4. “Lord, May This Accident Not Have Happened!”
4
“Lord, May This Accident Not Have Happened!”
That request was sent heavenward by a young man who had wrecked his father’s car, but the evidence in the police files did not indicate that his petition was answered.
The boy’s “prayer” reminds me of Ambrose Bierce’s famous definition of prayer: “To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled on behalf of a single petitioner, confessedly unworthy.” This definition produces a smile and aptly describes the boy’s prayer (and perhaps some of our prayers), but Bierce’s definition is as foolish as the prayer.
Granted, in answer to prayer, God has been known to suspend the laws He built into His universe so that He might accomplish His great purposes. He did it for Moses at the Red Sea, for Joshua at the Jordan River, and for Jesus when He healed the afflicted and raised the dead—and when Jesus Himself was raised from the dead. Of course, the greatest miracle God ever performs in response to prayer is the forgiveness of our sins and the transformation of our lives as we walk with Him. That will last for eternity.
So God could have answered this young man’s prayer. All He had to do was reverse the spin of the earth so that time went backward to a point before the accident occurred and then prevent the accident. Or He might have spoken the word and restored both the boy and the vehicle to their pre-accident conditions. “Is anything too hard for the LORD?” (Gen. 18:14). But if the Lord prevented or reversed the consequences of every foolish thing we did in violation of His will, we would never build character or become trustworthy servants who sincerely want to do His will. If God operated as the teenager wanted Him to, we wouldn’t have to worry about disobedience or folly. If we did a dumb thing, God would just kiss it and make it well and we would never learn from our mistakes. But it doesn’t work that way (thankfully).
“Lord, may this accident not have happened” is not really a prayer; it’s an expression of juvenile religious wishful thinking. Like Adam and Eve, the young man believed the Devil’s lie, “You will not certainly die” (Gen. 3:4). In other words, “There are no consequences to foolishness and disobedience!” But the boy’s prayer, foolish as it is, touches on a subject that is vital to a successful prayer life, and that’s the relationship between prayer and the sovereignty of God.
After his restoration to sanity—and probably his conversion to faith in the God of Israel—King Nebuchadnezzar uttered a powerful statement of his faith in the sovereignty of God:
His dominion is an eternal dominion;
his kingdom endures from generation to generation.
All the peoples of the earth
are regarded as nothing.
He does as he pleases
with the powers of heaven
and the peoples of the earth.
No one can hold back his hand
or say to him: “What have you done?” (Dan. 4:34–35)
That’s the kind of God we worship and serve, the kind of God to whom we pray! Ignore the sovereignty of God and you not only silence worship and prayer, but you also foolishly abandon the very source of life, wisdom, and strength. After Peter and John were released by the authorities and warned not to preach again in the name of Jesus, they didn’t stage a protest or seek political protection. They went to a church prayer meeting and prayed to almighty God! This is how they prayed:
“Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heavens and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David:
“‘Why do the nations rage
and the peoples plot in vain?
The kings of the earth rise up
and the rulers band together
against the Lord
and against his anointed one.’
“Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. (Acts 4:24–31)
The record of this event makes it clear that there is no conflict between the sovereignty of God and the believing prayers of His people. The same God who ordains the end also ordains the means-to-the-end prayer in the name of Jesus. The God to whom they prayed is “sovereign Lord”—literally, “despot”—and His sovereignty is seen in the fact that He created the heavens and the earth. Jesus called Him “Lord of heaven and earth” (Luke 10:21), and Paul said that Jesus today is “far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked” (Eph. 1:21). It seems incredible, but when we pray to the Lord in His will, we are privileged to lay hold of the almighty power that created and sustains the universe.
The prayer of Peter and John was based on God’s Word, specifically Psalm 2, for the Word of God and prayer must always go together. “If you remain in me and my words remain in you,” said Jesus, “ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you” (John 15:7). If we are filled with God’s Spirit (Eph. 5:18) and God’s Word (Col. 3:16), then His desires will be our desires, and we will pray in His will. Archbishop Richard Trench said, “Praying is not overcoming God’s reluctance; it is laying hold of His highest willingness.” And Robert Law, in his commentary on 1 John, The Tests of Life, wrote, “Prayer is a mighty instrument, not for getting man’s will done in heaven, but for getting God’s will done on earth.” 1
The challenging thing about this prayer of the early church is that it wasn’t directed against their opponents. The believers didn’t ask the Lord to stop the persecution (the persecution actually grew worse) or to destroy the enemies of the gospel. They asked the Lord to give the church power to witness with boldness so that they would glorify the name of Jesus (Acts 4:29–30). The focus was not on their comfort or even their safety but on the glory of the sovereign God. “Do not pray for easy lives,” said Phillips Brooks. “Pray to be better men and women. Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers; pray for powers equal to your tasks.”
A Christian, angry at what he considered government interference in his life, prayed publicly that God “would kill or convert every elected state official.” The request for their salvation was biblical, but the request for their death was not. If anybody had a right to pray God’s judgment on their persecutors and murderers, it was Jesus and Stephen, yet both of them prayed that their murderers would be forgiven (Luke 23:34; Acts 7:60).
The early church prayed, “Enable your servants” (Acts 4:29), and God answered their prayer. He shook the place where they were meeting and filled the believers with His Spirit, and in spite of the official order to keep quiet, they spoke the word of God boldly. “The place was shaken,” said Chrysostom, “and that made them all the more unshaken.” 2
As I think about the relationship between prayer and the sovereignty of God, the prayer of Abraham in Genesis 18:22–33 comes to mind. The Lord told Abraham that He was planning to destroy Sodom, and Abraham was concerned because his nephew Lot lived there with his family. Furthermore, Abraham didn’t want the people of Sodom—people he had once rescued (Gen. 14)—to perish, ungodly as they were. Abraham had a burden for his lost neighbors and interceded for them.
God revealed His plan to Abraham because He had chosen Abraham as His servant, so we have here the sovereign grace of God. But in doing this, the Lord was giving Abraham opportunity to respond. Deeply hurt by his nephew’s lack of spiritual discernment, Abraham might have said, “Lot got himself into this mess, so let him suffer. And as for the people of Sodom, they’re so wicked they ought to be judged!”
But he didn’t respond with self-righteous anger; instead, he “approached” the Lord with his prayer (Gen. 18:23). The Hebrew word means not only “to draw near” but also “to argue a case in court” (see Isa. 41:1, 21). Abraham asked the Lord to spare the wicked city of Sodom for the sake of the righteous people living there, meaning Lot and his family (2 Pet. 2:6–8). It appears that Lot and his wife had at least two married daughters and two single daughters. If Lot had won to the Lord his wife, his single daughters, his married daughters and their husbands, and two other people, the whole city would have been spared. As it was, the people of Sodom went into eternity without God.
Abraham’s appeal was based on the justice of God. He wasn’t arguing or bargaining with God or trying to change God’s sovereign will. If God had said no, Abraham would have stopped interceding. But, though Lot should not have been living in Sodom, it would be wrong for the Lord to treat him the same way He treated Lot’s wicked neighbors. There’s no evidence that Lot lived like the people in Sodom; he only lived among them. So Abraham humbled himself before the Lord and sought to convince Him to spare the city. Godly Samuel Rutherford wrote, “It is faith’s work to claim and challenge loving-kindness out of all the roughest strokes of God.” That’s what Abraham was doing.
The two angels didn’t find ten righteous people in the city, but they did offer Lot’s family a gracious opportunity to escape. The married daughters remained in Sodom with their husbands, but Lot made his escape with his wife and two single daughters. His wife disobeyed God and looked back at Sodom as they left, and she was instantly judged. In the end, God saved Lot and his two daughters for the sake of Abraham. Let’s keep in mind that God saves sinners today, not because they deserve it, but for the sake of His Son.
If your views of the sovereignty of God keep you from witnessing or praying, then those views are incorrect. In His sovereign grace, our God is calling out a people for His name so that we can witness and preach with confidence, knowing that His Word will not be wasted. God is in complete control of the universe, so we can pray to Him without fear. We don’t always know what to pray for or how to preach the Word, but if our faith is in God almighty, “Maker of heaven and earth” (Ps. 124:8), and if our desire is “Hallowed be your name” (Matt. 6:9), then our sovereign Lord will hear and work according to His will.
We should never boast about answers to prayer, because these gifts are all from God. Nor should we despair over unanswered prayer or answers that are different from what we prayed for, because our loving Father knows what is best.
“In all our praying, however,” wrote A. W. Tozer, “it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind.… What the praying man does is to bring his will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do.” 3 After all, don’t we pray, “Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10)? One of God’s most painful disciplines is to give His children what they want when He has something better in store. Many of us have lived long enough to be thankful for unanswered prayer.
So, if you wreck the car and find yourself in a really tough situation, don’t ask the Lord, “How can I get out of this?” Ask instead, “What can I get out of this? What is your will?” God reversed the shadow on the sundial for Hezekiah (Isa. 38:7–8) and delayed the sunset for Joshua (Josh. 10:12–15), and He can still do such miracles today. But we must remember to pray as Jesus did: “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will” (Matt. 26:39). God still gives His best to those who leave the choice with Him.