by A.W. Tozer
No one who has read the Bible with any perception can fail to see that to God men are more important than things. A human being is of more value than a thousand galaxies of stars or a million worlds like ours. God made man in His own image and He made things to serve man. His concern is with intelligent moral beings, not with lifeless matter. However, since man has a material body and must live out his days in an environment of matter, time and space, things are important to him. His earthly life is to a large degree interwoven with matter and the laws that control matter. He is often deeply affected by the report his senses bring him from the world around him. Situations sometimes develop where the welfare of the inner man is for the time allowed to depend somewhat upon outward circumstances. At such times it is altogether proper that he should pray to God to alter those circumstances and "change things" to afford a more favorable climate for the growth of the spirit. A thousand promises are recorded in the Scriptures to encourage him to ask and seek and knock to the end that unfavorable things might be changed or removed altogether. And the history of Israel and the Church abundantly demonstrates that God does hear and answer prayer.
In all our praying, however, it is important that we keep in mind that God will not alter His eternal purposes at the word of a man. We do not pray in order to persuade God to change His mind. Prayer is not an assault upon the reluctance of God, nor an effort to secure a suspension of His will for us or for those for whom we pray. Prayer is not intended to overcome God and "move His arm." God will never be other than Himself, no matter how many people pray, nor how long nor how earnestly.
God's love desires the best for all of us, and He desires to give us the best at any cost. He will open rivers in desert places, still turbulent waves, quiet the wind, bring water from the rock, send an angel to release an apostle from prison, feed an orphanage, open a land long closed to the gospel. All these things and a thousand others He has done and will do in answer to prayer, but only because it had been His will to do it from the beginning. No one persuades Him.
What the praying man does is to bring His will into line with the will of God so God can do what He has all along been willing to do. Thus prayer changes the man and enables God to change things in answer to man's prayer.
( Article taken from The Price of Neglect, Chapter 14 )
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