No one is completely indifferent about what he or she believes.
In the previous post we looked briefly at why prayer is so important in coming to an understanding of truth about God and his Scriptures and all the great questions of life. We saw that God teaches the humble. Here is the second surprising reason to pray for understanding.
2. Understanding truth requires both the mind and the will
Everyone is predisposed against certain truths. There are things we do not want to be true, and so we do not believe they are true.
For example, the atheist is not just intellectually opposed to the idea of God, but volitionally opposed. He does not want God to exist. Romans 1:19 says, “…what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them.” Nevertheless, they “suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18). They do not want God to exist because for one thing he requires obedience to his commandments.
But the role of the will in understanding truth affects not just atheists, but each one of us with particular doctrines. No one begins day one of their Christian life with perfect theological understanding of all things. We all come upon the various theological truths of the Bible with a disposition toward or against them.
For example, few of us wants to believe in the wrath of God. But you cannot read the Bible for long without seeing God’s just wrath against evil, and eventually if you are willing to accept it you will come to believe that God’s wrath is real and we need to be saved from it.
So we pray for understanding because we need God to change our will to make us willing to believe what is true.
Next week we look at the third reason why prayer is an essential guide into truth.