Sovereignty and Prayer

Prayer is one of the necessary wheels of the machinery of providence.

Prayer is an essential part of the providence of God, so essential, that you will always
find that when God delivers His people, His people have been praying for that
deliverance. They tell us that prayer does not affect the Most High, and cannot alter
His purposes. We never thought it did; but prayer is a part of the purpose and plan, and a most effective wheel in the machinery of providence.
Now, whenever we come to God and ask for anything which we consider to be a real
good, we have a right to plead earnestly, but we err when we go beyond the bounds
of earnestness, and come to impudent demand. It is ours to ask for a blessing, but not
to define what the blessing shall be. It is ours to place our head beneath the mighty
hands of divine benediction, but it is not ours to uplift the hands as Joseph did those
of Jacob, and say, “Not so, my father.”

Beggars must not be choosers, and especially they must not be choosers when they
have to deal with infinite wisdom and sovereignty.

Predestination embraceth the great and the little, and reacheth unto all things; the
question is, wherefore pray? Might it not as logically be asked wherefore breathe, eat,
move, or do anything? We have an answer which satisfies us, namely, that our
prayers are in the predestination, and that God has as much ordained his people’s
prayers as anything else, and when we pray we are producing links in the chain of
ordained facts.

Prayer does move the arm that moves the world, though nothing is put out of gear by
our praying. The God who ordained the effects that are to follow prayer ordained the
prayer itself; it is a part of the grand machinery by which the world swings upon its
hinges.