Ask Pastor Mike Fabarez

Speaker 1

If God knows all things, then what's the point of praying? Is it even possible to change his mind? Welcome to Focal Point, and you're invited to join us for an important conversation with Mike Fabarez on this prayerful edition of Ask Pastor Mike.

I'm Dave Drouehe. Glad you're with us today for Focal Point. Now, at the end of each week, we have a standing appointment with Pastor Mike Fabarez. It's a chance to sit down and enjoy a more personal conversation with our Bible teacher on topics that we wonder about most.

If you'd like to ask a question of Pastor Mike yourself, stay tuned. I'll share our contact information in just a bit. First, though, let's join executive director Jay Worton in the Pastor Study for this edition of Ask Pastor Mike.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Dave. Pastor Mike, I have a very interesting question from a listener today. This listener writes, if God knows everything that will happen, what is the point of praying? Can we ever change God's mind?

Speaker 3

Yeah, you know, you get this question a lot, and I don't mean to be dismissive, but I think to myself, there's so many things in life like this that we could look at philosophically and then dismiss the clear teaching of the Bible.

The Bible calls us to pray, right? Ask, you'll receive. Knock, the door will be open. Seek, you'll find. I mean, we have so many encouragements to pray and then to say, well, wait a minute, here's a theological reason not to pray.

Speaker 4

Why do it?

Speaker 3

I think that's silly, right? We need to not think that way. I understand that God grants repentance to people. And you could say, well, if God brings people to himself, if he reconciles the world to himself, then why do I need to share the gospel with people? Because God told us to. God tells us to pray. God tells us to do evangelism.

I mean, I could be absurd and say, I know I'm going to die one day. Why have a house? Why drive a car? Why not just wait for my end? I mean, there are things that I think you could look at in so many areas of life and dismiss the things that God has asked us to do that seem natural to do. When you're in pain, it's natural to cry out to God. This is someone, I think, who is sitting and looking at this from an ivory tower perspective, not from being in the trenches of the Christian life.

When you're sharing the gospel, you're praying. You're praying that God would grant repentance. You're praying for hearts to be changed. When you're in pain, when there's a difficulty, when there's a trial, you're praying and you're not sitting there going, well, what difference will this make? That's more of a classroom question and not a real-life question, because I think our hearts are drawn to pray. God has called us to pray. God encourages us to pray, and he says that the prayer of a righteous man will accomplish much.

So I got to look at it that way, and that may be, as I often say, the underside of the tapestry. There's another side we can look at from our ivory tower and say, well, God is sovereign, God knows God. Listen, I get all that. But we live in the underside of the tapestry where we look to God's word, and it tells us to pray and pour out our hearts to God and bring our requests to Him.

So we're going to do it. In the end, when we get translated to heaven one day and we look at the other side of the tapestry, it'll all make sense. It'll be difficult for us on this side of heaven to reconcile God's sovereignty with our praying, but we're going to have to get comfortable with that difficulty and just dismiss it, as I think we naturally do when we're crying out to God with a great need.

Speaker 2

Well, Pastor Mike, what about places in the Bible where God changes his mind, or at least appears to change his mind? It certainly seems like that with Moses. But others, what's going on there?

Speaker 3

Right. Well, these are what we call anthropomorphisms, right? These are things that anthropos means man morphe the form of. There are things that are given to us in the form of a normal man in terms of God's hand of protection, God's eye seeing all things. You know, when it comes to God changing his mind, of course, God's plan is his plan. He works his plan. He knew when he sent Jonah to Nineveh what was going to happen. He had planned that, and the people responded and he relented. And that's the word that's often translated in the ESV to describe that turnaround of the plan.

Well, the threat was that we're going to destroy your city. He didn't even say, if you repent, I won't. He just said, I'm going to destroy your city. That led to their repentance. And God then relented, and it made Jonah mad. But you could know that if you could look in the annals of heaven, God planned this whole thing. And it worked out exactly as Ephesians 1 says after the counsel of his will.

Now again, we're kind of in an ivory tower when we talk in those terms. But as human beings, the anthropomorphism in this case is that we look at God and it seems like there's a path that God is working down. And then all of a sudden something happens. In the case of the Ninevites, they pray in repentance, and God turns around and moves in a different direction and doesn't bring the, in that case, the threatened judgment. So that's going to be the way all of our life is going to feel. That's going to be the sense we're always going to have this side of heaven, that we are praying to God and God is turning in the direction of an answered prayer perhaps, you know, given that he does in a positive way.

And we see something that was heading in one direction that God seemed to be clearly doing now heading in a different direction. And that apex of that is prayer. So again, that's where we should live. That's the mindset we should have. And that is that we pray and things change.

Okay? Now if you want to get on the other side of the tapestry again in the ivory tower, we can say, well, that change was all planned. Well, fine, great. But that prayer, as people often say, changes us. It changes in our perspective God's directive and his plan and how he's moving. And so let's just live on the side of reality that God has called us to live on and let us recognize that God may set out in the scripture. Biblically, we see that the stories told moving in one direction, prayer, intercession, repentance, whatever it might be, changes the direction of God.

I get that. I'm all for that. But let's not reduce God to a human being that's just open to changing his ideas and plans at anybody's request. That's not how it works from a theological perspective, but from a human experiential perspective, let's pray and watch God change things.

Speaker 2

That brings up the question, what exactly would be an effective prayer? How should we be praying? What should our mindset be?

Speaker 3

Well, go to the garden. Here's Jesus praying that the cup would pass from him. You could say he knows better because the cup of the cross, the painful cup of the cross that he has to drink is going to happen. That was the whole point of sending the baby to the manger, was to send Christ to the cross. But he's praying in a heartfelt prayer that God doesn't answer.

In his prayer, he shows us how we should all pray, as James teaches us to pray by saying, if the Lord wills. And as he says, listen, let the cup pass from me. If there's any other way, great, that's what I want. That's my desire of my heart. And we ought to pray that way. But then he ends with that footnote. And that is, but not my will, yours be done. That needs to be the footnote on every prayer that we pray.

I think that is so healthy for every Christian to get in the pattern of praying. Whether it's by a loved one's bedside at a hospital, whether it's about your finances, whether it's about your job. No matter what it's about, you pray to God. And at the end of that prayer, or at least undergirding in your mind throughout the prayer, you say, you know what, this is what I want. I should give you my request in terms of my desires. But I realize it's ultimately what I want is your will to be done. And I'm open to that.

Jesus had to get up from his knees in the garden of Gethsemane and go to the trial in Caiaphas House and before Pilate and end up on a cross, which is not what he wanted. But in his praying, he always had that openness to defer. I call it flexible praying. I want to pray very clearly. This is my stated desire, but I'm going to be flexible in my heart. I want to see played out in my life whatever God wants. So I'm going to pray if this is your will. If it's not your will, it's not what I want.

Speaker 2

Well, thank you, Pastor Mike. As prayer is a core component of the Christian life, we're going to keep this conversation going with a message you gave called making prayer your daily habit.

Speaker 4

I find perhaps with you that there are a lot of assumptions that are made in the Christian life, a lot of assumptions that Jesus didn't make. For instance, if you study the life of Christ, he taught on a lot of topics that it seems today in churches, and particularly in Bible schools and seminaries, they don't seem to teach much at all about. We all assume that we got those things wired.

For instance, if you take the topic of prayer in the Gospels and you kind of track Jesus' discussions about prayer, he was constantly instructing his followers on how to do it. "Here's how you do it. Here are the prerequisites, here are the ingredients. Here's a pattern for it. Watch how I do it." And he's constantly teaching them how to do it. Compare that with the average Bible school or seminary. You want to learn all you can about the Christian life. You want to learn about the Bible. They send you off to these schools, and rarely will you find a school that requires you to take a class on prayer. It's assumed that you know prayer. It's kind of simple. You just kind of do it.

And yet it seems to me, if you read the Bible, that it's time for Christians to recognize that we do need some basic instructions. We need to kind of figure out what God expects, what's required, what's a part of this thing called prayer. Paul chose three very strategic words to describe prayer that are used all throughout the New Testament in association with prayer. If you turn to Colossians 4, I want to show it to you.

And as you're turning there, I want to remind you that the way Jesus taught about prayer wasn't that this is something that is ancillary; it's something supplemental to the Christian life. He talked about prayer as something essential, foundational. It was at the center of what it meant to be a follower of Christ. As a matter of fact, Jesus taught in such a way as to leave us the impression that you cannot have a healthy Christian life and not have a healthy prayer life. He certainly, in his dialogue with the Pharisees, helped us to understand that you can have all the Bible knowledge that you want, but if you're not connected intimately on that level that we get to in our prayer lives with God, then all that knowledge and all that talent and any giftedness is all for naught.

Because ultimately we've got to be connected with the Father through prayer, and we've got to have good prayer lives. I don't know what's going on in your Christian life, but if everything's in place but prayer, then your Christian life's really not in place, because that's what it gets down to. It's not the only Christian discipline, but it is certainly an essential and indispensable Christian discipline, as Martin Luther, the great reformer, put it. He said this: "It's the business of cobblers to mend shoes. It's the business of tailors to make clothes. And it is the business of Christians to pray." Perhaps it is hyperbolic, but certainly it is central and indispensable. It is our business to be connected in an intimate way with God in our prayer lives.

And if your prayer life is perhaps in a lull, if you're in a valley, if it's kind of backed off of what it used to be, then it's time for us to go back to school to the basics of prayer. Prayer 101. Colossians 4:2. Here's what it simply says. Look at it with me. It says, "Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful." Those three words—devotion, watchful, and thankful—constantly are found throughout the New Testament in association with this topic, this spiritual discipline called prayer.

Let us start with the first one, the word devotion. Now, that word by itself, you look at it, there's certainly a sense of responsibility; it certainly reeks of this idea of commitment. It seems like it would engage sacrifice and require lots of things in our lives. And it almost gives us a negative slant on prayer. As a matter of fact, if you study prayer, usually the backdrop for prayer is constantly presented to us as a great privilege.

And I think before we look at the responsibilities that are inherent in the word devotion, we got to see why it makes so much sense to call people to devote themselves to prayer because it's against the backdrop of great privilege. So jot it down in your outlines as we kind of set up this idea of devotion by pondering the privilege. Let's think about that a little bit.

Number one, ponder the privilege. Ponder the great privilege that is bound up in the statement that you and I can go home this afternoon. We can say things, we can think things, we can direct our thoughts and words toward God, and the God of the universe will actually listen. That's an amazing thought. Turn in your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter 4, and let me show you how Moses reveled in the fact that we have a God who draws near to us, and all we got to do is open our mouth. You can talk to God today, and he will actually listen. That's amazing.

Try that with the President of the United States. Get on the phone. Talk to the governor. I mean, I can't even get Pastor Dan on the phone half the time, you know? And what really is a reality for you and I is that we can talk to the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the President of presidents. We can talk to the ruler of rulers. We can talk to the one who holds the world together in his hand. In him we live and move and exist. He spun the worlds and the galaxies into existence. And I'm telling you, if you'd like to have a conversation with him, his door is open. There's a seat right across from his desk. And he says, "Come on in. I'll listen to you."

Here's how Moses put it. He says, "This is an amazing privilege. Not everybody has it." Look at verse number seven in Deuteronomy chapter 4. He says, "What other nation is so great?" His idea wasn't that he was puffed up with pride about their accomplishments. Here's what made them great, he says, "as to have their gods near them the way the Lord, or Yahweh, our God is near us whenever we pray to him." Now, these people are serving all kinds of things, and these deaf and dumb pieces of wood and these stones, and in reality, there's nothing. They're out there on their own. But, you know, we cry out to our God, the God of the universe, and you know what? He draws near to us. Every time we open our mouth, we just say, "Hey, God, I'd like to talk to you." And God says, "Yeah, I'm available. What is it? I'd like to hear what you have to say." That is an incredible truth.

Turn with me to Matthew chapter 7. I want to show you that what the privilege of prayer is all about is not just that we have a deity, a God, a sovereign in the universe who wants to hear us. There's a God in the universe that has promised to actually respond to us. Here's how Jesus put it. Look at it in verse 7. He says, "Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened to you." Now stop right there. If you're theologically savvy, if you're a Sunday school graduate, if you've been around the block in the Christian life a few times, you immediately think of all the qualifications. "Well, there are a lot of exceptions to this. You know, you got to do this, or you got to pray in God's will." Get away. You know, I just know it's not that simple.

Now stop it. Stop it for just a moment. Are all those things true? Perhaps they are. But you know what? Jesus is on a hillside talking to people who are gathered there, listening to him talk about the Father. And he is not trying to explain exceptions. He's trying to talk about the rule. And here's the rule: you got a God out there. If you ask him, he'll answer. If you're seeking, he'll let it be found. And you know what? If you knock on the door, he's going to open it. That's the rule. Let's not get so fixated on exceptions. Here is the rule. The general rule is you call out to God, and God's going to answer. You seek for something, he's going to open it up to you and let you find it. You knock on the door, bing, the door opens. That's the kind of God we have. That's what he wanted to leave these people with an impression of.

Look at how he puts it next: "For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." And then he gives us an example that some of his dads can identify with. He says, "Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake?" And he says, "If you guys, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him?"

And the scripture is saying, "Don't you realize that your privilege to go into a place on your knees and talk to the God of the universe is that you've got a God that's not only attentive, you've got a God that's responsive, and he wants to give the things that you ask for?" Are there exceptions to that? Sure. Is there a way to abuse that principle? Absolutely. Are there all kinds of things that we could do to discourage the thrust of this passage? Yes. But the thrust of the passage is you've got a God that wants to answer you.

Now, would we be stupid to pass on that? Would it be dumb to spend our hours watching TV when we could be spending our hours talking to a responsive, attentive God? Yes. You got to realize this has got to become a priority in our life to say, "Let's resolve to pray. Let's be committed, devoted." You know, it starts at the wrong place. Devotion to prayer is a devotion to a great high privilege. And we just need to rekindle that in our minds. Prayer is an amazing thing. And God says, "Listen, you want to talk to me? I'll listen. Hey, you want to ask me for something? My general responsiveness is yes."

I love Psalm 103: "Like a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him." Man, let's take advantage of that. What is it going to cost? That's what devotion is all about. Devotion is a weighty word. It's a word that requires sacrifice. It's a word that requires commitment. But you know what it really is? A commitment to something great.

And the text then gives us this great word: "Devote yourselves to it." Let's talk about the word a little bit. Here's something perhaps not particularly evident on the page there for you, but you might want to jot down that the core of this word, the root of the word devotion, is the Greek word for strength. It is the Greek word for might, power. And what they've done is they've added a little preposition to it, and it's taken its current shape that is found here in this text. That is that we are strongly attaching ourselves to something.

To say you're devoted to something assumes that there is a strong attachment to it. And the strong attachment results in a high degree of participation. If you asked, "Is Pastor Mike devoted to golf?" If you can't tell that by watching my golf swing or seeing my golf scores, you can certainly look at my calendar and find out the answer is unequivocally no. I'm not devoted to golf. I just don't spend a lot of time doing it. I try. I go out when I'm invited. Every now and then I hack up the course. When I'm done, I'm, you know, glad to quit for a month or so, and I'm on to something else.

I'll play. I know how to play. I know the rules. I can get around on a golf course. But I'm not devoted to golf. Now, I know people that are. I know people that are so devoted, they got their putters lined up in their office between appointments. They're out there putting. They're skipping out of their office early. They're heading to the driving range Saturday morning, and they're in their car in the dark waiting for the starter to open. And they're just devoted.

You can look at their calendar, and you can see by the way they spend their time, they are strongly attached to this thing called golf. And it's borne out in their calendar. Time is the indicator of devotion. Time is the thing that shows whether you're devoted or not. And the text here is saying, "Listen, be devoted. Be strongly attached to it." That means it requires some time participation; it means we're going to have to do it. We're going to have to do it a lot. It's going to take time out of our schedule.

"Devote yourself to prayer." To devote yourself to prayer is to resolve, number two on your outline, to pray more. That's what it gets down to. And unless we're as devoted as we can possibly be to it, then it applies to all of us. We need to resolve. It is a commitment. We need to resolve to pray more. Pray more. Pray more than you do now. I'm going to make the commitment. It is a weighty word. I'm going to be more strongly attached to this thing called prayer this week than I was last week.

What does that mean, practically speaking? It means I'll spend more minutes on it this week than I did last week. I'm going to spend more time at it. If we can look back at a time when our prayer life was better, it hadn't waned because the proposition in some way got less attractive. It waned because Satan has come in and carefully and strategically attacked what he knows is most important. If I can cut off communications with the commander in chief, I know I can defuse the effectiveness of that Christian.

Because you have all the gifts you want, you have all the knowledge you want. If you don't have intimacy with Christ on your knees on a daily habitual basis, then you're just not an effective Christian. So he can slowly make that happen. I mean, we think of that verse in 1 Peter 5 where it says, "He's prowling around like a roaring lion; our enemy is seeking someone to devour." And we may think of, you know, hexes and inverted pentagrams. He wants to make me a warlock or a witch. That is not his strategy for you. His strategy for you is to have you spend less and less and less and less time at such a slow, diminishing pace that perhaps you don't even notice that it takes a sermon like this for you to look back and say, "Yeah, you're right. I used to pray a lot more."

That's all it takes is the communication to be cut back. It is important. This is a spiritual battle. And you know that, don't you? Because you get on your knees and you try and pray, and you know what happens, right? I mean, you're a smart person until you get on your knees, and all of a sudden you can't think straight, right? I mean, you're coordinating businesses and you're doing your thing. You get on your knees and try and concentrate on God for 15 minutes, and your mind is running.

And I know what it's like. I get on my knees, and I'm thinking, "Okay, God, I want to talk to you. I got a lot of things to talk to you about." And I'm thinking about my to-do list, and I got to cut the grass, and I got, you know, and off I go on all these things. And God says, "Listen, this is a spiritual battle. Communication with headquarters is the most important thing in a Christian's life. It is foundational, it is central, it is primary, and we got to focus on it."

If you think great Christians are great Christians because they're smart or they're talented or whatever, then you don't understand. As Oswald Sanders said, "Great leaders in the Bible were great at prayer." That was the common denominator. They knew what it was to be before God, to spend that time linked up with headquarters, to be talking to God as God requires.

Pray with me, God. Spending more time in prayer is not going to happen by accident. That's really clear in this passage. It's going to take a commitment, devotion, a resolve. So we want to make a commitment right now. We want to personalize it. I want to tell you that we're going to spend more time praying. We're going to think through the where, the why, and the how and all those things, God, that are going to drive us to a place, a quiet place, maybe early in the morning, maybe the corner of the office somewhere at lunch, maybe late at night.

We want to make some decisions right now and make some commitments and promises and tell you right now that we're going to pray more. So hear our prayer and prompt our individual hearts in the silence of this moment. Make those kinds of verbalizations, those commitments to you in our minds. Make that a reality for us. In Jesus' name, I pray. Amen.

Speaker 3

Amen.

Speaker 1

You're listening to Focal Point. Today's program is part of our weekly Ask Pastor Mike segment. If you have a question for Pastor Mike, you can submit it online at focalpointradio.org or through Facebook at facebook.com/pastormike.

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Well, I'm Dave Drouehe inviting you to join us next time as we continue learning about biblical prayer that honors God. Listen Monday to Focal Point. Today's program was produced and sponsored by Focal Point Ministries. Sam.