I meant to post this last week, since it goes with the study on how the the fact that God is a Trinity makes it possible for us to pray.
These are some amazing quotes from Andrew Murray on why prayer is possible at all–and it has to do with the nature of God. Check it out and get blessed…
…And so there was in the very Being and Life of God an asking of which prayer on earth was to be the reflection and the outflow. It was not without including this that Jesus said, “I knew that Thou always hearest me.” Just as the Sonship of Jesus on earth may not be separated from His Sonship in heaven, even so with His prayer on earth, it is the continuation and the couterpart of His asking in heaven. The prayer of the man Christ Jesus is the link between the eternal asking of the only-begotten Son in the bosom of the Father and the prayer of men upon earth.
Prayer has its rise and its deepest source in the very Being of God.
In the bosom of Deity nothing is ever done without prayer–the asking of the Son and the giving of the Father.
One of the secret difficulties with regard to prayer–one which, though not expressed, does often really hinder prayer–is derived from the perfection of God, in His absolute independence of all that is outside of Himself. Is He not the Infinite Being who owes what He is to Himself alone, who determines Himself, and whose wise and holy will has determined all that is to be? How can prayer influence Him, or He be moved by prayer to do what otherwise would not be done? Is not the promise of an answer to prayer simply a condescension to our weakness? Is what is said of the power…of prayer anything more than an accommodation to our mode of thought, because the Deity never can be dependent on any action from without for its doings? And is not the blessing of prayer simply the influence it exercises upon ourselves?
In seeking an answer to such questions, we find the key in the very being of God, in the mystery of the Holy Trinity.
If God was only one Person, shut up within Himself, there could be no thought of nearness to Him or influence on Him.
But in God there are three Persons. In God we have Father and Son, who have in the Holy Spirit their living bond of unity and fellowship. When eternal Love begat the Son, and the Father gave the Son as the Second Person a place next Himself as His Equal and His Counsellor, there was a way opened for prayer and its influence in the very inmost life of Deity itself. Just as on earth, so in heaven the whole relation between Father and Son is that of giving and taking.
These quotes are in Fred Sanders’ book The Deep Things of God. Sanders goes on to explain a little more what he sees in Murray’s thinking:
Crucial for Murray was to resist the urge to think of some will of God that is antecedent to the Son and the Father, or some decision that was made behind the back of the Trinity, in the oneness of God that is not already triune. There is no such God, so there is no such divine will. The divine will is Trinitarian and is worked out according to the asking-and-granting structure revealed in the Son: This may help us somewhat to understand how the prayer of man, coming through the Son, can have effect upon God.
The decrees of God are not decisions made by Him without reference to the Son, or His petition, or the petition to be sent up through Him. By no means.
The Lord Jesus is the first-begotten, the Head and Heir of all things: all things were created through Him and unto Him, and all things consist in Him. In the counsels of the Father, the Son, as Representative of all creation, had always a voice; in the decrees of the eternal purpose there was always room left for the liberty of the Son as Mediator and Intercessor, and so for the petitions of all who draw nigh to the Father in the Son.