So There You Have It

It's official!

Prayer does not "work!"

Or so says a group of "scientists" who did a study.

Since they did a study, we know they must be right.

They did a study.

A study!

They studied heart attack patients, some of whom "were prayed for," and some of whom "were not prayed for," and some who were "a control group." Sort of a standard "scientific" study.

They found no statistical differences in the outcome of each illness, whether prayed for or not.

OK...let's look at the issue.

It begins with the sovereignty of God.

"Sovereignty," as it applys to God, means that He is the absolute, unequivocable determiner of what has been, what is and what is to come. He is the boss of bosses. He does what He wants, when He wants. Period. I said, "period...end of discussion."

If God is NOT sovereign, then He is not God and if the God you serve is not sovereign, then you are not serving the God of the Bible.

He does not have to fit my mold. He does not have to do my will. He does not have to give me what I ask for in my prayer(s). He does not have to go with the majority or the "flow."

He cannot be manipulated by us.

If He can be manipulated by us, He is not God.

It is in submission to the sovereign God that we find peace and joy.

If we have no peace and joy, we are not submitted to Him.

So, in the sense that we use it to make God do what we want Him to do, prayer certainly does not "work."

Prayer is not an incantation by which we get God to see things our way, to do what we want Him to do, when we want Him to do it, the way we want Him to do it.

Prayer is talking with God about what He IS doing and how we can change our agenda to go along with Him.

So we pray for a sick person and the person dies.

Do we conclude that our prayer was not heard? Do we deduce that God did not answer our prayer? Not at all. We are not all knowing and cannot know what is best for them or us.

We can say that it SEEMED not to be the best, but there is a way that SEEMETH right to a man, the end thereof is death.

Don't count on what SEEMS right.

(Why do we say, "God answered our prayer," when He does what we want and, "God did not answer our prayer," when He does NOT do what we want?).

If God is omnicient, omnipotent and omnipresent, and if God knows what we need before we ask, then He knows what is best in terms of the big picture, which we cannot even see vaguely.

Make no mistake! When we ask for what He wants us to ask for, in submission to and according to His will, He gives us what we want because what we want is what He wants, therefore we get what both He and we want.

So what about the study?

The study is grossly flawed by its very nature and purpose.

In the first place, the study could not possibly restrict who was praying for whom to those participating in the study. In other words, the studiers had no way of knowing who else might be praying for which patients.

Secondly, God is not bound to or restricted to statistical analysis.

Thirdly, there is no way of knowing how much worse a patient might have been had he/she NOT been prayed for.

Now I am not contradicting myself. Nor am I saying that God might have been manipulated without the knowlege of the "scientists."

I'm saying that the very act of doing such a study demonstrates a total lack of understanding of the concept of prayer, which is an act of submission, not an act of exploitation.

We don't manage God...He manages us...or else we are not His.

We become His by, and only by, trusting in the finished work of Christ at the cross of Calvary and His resurrection.

So, pray without ceasing and in complete submission to the will of God.

Then watch prayer "work!"