Born Again Unto Holiness-James 1:18

J. I. Packer has well said that on our knees all men are Calvinist, whether they are an Arminian when they get back up, or not. It is trust in God's sovereignty that moves men to prayer, when it is rightly understood. Essential to prayer, evangelism, and every other duty of the Christian life is the realization that God has ordained all things, yes, but He has ordained to accomplish them through means: thus the salvation of sinners through evangelism ad prayer. Prayer aligns our hearts with the will of God and moves the hand of God according to His will in response to our prayers. God's sovereignty is the only truth that gives prayer any rationality, without it prayer is meaningless. If God prized the sinners will above His own, or above any interference on His part, then prayer would be pointless and we would all rightly be Deist and believe that God simply started the mechanism of the universe and then left it to run on its own, committed to not interfere. Prayer recognizes the sovereign will of God and His activity in the hearts of men. Therefore, belief in God's sovereignty is the strongest motivation to pray, indeed the only reasonable explanation for prayer. This is just one of the very practical take-aways of the doctrine unconditional election that we have studied for the past couple of weeks in midweek Bible study! When we talk of the DOCTRINES OF GRACE and God's absolute sovereignty in salvation, it elicits gratitude for God sovereignly setting His love upon us who were dead in our transgressions and sins, for we know that even if we could come to God (but can't due to radical depravity and original sin), we wouldn't come, since no man seeks after God (Romans 3). This coming Lord's Day we'll see James' succinct teaching of God's sovereign plan, our supernatural birth, God's supernatural tool of Scripture, and His sanctifying of His children in our study "Born Again Unto Holiness" (Jas 1:18). Join us!