We can’t fully understand how it works, but in His sovereignty, God graciously responds in answer to our prayers. Certainly prayer help us to focus and change our own thinking, but also amazingly He changes circumstances and situations.
The Lord Jesus told His disciples to pray:
“Give us today our daily bread.” (Matthew 6:11)
If they didn’t pray that would food come? Sometimes maybe it would and sometimes maybe it wouldn’t. Yet the fact that He told them to ask means they can say thank you when it does!
Given that’s how the Lord has organised things we have a great incentive to ask the King of Kings for things – not least for His blessing on those whom we can’t help.
Last Sunday morning we were challenged to pray for the newly crowned King Charles III using Paul’s prayer for the Colossian Christians which was read by the Prime Minister in the Coronation service:
“…since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives…” (Col 1:9,10)
We saw that this is rich prayer for the Colossians to know the Lord better and reflect His grace in their lives, but only because their trust in the risen Jesus had drawn them to be members of the Kingdom of God.
Paul had never met these Christians personally, yet the priority of his prayer is that their lives would be fruitful as they intentionally lived worthy of the Lord who had saved them.
That’s a great prayer to pray for anyone who claims to love Jesus, whether a King or not. Who might you pray that for today?!
Spencer Shaw