Prayer as a training school for confession
Kuyper argues that prayer serves as a training ground for genuine Christian confession, emphasizing how the church's external means of grace (Word, baptism, education) must work in conjunction with the internal operation of the Holy Spirit for faith to develop and mature. Using the metaphor of a farmer cultivating soil, he illustrates the necessity of both human effort in spiritual preparation and God's sovereign, effectual work through the Spirit to produce authentic confession of faith.
I prayed…and made my confession. -- Daniel 9:4 The seed of faith which it frequently pleases God to sow within the heart of a child does not grow and flourish of its own accord. Imagine, for a moment, that a child within whose heart this seed had been planted had been kidnapped soon after its birth by a tribe of savages, that it had been taken far from its father and mother, and far from the blessed influences of Christ's church. Do you suppose that child's faith would have developed? By no...
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