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.
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.
Category: Q&A
Tags: Christian Life, God, Open Theism, Prayer, Theology
Topics: Apologetics, Open Theism
Related Reading
What is the significance of Exodus 33:1–3, 14?
“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Go, leave this place, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, and go to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob…I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites…Go up to the land…
What about the Gospel of John and Calvinism?
Question: The Gospel of John seems to teach that people believe because God draws them, rather than that God draws people because they believe. If this is true, how can you deny the Calvinistic teaching that salvation is based on God’s choice, not ours? Answer: As you note, many people find support for the view…
Scientific Support for the Open View
If a position is true, every avenue of reflection ought to point in its direction. What follows are two more “pointers” to the view that the future is at least partly open (indefinite, composed of possibilities). I’ll first consider an argument from quantum physics, followed by a pragmatic argument regarding what we ordinarily assume to…
Lord Willing? Part 1
Greg sat down with Jessica Kelley recently to talk with her about her book Lord Willing?. We’re posting their conversation in three parts. Today, in part 1, Jessica shares the story of when her son Henry was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor at age 4. You can find part 2 of the interview here, and part…
What is the significance of Jeremiah 3:19–20?
“I thought how I would set you among my children…And I thought you would call me, My Father, and would not turn from following me. Instead, as a faithless wife…you have been faithless to me…” If the future is eternally and exhaustively settled, and if God therefore knows it as such, he could not have…
Modern Theologians and the Centrality of Christ
During the twentieth century the development of a Christocentric reading of the Scriptures—which is crucial to understanding what I argue in Crucifixion of the Warrior God—surged in the wake of Karl Barth’s publication of his Romans commentary in 1916. It was justifiably described as a “bombshell” that fell “on the playground of the theologians,” demolishing…