His Sovereignty in Prayer
“For you, O Lord, are my hope, my trust, O Lord, from my youth.” (Psalm 71:5)
I want you to imagine yourself in a car that is driving along, on a curvy one-way dirt road — but the catch is, you are fourteen thousand feet in the air on the side of a mountain. No guardrails. When you look down there is nothing sloped about it. It is a straight shot to the bottom. You are the passenger and Jesus is the driver. Here in this place, we have two choices — we can choose to allow fear to take over, to consume us in such a way that we are just waiting for the car to go over the edge or we can trust the driver — we can position ourselves in Christ focused on who He is, His control, not ours. We can depend on Him here, we don’t have to focus on the idea of falling straight down, instead, we can sink into that seat, surrendered to His power — to His story that He is driving us through.
A posture that is positioned in Christ is where we fully experience His sovereignty — His power, His ability, His goodness, His control. It is from Him that we have our salvation. His sovereignty in prayer is our dependency on Christ. Prayer is a partnership with the Lord, it is a deep relationship with the One to whom we give all of our trust and surrender. He appoints us in such a way that demands the participation of our faith. Prayer is actively engaging and experiences the faith-partnership that we have with God. We have to trust that whatever the outcome of our prayers, victory is already there because He is using it for His glory. His sovereignty in prayer releases us to the one thing that will remain steadfast — Jesus.
Our circumstances, situations, health, status, relationships, life and death can and will change instantly. You see, our prayers are not about our control, because it is Him we have to depend on. His sovereignty in prayer tells us that no matter the outcome of what we are praying for we ultimately become more dependent on Him. Not that the thing we are praying for doesn’t matter, but it becomes more about being dependent on Him than what the answered prayer looks like.
Our prayer life is transformed in walking out our faith, surrendering it all to Him, being expectant of the work He is doing, where we might be swept in a slew of directions, shaken, sifted, taught, even paused to actually being present, showing up to do the work, meeting Him in that place. Honestly, we have to have a faith so rooted in Him where we allow Him the room to do the mighty works; that is fully transforming, not necessarily doing but being one with Christ.
His sovereignty in prayer positions us to press into that exact place where He has us with our eyes on the Lord. When we release the control of the outcome of our prayers to Him, we get to live in Christ to carry us through it. It stops becoming about what we want or even need to happen and becomes about our dependence on Him, the only true thing that sustains us.
His sovereignty in prayer leads us to seek the Lord, and continue on steadfastly in prayer, being watchful and persistent in thanksgiving. We give Him permission because we know with every bone inside of us that His way is better. Our prayers are not about us or how we see them being answered, but they are the place where we give Him control — it is that place we grow so deeply with our Savior. We live each day in prayer making our Father known, giving Him the glory.
His sovereignty in prayer gives us our position, we can stand firm and see that He is fully in control. When we acknowledge that He is the power in it, we can pray from a place that focuses on who He is rather than what the answer to the prayer looks like.
We get to go into our prayers letting our praise and worship lead us because we have a posture that trusts that He is sovereign here. When we embrace that is it His sovereignty in prayer we let our faith in Him claim victory overall, and our praise is then the evidence of our faith.
So we can ask, are we fully giving ourselves to the Lord because of the grace that we have through Him, that which saves us? When we are new in Him, we have come from the dead (brokenness) to a new living being from within. The old withers and the new sprouts. As we are made new in Christ our minds are also transformed so that we can further live in God’s will. That which is good and acceptable and perfect for our world is far different than that of Christ most often, a purpose that goes far beyond the expectancies of the world. When we meet the Father in prayer we are letting Him overtake it all for us, which is what He desires, it is what He wants so that we have a vast awareness of what He is capable of in our lives. Let us be dependent on Christ because He is sovereign.
