Article March 1, 1969 Issue

Blessing, Not Bargaining

J. MORRISON HALCROW

Prayer may be considered unfashionable nowadays and rejected by many as irrelevant. What they are rejecting is not, in fact, true prayer. Usually they are simply refusing—and refusing quite rightly —to countenance the notion that we can hope to influence human affairs by appeals to some supernatural, mysterious, and perhaps capricious being who may or may not listen to our appeals.

No authority for such a version of prayer is to be found in an inspired study of the Bible. Christ Jesus, whose prayers were outstandingly effective, encouraged his followers to pray with quiet confidence in God's abundant capacity for blessing His children. He told them to "consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin."^{Matt. 6:28;}

This is not to say, of course, that Jesus preached a doctrine of effortless salvation. He constantly urged the need for individual regeneration as the way to individual progress. But it is important to understand that no individual's effort, not even the noblest effort, can influence God's direction and government. To believe otherwise is to imagine that we can bargain with God.

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