Your Prayers and God’s Plans Aren’t Enemies
Your prayers don’t compete with God’s plan; they’re part of his plan.
How do our prayers and God’s sovereignty fit together?
If you were to focus only on the parable of the importunate friend and other similar stories in Scripture, you might conclude that our persistence in prayer can overcome God’s plan (Luke 11:5–13).
If you considered only the meticulous sovereignty of God described in the prophets, you could think that God’s plans overrule our prayers, no matter how persistent we might be (Isaiah 14:26–27).
Neither one is the case.
God’s plans and your prayers are not opponents, locked in combat to see which one can outlast the other. Instead, your persistence in prayer is part of God’s plan, and it always has been.
God’s plans never change, but his plans include your prayers. Your heavenly Father has decreed not only a perfect plan but also the means by which this plan comes pass, and prayer is a primary means through which God works.
Your prayers—even those imperfect pleas that you cry out in moments when we aren’t sure what to pray (Romans 8:26)—don’t compete with God’s plan. They fulfill his plan.
Your prayer and God’s plans are not enemies, and they never have been.
The deeper that you drink in this truth, the more power and persistence you will discover in your prayers—and the more you will rest in your Father’s plan.