We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

Q&A

How can prayer change God’s mind?

Every week we get in all kinds of questions and comments from our readers. If you have a question, first check our ever-growing Q&A page, and then send it to us if it hasn’t already been answered. We can’t get to them all, but yours might be answered and featured like this one below.


READER:  You’ve argued that since God is all-good, he’s always doing the most he can do in every situation to bring about good. But you have also argued that prayer can change God’s mind. How are these two beliefs compatible?

GREG: The beliefs aren’t incompatible if you believe, as I do, that God wants humans to have significant “say-so” in affecting what comes to pass. As such he created a world in which we have “say-so” on a physical level, making decisions that affect what comes to pass through our physical activity. We also have “say-so” on a spiritual level, affecting what comes to pass through prayer. By God’s own sovereign will, he bound himself to be affected by whether or not humans engage with him in prayer.

Hence, there are things that God would like to happen that won’t happen unless his people pray. In Scripture, there are times God plans on going in one direction, but hopes that his people will intercede to change that direction. For example, he told Ezekiel he planned on bringing judgment on Israel but tried to find someone to “stand in the gap on behalf of the land so [he] would not have to destroy it.” Unfortunately, he says, “I found no one” (Ezek. 22:30). Many other times, however, God allows his plans to change in response to his people talking to him (e.g. Ex. 32:14). I imagine it like a reservoir of divine power that won’t – can’t—be released unless his people agree with him about releasing it, or like a trust fund that requires a co-signer to be released. What God’s people do and don’t do really matters.


Image by OpenSource.com. Used in accordance with Creative Commons. Sourced via Flickr

Related Reading

The Ultimate Criteria for Theology

Theology is thinking (logos) about God (theos). It is a good and necessary discipline, but only so long as it is centered on Christ. All of our speculation and debate about such things as God’s character, power, and glory must be done with our focus on Jesus Christ—more specifically, on the decisive act by which…

What is the significance of Jeremiah 3:6–7?

Regarding Israel, the Lord says “I thought, ‘After she has done all this she will return to me’; but she did not return.” If the future is exhaustively settled in God’s mind, the meaning of this verse is unclear. How could God really think that something was going to happen if he foreknew with absolute…

Topics:

What is the significance of Exodus 4:10–16?

Immediately after convincing Moses of his ability to [somehow!] convince the elders of Israel to listen to him, Moses says, “O my Lord, I have never been eloquent…I am slow of speech and slow of tongue” (vs. 10). The Lord reminds him that he is the Creator and is therefore bigger than any speech impediment.…

Topics:

Podcast: Is God Capable of Total Control?

Greg talks the consequences of creating autonomous persons. http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0355.mp3

Why You Have Free Will

God’s decision to create a cosmos that was capable of love and that was, therefore, populated with free agents (see previous post) was also a decision to create and govern a world he could not unilaterally control. These are two aspects of the same decision. What it means for God to give agents some degree…

What is omni-resourcefulness?

Question: What do you mean when you refer to God’s omni-resourcefulness? Can you support this with Scripture? Answer: I and others use the term omni-resourcefulness to highlight a feature of God in Scripture that the classical theological tradition consistently overlooks. Part of the greatness of the God of the Bible, we argue, is that he…