For most of my life, growing up in the American-Christian culture, I heard well-meaning Christians say, “Don’t worry — God’s in control.” It sounds like a comforting platitude, but for a while now, it has raised some troubling questions for me: if God controls everything, then what’s the point of prayer? Why would Jesus teach us to ask, seek, and knock if everything were already decided? And, if God is in control, then there are a lot of evil things taking place that should make every Christian question their loyalty to Him?
As I have read and studied the Scriptures, they seem to paint a richer, more relational picture of God. He is in charge — He reigns over creation — but He isn’t a micromanager. He is sovereign enough to give His creation genuine freedom, choosing to work within humanity’s boundaries rather than controlling it like a puppet master. His power is unquestionable and infinite; yet in His love, He has chosen to limit how and when He uses it.
Think of Jesus in Gethsemane. He prayed, “Not my will, but Yours be done” (Luke 22.42). If everything were predetermined, that moment would be meaningless. Instead, it reveals divine partnership. The Father wasn’t forcing the Son’s hand; the Son (as a real flesh-and-blood human) was freely aligning his will with the Father’s. Prayer, then, isn’t about convincing God to act — it’s about having a real back-and-forth conversation about what He desires to do with us or our responsibility (led and empowered by the Holy Spirit) in resolving a matter.
Even Jesus’ long prayer in John 17 reveals this partnership. He doesn’t speak like someone following a script, but like a Son asking how his followers could participate with the Father’s heart for human history. And Paul echoes the same truth when he calls us “co-workers with God” (1 Corinthians 3.9).
If God’s sovereignty were about control, prayer would be performance. But because His sovereignty is relational, prayer becomes cooperation — the joining of free human will with the power and purpose of the Holy Spirit.
So maybe the real question isn’t whether God speaks, but whether we’re actually listening.
Ask the Holy Spirit this week: What area of my life am I avoiding praying about because I’m afraid of what You might actually say or ask of me?
God bless,
Nathan
