Good News #299: I Know and Believe: Through and Because of Jesus, God Always Answers My Prayers!
Everything bad and evil happening in the world can be traced back to the disobedience of Adam in the garden.
God created a perfect world. Everything was provided for. In fact, everything was in abundance for Adam and Eve. The only thing God asked was for man not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil… but they did… and now, here we are — living in the fallenness of the world, a consequence of man’s disobedience.
If we are to be honest with it, God could have wiped out humanity and started all over again… but this would mean that mankind’s spirit which will still continue on after the physical death would have zero escape out of hell, so God’s grace compelled Him to work the work of redemption…
Adam’s disobedience led to the curse of the ground, that is, that the mist that originally came up from the ground to water the face of the world was no more. The ground would now depend on rain.
Now, we know God gave man dominion over the world… and God respects man’s dominion so He is not going to impose things on the world without man’s agreement… yet we know man gave his dominion over the world to the devil when he listened to the voice of the serpent and acted on it… and so now the devil has some control over the earth along with man’s…
For God to righteously and legally intervene in the affairs of the world… although He is sovereign…God has to, in a way, work through humanity.
This is where the beauty of the gift of prayer comes…. because despite creation being fallen and the ordained cycles and seasons distorted, God can cause His goodness to happen when man prays.
To ask God for rain in the time of latter rain is a picture of how prayer allows God to cause blessings from heaven to fall down on earth without imposing on man’s dominion over the world…despite the world being under the sway of the devil.
The gospel is this — Jesus gained back man’s authority over all the earth.
Everyone who belongs to Jesus can use the authority of Jesus (The Son of Man) over the world to allow heaven’s realities here on earth.
Prayers are God’s ordained way for us to cooperate with God in creating heaven on earth (though it is fallen).
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Ask the Lord for rain
Zechariah 10:1
In the time of the latter rain.
The Lord will make flashing clouds;
He will give them showers of rain,
Grass in the field for everyone.
