Why Pray?
While stigmatized by others because of the Baptism experience and my attendance in what may be characterized to be a “charismatic” church, I am still all about an intelligent faith. In Colossians 2:7 the Word says that we are to be “rooted and builded up” in Jesus and “stablished in [our] faith.” Since the Word demonstrates what Jesus had to perform concrete acts to redeem mankind and He was a living and breathing human being, I just assumed that intelligence and logic were part of the sum and substance of the Christian walk when I was born-again. Today, however, as I go about my own salvation walk, they (faith and intelligence) do not seem to be the rule, but actually the rare exception. And this exception is not limited to what are called “charismatics.”
Very often on Sundays ministers preach that “God is in control.” In Reformed and Baptist circles (I’m speaking generally here) they say that God is “sovereign” meaning that just about anything that happens in the world has some divine puppetry behind it. In a recent blog post, one blogger stated that God had chosen those in the Amish shootings to be shot for a divine reason we just “cannot know.” This view begs the question of what is the purpose of prayer if God is doing His puppetry and everything is predestined anyway. I asked one young Calvinist that question and he answered, “Because God tells us to pray we pray.” One smart journalist has asked the question, “If God is in control, then why in the world are there so many wars, so many hungry, and so much death?” If God “is in control,” that sounds like an intelligent question to me.
John Wesley, the great Methodist preacher, once said, “It seems God is limited by our prayer life - that He can do nothing for humanity unless someone asks Him.” Wesley’s statement demonstates the fact and the Word confirms that God is not actually in control. For instance, in 2 Peter 3:9 the Word says, “The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness; but is longsuffering to you-ward, not wishing (or willing) that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.” If God was in control, it seems that all people would come to repentance because that is exactly what He wants, but we know that they do not.
The Word demonstrates that God is not “in control” as we hear that phrase used. In the book of Genesis, we see that Adam was given dominion of the earth by God, but he abdicated this dominion when he sinned. See Genesis 1:26, 27; 3:6, 7. In so doing, he gave authority and dominion of the world to Satan. Satan is now holds jurisdictional control of those who are unsaved. 2 Corinthians 4:4 says:
“in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn on them.”
In Acts 26:18, Jesus tells Paul that those unsaved are under Satan’s “authority.” By these verses we see that God actually does not have control over those who are unsaved. He cannot just snap His fingers to make things happen. He does not have the right to do that. When one really takes the Word for what it says, he understands that God does not do anything in this world unless someone asks Him to. When we realize this, our prayer life becomes one of the most important spiritual exercises that we can perform while we are still alive on this earth.