Prayer and Faith (Part 2): “Lord, teach us to pray...”

In my previous post, I talked about two different authors’ opposing worldviews on how prayer and the spirit world operates:

Gerald Sittser believes everything that happens fits into God’s secret plan, a divinely ordained blueprint, which is hidden from us. Our prayers, he says, may not always be answered because God’s sovereign will may dictate otherwise.

Gregory Boyd believes in a warfare worldview, in which Satan is actively thwarting God’s will. He says that principalities and powers – not God’s sovereign will – is what hinders what God is able to do, and that prayer is about cooperating with God to help accomplish his will.

According to Boyd, the problem with Sittser’s blueprint worldview is that...

“...it is difficult to pray passionately that the Father’s will would be done ‘on earth as it is in heaven’ (Mt 6:10) if one believes that the Father’s sovereign will is already being done in bringing about the very thing against which one is now praying.” (pp 370)

When American troops were deployed in Viet Nam in the 1960’s, they were not sent there to fight and win a war - they went there to “contain” communism and prevent it from spreading. Contrary to what they’d been trained for, the military was not empowered to act or go on the offensive, because it might conflict with the government’s agenda of containment.

As a result, the soldiers lacked a clear sense of what the war was about... why are we here? As one history professor observed: “In the field – ‘in country’ there seemed to be no secure places – the enemy was everywhere.”

I can’t help but see the similarity to – and the results of – Sittser’s worldview: Christians lacking a clear sense of direction... the enemy seems to be everywhere, but we’re not sure of exactly how to pray or act...  because it might conflict with God’s true agenda.

Because of this, the church is too quick to accept unanswered prayer as the norm. Yet, if we are to take verses like 1 John 4:14-15 at face value, then prayer which lines up with the Word is to be answered, isn’t it?

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 4:14-15, Italics Mine