Can We Pray for God to Train Somebody a Lesson?

Audio Transcript

Can we pray that God would train somebody a lesson? Can we pray for God to disrupt and make their life exhausting, all to get their consideration? It’s an attention-grabbing query from Tiffany immediately.

“Pastor John, hey and thanks for the podcast. I do know the Bible says to like our enemies and pray for many who persecute us. I wish to pray for God to vary their coronary heart and methods. However typically I wish to pray that they’re affected by their actions so they are going to get up and alter their methods. For instance, at my job there’s rampant negligence that has been dropped at my boss’s consideration a number of occasions. This negligence may severely hurt or kill somebody. My boss doesn’t just like the confrontation and doesn’t handle the difficulty.

“Is it mistaken to need them to be shaken up by some occasion to vary their methods, or is praying that somebody will get taught a lesson the identical as saying, ‘I advised you so’? Or is all of this unchristian to start with? Psalm 73 involves my thoughts and appears to test this sort of pondering. Fast justice isn’t one thing that always occurs, and we shouldn’t essentially search for it to occur earlier than Christ returns. However what do you suppose? Can we pray for somebody to be taught a lesson?”

I begin with the conviction from Jesus in Luke 6:28 that Christians are to “bless those that curse you [and] pray for many who abuse you.” So, I believe it’s proper that we must always search the great of our enemies after we pray, particularly the last word good: their salvation. So, if we pray that they be taught a lesson, we’d be praying that the lesson would bless them, save them. That’s the precept. That’s the essential factor I might say. For those who’re going to do it, do it savingly. It’s not an “I advised you so” — it’s not a “Gotcha!” — however somewhat, “I need your final blessing.” That’s what I’m searching for in my prayer.

However let me again up and put this query in a selected framework of what the Bible teaches about prayer. It was actually useful for me to consider this. Possibly it’ll be useful for others. This query actually is a component of a bigger query of how detailed our prayers ought to be relating to pleading with God to perform one thing in a selected manner. In different phrases, if we now have an final final result in thoughts that we would like God to result in, like saving a selected misplaced individual, how detailed ought to we get in praying for God to do it in sure methods? Or to say it one other manner, what number of secondary causes of a desired impact ought to we ask for?

Praying for Causes

Let me illustrate with a few photos. When Jesus taught his disciples to hope, he started with probably the most normal, all-inclusive prayer — particularly, “Hallowed be your identify” (Matthew 6:9). So, it is a prayer that God would see to it that his identify is honored, reverenced, treasured, glorified. “Do it Lord; trigger that to occur.” And at that time within the prayer, he may have simply stopped, proper? He may have simply stopped. “That covers every part, of us. If every part occurs to the hallowing of my identify, the glorifying of my identify, the treasuring of my identify, it’s over. That’s the top of the universe. That’s the purpose of every part.” He may have simply stopped proper there. The hallowing and the glorifying of God’s identify is the last word aim of all issues.

However he didn’t cease there. He tells us to hope some specifics beneath the hallowing of his identify — particularly, “Your kingdom come” and “your shall be performed, on earth as it’s in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). So listed here are two particular secondary causes to the last word goal of the hallowing of God’s identify — that he would reign in individuals’s lives and over the earth, and that these lives could be obedient to his revealed will. And that might consequence within the hallowing of his identify, the glorifying and honoring of his identify.

“We could pray for others to be taught a lesson for his or her good, however we ought to be cautious to not presume to be God.”

Then Paul will get much more particular in Romans 10:1, and he reveals that we don’t merely simply pray for the hallowing of his identify or his reign in individuals’s lives or the doing of his will. We additionally pray that folks be saved, be redeemed, be rescued from their sin. “Brothers, my coronary heart’s need and prayer to God for them is that they might be saved” (Romans 10:1). So now we now have a number of secondary causes prayed for: that God would reign in individuals’s lives, that they may be saved, that they could do his will on earth, that the hallowing of his identify, the glorifying of his identify, would come to go.

However Paul and the Psalms take us into extra specifics, extra secondary causes. They pray — for instance, in Ephesians 1:18 and Psalm 119:18 — that God would open individuals’s eyes to see great issues within the Bible. So, the New Testomony saints didn’t simply pray for individuals to be saved, but additionally prayed for what wanted to be performed for individuals to be saved — they have to have their eyes open in order that they will see the glories of Christ.

However Paul will get much more granular in his prayers and asks in 2 Thessalonians 3:1 that the phrase of God would run and be glorified. In different phrases, he’s not content material to hope that folks’s eyes could be opened, however that the phrase of God would in actual fact be efficient in opening their eyes. So, he’s shifting again down the causal chain right here and asking God to behave in producing sure secondary causes that convey concerning the final factor he’s involved about.

And Jesus takes this even a stage under that within the causes that result in such issues. He says in Matthew 9:38, “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to ship out laborers into his harvest.” Now, these are the individuals who communicate the phrase of the Lord, which is able to open individuals’s eyes, which is able to cause them to salvation, which is able to cause them to obedience, which is able to cause them to the hallowing of God’s identify.

‘Train Them a Lesson’?

So, you possibly can see the place that is going. I’m stating that the Bible doesn’t merely train us to hope for the last word finish of issues — just like the glorifying of God’s identify — after which cease. It teaches us to hope for layers of causes that the Bible itself reveals do in actual fact result in the glorifying of God’s identify. Which signifies that the query I’m being requested is, in impact, Is it biblical to hope that a type of causes, resulting in the last word impact, could be, “Lord, train this individual a lesson in an effort to convey them to repentance and religion and obedience and the glorifying of your identify”? Is that biblically warranted?

For instance, say an individual is making a observe of dishonest on his earnings taxes, and he’s simply not telling the entire reality to the IRS, and he received’t pay any consideration to your rebukes. “You’ve seen it; you perceive it; you’re telling me that’s not mistaken. A Christian doesn’t act that manner. It’s misleading. Change your conduct.” And he doesn’t do it. He received’t repent. Ought to we not solely pray that he come to repentance and go away the strategy by which he’s sinning, however ought to we pray that one thing occur to him in an effort to wake him up from his sinful manner?

My reply is that this: We could pray for specific methods for him to be taught a lesson for his good, however we ought to be humble and cautious to not presume to be God and to know greater than we do. The explanation I say that is first due to Psalm 83:16. Right here’s what it says — it is a prayer now — “Fill their faces with disgrace, that they might search your identify, O Lord.” So, the psalmist doesn’t simply pray that they might search God’s face, however that they might be shamed for what they’re doing, and that that disgrace would convey them to hunt God’s face. So, that’s a biblical instance of praying that someone be taught a lesson.

So, the essential reply is sure. However the motive I say we ought to be humble and cautious to not presume to be God is that we don’t know what one of the best ways is for God to convey an individual to his senses and save him. We don’t know. We will guess. We will take a look at the Bible for pointers. However we’re not God. We ought to be cautious to not inform God how he ought to do what’s greatest to do. If there are biblical pointers, then we will comply with these pointers in praying for secondary causes, however I might not make a observe of going past Scripture and prescribing to God how he ought to accomplish his biblically revealed functions.