This series of articles, written by Dr Peter Masters, is taken from https://metropolitantabernacle.org/articles/remedies-for-problems-in-prayer/
The Problem of Foreordination
Fatalism will inevitably empty prayer of fervour. It is hard to pray for the sick if we add to every plea ‘if it be Thy will’ in a resigned tone. To use these words is right, but to understand them in a fatalistic way is wrong. We must remind ourselves that God employs prayer as part of His process of blessing, making it instrumental. He commands us to pray with fervency for a purpose, and not because He intends to ignore us altogether.
If the writer may be permitted another personal recollection – this was a hindrance for me in spiritual youth, when first grasping the doctrines of sovereign grace. The usual way of describing how God is the author of all effective prayer is to say that He ordains not only the ends (the answer) but also the means (the prayer itself), and in a sense this is true. I was taught that every inclination to pray is from God (which is correct), but it was explained in a very mechanistic way, undermining personal responsibility. If I did not pray, it could well have been God’s fault, not mine, for not having impelled me to pray in a sufficiently irresistible way.
However, the teaching just described runs the risk of forgetting the mysterious interface between God’s foreordination and the believer’s obedience. God’s foreordination of my prayers as a converted person is not quite the same as His foreordination of my salvation. In the latter case He brings it about by irresistible grace. It may have seemed to me that I chose Him gladly, willingly and freely, but the reality is that He changed my heart, making me willing to listen, bending my stubborn will, bringing light into my darkened mind, and placing my conscience under conviction of sin. The moment I became a believer, however, a new margin of responsibility came into my relationship with God, and into my responses to His promptings.
In the Scripture, God calls me to prayer, and I must respond. He promises blessing if I do so. Certainly, He stirs my heart and gives the desire – but I may still fail to pray. Is it God’s fault? Has He left out some vital ‘link’ in His prompting of me? No, it is my fault, and in not praying I shall forfeit blessing.
We may, according to God’s Word, truly prevail upon Him. He evidently took account of our prayers before the foundation of the world. He is pleased to hear us pray, and undertakes to respond. It is ever true – ‘Ye have not because ye ask not.’
Let us never slip into fatalism by a misunderstanding of Gd’s foreordination. Fervour will be kindled when we have a solid hope that God will take account of our cries, and is persuadable by His people, according to His own secret and mysterious will. We must take at face value the words of Christ, and also those given to John:–
‘Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you’ (Matthew 7.7).
‘And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us’(1 John 5.14)… to be continue