God’s Invitation to Partner with Him

One of the great truths about prayer is that God actually desires to partner with us through prayer. There are many ways in which God wants to  move within the lives of people in the world and He invites us to join Him in seeing those things happen through the activity of prayer.

Perhaps the most well known Scripture that demonstrates this is found in the Lord’s Prayer, where Jesus teaches us to pray, “…your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 5:10). In this phrase Jesus shows us that God’s will, His plans and purposes are released upon the earth in partnership with our prayers, which is simply an incredible thing to consider.

The invitation to pray not only for our own needs but also for the needs of others and for God’s purposes on earth is found throughout the Bible. Isaiah the prophet wrote about this in dramatic terms:

I have posted watchmen on your walls, O Jerusalem; they will never be silent day or night. You who call upon the Lord, give yourselves no rest and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes her the praise of the earth. -Isaiah 62:6-7 (NIV)

In natural terms, watchmen were to look out and see potential threats, often from invading armies and they would call out and sound the alarm, seeking help on behalf of the city. God uses this imagery to invite the people to ‘call out’ to Him through prayer, seeking God’s divine help in times of need. God is actually inviting people to ‘give him no rest’ as they cry out to him through prayer, asking him to ‘establish’ His plans and purposes.

Years ago I heard a sermon that challenged me to consider the powerful truth of James 4:2 - “You do not have, because you do not ask God.” I still remember the exhortation that “there are things in the heart of God to give us if only we would ask Him in prayer”. How often do we live without the things that God wants to give us, simply because to do not come before God’s throne of grace and ask?

The great theologian John Stott said: “We have no authority to pray for anything which God has not revealed to be in his will. This is why Bible reading and prayer should always go together. For it is in the Scripture that God has disclosed his will, and it is in prayer that we ask him to do it.”

This is precisely what the apostle John wrote about:

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us- whatever we ask- we know that we have what we asked of him. -1 John 5:14-15 (NIV)

Consider the dignity and honour that is extended to us in this invitation to partner with God. We, who were once God’s enemies, are now reconciled through Jesus Christ and declared to be ‘friends’ of God (Jn. 15:15), and are invited to actually join God through our prayers, in seeing His kingdom come and His will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

(Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash)