The Sovereignty of God & the Call to Prayer

Even after thirty-four years of following Jesus Christ, I am still amazed by his sovereignty. When he determines to issue a message to his Bride, he sees to it that the message is articulated by the right man at the right time, and that the message reaches all for whom it was intended. Nothing stops him from accomplishing his purposes!

The Kneeling Christian (Zondervan, Grand Rapids: 1971) was written by an anonymous author “by request, and with much hesitancy” (7), and it was first published in England. Some years later, not long after brothers P. J. and Bernard Zondervan founded the Zondervan Publishing Company, P. J. stumbled across the work as he made a sales call in Seattle, Washington. The bookseller there had been blessed by the book and therefore commended it to Mr. Zondervan who in turn secured the rights to distribute it in the United States. 

However, due to the devastating effects of World War II upon England, the publisher was no longer able to print the book and thus Mr. Zondervan secured the rights to print and publish it. Between the years 1945 and 1971, Zondervan executed twenty-four printings and sold over 100,000 copies of it. This is how a little book by an unknown author came to have such a massive impact on the body of Christ in England, in the United States, and around the world. 

This story is not primarily about an author and his publishers. Rather, it is about a sovereign God and his Bride. When God chooses to speak to his Beloved, nothing stops him from doing so, not even a great World War! As Isaiah declares in 55:10-11, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” 

The message of this little book is as clear as it is profound: there is much joy in secret prayer, and we would do well then to give ourselves to it. It is not designed to inform our minds about prayer so much as to inspire the practice of prayer, in our lives, and therefore, we would well to honor the God who issued this call to prayer by reading what the author has to say, and by joining him in saying, “Lord, teach us to pray.”