Mark Galli is an editor for Christianity Today and the author of one of the more interesting books written about Jesus in the last couple of years entitled Jesus Mean and Wild:The Unexpected Love of an Untamable God. He has just finished a book on the attributes of God entitled: A Great and Terrible Love: The Unexpected Embrace of a Holy God. The following quote is about how prayer and arguing with God are related:
Aligning our wills with that of God’s is not a matter of meek abdication, of mindless submission to power and wisdom of an almighty divinity. It begins by boldly accepting the invitation to make our desires known to God: “Ask and it will be given to you.” It is not until after Jesus pleads that the cup of suffering be removed that he finally discerns that it is not God’s will that it be removed. Only after wrestling with God does he relent of his desires.
God’s unchanging purposes, then, are discovered in the argument of prayer. To reduce prayer to begging God to fulfill our desires is childish. To abdicate to God without first acknowledging our desires is to deny our humanity, the person created and shaped by God. Pure acquiescence is often portrayed as the most saintly posture of prayer, but in reality God invites us to argue with him. And it is through the argument that knowledge of God’s will emerges.
This is the dynamic of all relationships. It is only in the back and forth of honest, passionate conversation that deeper understanding emerges. Only by expressing our desires and views, and hearing a challenge, do we begin to see that our desires and views have richer features than we had first imagined. Only in argument do we see where our desire has become selfishness, and where our opinion is but ignorance.
Even more so when we argue with God. Through the argument of prayer we better understand ourselves as well as the unchanging nature and purpose of God.
