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What then is the Relationship between God's Sovereignty and Christian Prayer?

Tip! “Supplication” is the very soul of prayer in the way of pleading for some one thing, very much needed, and the need intensely felt.

First of all, I would say with emphasis, that prayer is not intended to change God's purpose, nor is it to persuade Him to form new or fresh purposes. God has decreed that certain events will happen through the means He has appointed for their accomplishment in time. God has elected certain people to be saved, but He has also decreed that these people will be saved through the preaching the Gospel. The Gospel, then, is one of the appointed means for the working out of the eternal counsel of the Lord; and prayer is another way. God has commanded the processes or the way in which His purpose is to be accomplished as well as the time to end them and among all the methods there is prayer. Even the prayers of His people are included in His eternal decrees. Therefore, instead of our prayers being ineffective they are among the means through which God exercises His decrees. "If indeed all things happen by a blind chance, or a fatal necessity prayers in that case could be of no moral efficacy, and of no use; but since they are regulated by the direction of Divine wisdom, prayers have a place in the order of events" (Haldane).

The thought that our prayers are for the execution of the very things decreed by God, and that they are not meaningless is clearly taught in the Scriptures. Elijah knew that God was about to give rain, but that did not prevent him from immediately launching himself into prayer (James 5:17, 18). Daniel "understood" by the writings of the prophets that the captivity was to last but seventy years, yet when these seventy years were almost to the end we are told that he set his face "unto the Lord God, to seek by prayer and supplications, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes" (Daniel 9:2, 3). God also told the prophet Jeremiah "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, saith the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an expected end"; but instead of adding, there is, therefore, no need for you to pray to Me for these things, God said, "Then shall ye call upon Me, and ye shall go and pray unto Me, and I will hearken unto you" (Jeremiah 29:11, 12).

Tip! In (Phil. 4:6) we have these words about prayer: “Be careful for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known unto God.

Here then is the design of prayer: not that God's will may be altered, but that it may be accomplished in His own good time and way. It is because God has promised certain things that we can ask for them with the full assurance of faith. It is God's purpose that His will shall be brought about by His own appointed means, and that He may do His people good on His own terms, and that is, by the ‘methods' and 'terms' of request and prayers. Did not the Son of God know for certain that after His death and resurrection He would be exalted by our Father. Of course He did. Yet we find Him asking for this very thing: "O Father, glorify Thou Me with Thine Own Self with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (John 17:5)! And He knew that none of His people could perish? Yet He asked our Father to "keep" them (John 17:11)!

Then finally, it should be said that God's will is unchallengeable, and cannot be altered by our crying. When the mind of God is not toward a people to do them good, it cannot be turned to them by the most fervent and persistent prayer of those who have the greatest interest in Him: "Then said the LORD unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before Me, yet My mind could not be toward this people: cast them out of My sight, and let them go forth" (Jeremiah 15:1). The prayers of Moses to enter the Promised Land are a parallel case.

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