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Great question! Oh yes! I've definitely struggled with this as have many Christians throughout the years. My resolution is that I've decided not to try to resolve it any more. Everytime I think I've come up with "the answer", I soon realize I've put God in a box...again. I don't know where the sovereignty of God ends and the free will of man picks up. I don't understand everything there is to understand about spiritual warfare. I don't know why at certain times I've prayed for people and things some might consider miraculous happened..sometimes even when I had a bad attitude. Other times I pray and pray and I feel like I'm talking to the ceiling and either nothing happens, or things get worse...like when you pray for people and they die anyway. I've resolved, in my saner moments, to just keep doing what I know to do. I pray for stuff, people, and situations. I don't play the little mind games TWI taught us. TWI's approach negates the sovereignty of God. When someone is hurting be it one person or a nation, the Bible teaches us to pray...so I pray. The Bible says to pray for the sick, so I do so. When I'm in need, I bring it to God. I live in the tension between two extremes. One, the Calvinists say everything is predestined and predetermined and nothing you do is going to change that. Then I ask, why bother? Why even pray at all? In fact, why even be a Christian? You're only a Christian because decided you should be one if the Calvinists are correct. The other extreme are the other guys whose name I can't remember. With them, it's all free will. There is no plan, God has no vision, everything just is what it is. Once again, why bother? I'm not wise enough to run my own life, much less the world. If God does not intervene in the affairs of man, then, in effect, God does not exist as far as man is concerned, and Christianity is just another philosophy. So, I pray and ask for God's intervention. I don't seem to get it in every situation, but sometimes I seem to. God isn't obligated to answer my requests just because I asked. A line from a song by Blood, Sweat, and Tears comes to mind. It doesn't completely relate to the subject matter, but it's an example of someone liveing in the tension. "I swear there ain't no Heaven and I pray there ain't no Hell."