The God Who Answers Prayer

"Tell me how you pray, and I will tell you what your faith is and who your God is.  The God who in Jesus Christ makes his face shine upon us is a God who answers prayer.  He is the Almighty God, the Creator and Sustainer of all things.  He is the all-knowing God who is aware of all your needs before you ask him.  He is the Lord who does everything according to his will, suffering no contradiction.  His reign over the world is hidden and inaccessible to human understanding.  Yet at the same time he has created us for fellowship with him; he not only speaks to us, but wants us to speak with him.  It is the mystery of his love that he, the Almighty, does not want to be alone, without us his creatures; he who alone has eternal life wishes to make us partakers of his love and his life – if we are willing to pray for it.  In his omnipotence he has ordered the dialogue between him and us.  In his Son, he has revealed himself, he has told us his name, that of the Father to whom we may come and should come with all our troubles.  It is the mystery of his omnipotence that he who knows everything and accomplishes everything nonetheless requests our prayers, and when we pray does what he would not do otherwise.  And it is the mystery of his mercy that he honors us, the unworthy, encouraging us to come before him despite our unworthiness and listening to us as though he needed us.  Even better, in his omnipotence he has decreed that he really needs us, because he so wills, because he desires true fellowship with us and is not bent on carrying out his plan without our participation.  He could very well govern the world without the slightest consideration of our thoughts and wishes, but then he would have no fellowship with us and we would have none with him.  Then we would not be his children, and he would not be our Father.  Fate would be our god, and we would be robots, puppets, moving at his command.  Then God would not be love, and we could not love him.  But now he has revealed himself in Jesus Christ as he really is, such as our parable shows him: the God who out of love answers prayer. This, you see, is the meaning of his revelation: God the Almighty shows himself as the one to whom we may and must and can pray.  Our mind shall never perceive how it is possible for the Almighty to answer prayer.  We are not even required to try, being unequal to the task.  But we are asked to acknowledge and to experience him as this God."

      - Emil Brunner, “Two Parables About Prayer,” in Sowing and Reaping: The Parables of Jesus, trans. Thomas Wieser (Richmond, Virginia: John Knox Press, 1965), 87.