Does Predestination contradict Prayer

Dale · August 31, 2020, 8:40pm

I don’t think we have the capacity to explain it, for resolving it, to get it to make sense. There is an apparent paradox that we cannot get our heads around, and it involves God’s sovereignty and our free will and God’s relationship to sequential time – he is not bound by it, and that is counterintuitive to our thinking. (We’ve been talking about it in another thread – you may already be following it.)

It is wonderfully and delightfully mysterious. Here is an account of an immediately answered prayer (not that I don’t have a lot of ‘unanswered’ ones or that are pending). It will be familiar to several, since I have posted it here before…

Here is a sweet example of his sovereign, immanent, personal and interventionist activity into my life:

Request and Articulate Reply

A little background:

I leave earlier for church than my wife for a couple of different reasons, so she drives our pickup and I take the car, also for a couple of different reasons. (And neither of the latter are because of her driving ability. )

I back the truck out of the garage because she is a little intimidated doing it since the clearances are tight. (I have dinged the garage door opening’s aluminum trim with the passenger side rear view mirror.)

Also, the concrete apron to our garage is a little steeper than some, so ice on it can be a problem, especially if you are not in a vehicle but trying to walk on the ice. She also has a knee issue which makes walking on ice even more treacherous.

My Co-instants Log entry:

1/3/16 While chipping some ice and spreading some Ice Melt on the garage apron so my wife could safely get into the truck, I was a little disheartened about an issue a family member had at another church, and I was consciously thinking that I would like some encouragement. So, as I was on my way to Sunday School, I asked the Lord to give me a co-instance before I got there (there were about five minutes left), thinking “You could do that, Lord.” In Father’s timing, not mine (and he’s never in a hurry, but he’s never late – it was right after I got there, not before) and Mike, the teacher, had completely abandoned the Sunday School lesson from the quarterly – he had decided instead to ask the class to talk about… coincidence! Was I encouraged and a little pumped?!