Let's Start Praying More (Part 2)

PRAYER FOR PROVIDENCE


“Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.’” (Matt 9:37-38)

How important is prayer? Even the providence of the LORD’S eternal plan is manifested through the prayer of the saints, as Jesus said, “beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.” If God is all-powerful so that the providence of His plan will be manifested in the proper measure at the appointed time, why is it necessary to pray for the fulfillment of God’s plan? We can only conclude that God not only affords, but He greatly desires His creation to be active participants in the redemption of the world.

When establishing His covenant with Abraham, the LORD foretold Abraham “your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years,” (Gen 15:13). From these words, we understand that God had predetermined the duration that the descendents of Abraham would be oppressed in the land of Egypt independent of man’s freewill. Prior to the expiration of this time,

“God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them.” (Ex 2:24-25).

Lost in the Exodus story is the praying of Abraham’s descendants for salvation from the oppression of Egypt. Although the LORD had fixed the duration of their bondage, it was the invisible force of prayer that set in motion the Exodus from Egypt, as the prophet Samuel recounted the sequence of events, “Your fathers cried out to the LORD, then the LORD sent Moses and Aaron who brought your fathers out of Egypt,” (1 Sam 12:8). Somehow, the providence of God’s plan still depended on the prayers of the saints. As stated by Rabbi Heshy Klienman,

“The arrival of the preordained time was not enough by itself to set the redemption in motion, the Ramban explains. It was when ‘Hashem heard their moaning’ that He remembered His covenant. ‘They were not…redeemed, except for the fact that their prayers were accepted with pity and mercy.’” (Praying With Fire, page 50)

For this reason, even in our generation the coming fullness of the kingdom must be prayed for, as Jesus instructed believers to pray, “Your kingdom come. Your will be done,” (Matt 6:9).

At the exact time determined by God for the redemption of the Jewish nation, “And at the end of four hundred and thirty years, to the very day, all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.” (Ex 12:41).  Believers might notice the apparent discrepancy between the 400 years of enslavement foretold to Abraham (Gen 15:13), and the 430 years spoken by Moses and referred to by Paul, (Gal 3:17).

 Paul, and the Hebrew sages, understood the beginning of the timeframe to coincide with the “covenant previously ratified by God” (Gal 3:17), when Abraham was seventy years old. Thirty years later, when Abraham was one hundred years old, Isaac the first descendant of the promised line was born. Although Isaac was not enslaved, the Jewish sages understood that he represented the beginning of the line of descendants that would ultimately be enslaved, and thus, the beginning of the four hundred years. The actual duration of Israel in Egypt was closer 210 years.

What do we need to pray for in the future, probably everything.

Scott