Thoughts on salvation

Two thoughts I have had about salvation recently are: (1) we are almost totally wrong about the way we pray for the salvation of others and (2) salvation is anything but simple.

In his book, Why Revival Tarries, Leonard Ravenhill mentions how wrong we are about prayer. He accuses us of giving God advice rather than simply laying our burdens before Him and petitioning Him. I think he's right. I have heard so many people pray for the salvation of others, asking God to soften the soil of their hearts or send some kind of revelation or do this or do that specific thing to save them, as if we knew the process of salvation better than God Himself. I don't think it is wrong to ask for specific things to happen in someone's life, but telling God what He must do to save someone is prideful and God hates pride.

The reason we probably do this is we think salvation is simple. Actually, the more I think about it, I find that salvation is unfathomably mysterious, unquestionably scandalous, and unmistakably an act of God Himself. It is mysterious because I cannot understand the process of how a sin-loving, God-hating person can be suddenly transformed into a sin-hating, God-loving individual. It is scandalous to because God who is absolutely holy has chosen to pardon and befriend sinners. It is an act of God because no human effort, though we are His vessels, can accomplished the radical transformation that salvation requires.