Why Pray? Part 2: Does God change his mind?

Does God change his mind?

If not, then why pray?

(Make sure you read Why pray? Part I: What difference does it make? for context!)

One of the keys to understanding the purpose of prayer is making peace with the 'Done' and the 'Doing', the 'Being' and the 'Becoming' nature of the Christian faith. There’s the finished work of the cross where, to some extent his kingdom has come, but he wants to complete the expression of that through us. This duality seems to be crux of the whole thing. ('Scuse the pun.)

Now while I find the idea that 'prayer changes us, not God' rather unsatisfactory, (Apologies to C. S. Lewis!) I'm not saying that prayer doesn't change us. Acknowledging our dependence on God on a regular basis can only be good for us, but that's not the primary purpose of prayer.

Still, something about the idea that prayer only changes us just didn't ring true, and when I actually checked my Bible, wonder of wonders, I found my suspicions confirmed.

In fact, it seems like the whole Bible narrative is stitched together by God responding the the prayers of his people.

Some examples...

At one point the Isaraelites had been getting up to no good, not unusual. This specific incident occured just after they had left Egypt. People were extorting money from each other, oppressing the poor, essentially slipping away from what God had called them to. So God says to Moses in Numbers 14:12-20

¹² I will disown them and destroy them with a plague. Then I will make you [Moses] into a nation greater and mightier than they are!”
¹³ But Moses objected. “What will the Egyptians think when they hear about it?” he asked the LORD. “They know full well the power you displayed in rescuing your people from Egypt. ¹⁴ Now if you destroy them, the Egyptians will send a report to the inhabitants of this land, who have already heard that you live among your people. ... ¹⁵ Now if you slaughter all these people with a single blow, the nations that have heard of your fame will say, ¹⁶ ‘The LORD was not able to bring them into the land he swore to give them, so he killed them in the wilderness.’
¹⁷ “Please, Lord, prove that your power is as great as you have claimed.

I’m not sure I’d be quite so bold as to pray that kind of prayer, but seeing as he isn't incincerated yet, he continues...

For you said, ¹⁸ ‘The LORD is slow to anger and filled with unfailing love, forgiving every kind of sin and rebellion. ...’ ¹⁹ In keeping with your magnificent, unfailing love, please pardon the sins of this people, just as you have forgiven them ever since they left Egypt.”
²⁰ Then the LORD said, “I will pardon them as you have requested.

Moses is quite bold in his response, but, somewhat surprisingly, God acquiesces: 'I will pardon them as you have requested.'
Not, 'I will pardon them because that was what I going to do anyway.'
He actually says, 'I will pardon them as you have requested' - because of your request, I will pardon them.

There are other examples where Moses cries out on behalf of the people and God appears to change his mind. And the same with David. It's a scary thing to say, I know. People get very stressed when we observe God changing his mind, because we have this idea that changing one's mind suggest inconsistency, but we see it in scripture so we’ve got to find a way to figure this out.

Another example: God tells Elijah that because King Ahab humbled himself, he (God) wouldn’t destroy King Ahab’s dynasty in his generation as he promised to do - he actually says ‘I promised’ but because KingAhab humbled himself I won’t don’t it.

Because of King Ahab's response, God changed his mind as to what he was going to do. If God had intended that outcome all along, then he was lying when he said he had changed his mind, or he actually does change his mind and King Ahab's prayers actually did make a difference. (1 Kings 29:21)

Then there's verse we’ve all seen on bible covers and mugs at the Bible shop - 2 Chronicles 7:14-15

¹⁴ ...if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land. ¹⁵ Now my eyes will be open and my ears attentive to the prayers offered in this place. 

Did you catch all those 'ifs' and 'thens'? We see this 'if - then' pattern quite regularly in scripture. God has given us this incredible gift called agency - our decisions do actually influence what happens on earth.

This also has a negative side - we see in Ezekiel 22:30

³⁰ I looked for someone among them who would build up the wall and stand before me in the gap on behalf of the land so I would not have to destroy it, but I found no one.

God relies on our prayers to get things done - and just as things change for the good when we do pray and act, so things change (or stay the same) in a way that is contrary to God's will when we don't pray.

This illustrates to us again the insane importance of prayer. It’s not just something we’ve made up to feel pious. It’s the way God has chosen to govern this earth - by relying on our prayer.

It’s a difficult thing to say, 'God needs our prayers,' especially when God's own name is Yahweh: 'I am', the self-existent one who needs nothing.  But there is a difference between something needed for existence and other kinds of needs. God needs nothing from us in order to continue existing, but he has chosen that for his will to happen, our prayers are required, which is maybe an easier word than needed.

Also, I see people start twitching when we talk about God changing his mind. But even in Genesis 6 concerning the flood, the text says that God repented of creating human beings - which I understood as regret. This understandably raises some concerns as most churchgoers today see the idea of God changing his mind as totally inadmissable - and I think I know why.

Let's start with a teeny tiny philosophy lesson. The whole idea of change being bad comes from Greek philsophy, Plato specifically.

A friend went to study theology at a university that shall remain unnamed. At one of their first lectures, the lecturer starts by sayng, ‘God is perfect. Agreed?’ The first years nod their heads. The lecturer relates an instance where God seems to change his mind and asks,  'And if something perfect changes, what does it become?' The immediately obvious answer seems to be, 'Imperfect'.
Imperfect. God. What?
You can see everyone blinking. Uh oh!

Plato is credited with the idea that when something changes it can only change for better or for worse. Later theologians applied these ideas to Christianity: If God changes his mind and it is something better then he wasn’t perfect to start with, if he changes his mind to something worse, then he has become imperfect. Either way there is no option for God to change his mind.

Where there is change there is sequence and where there is sequence there is time.

'If God is unchangeable then God experiences all of history and all of the future as a timeless unchangeable ‘now’.  If everything that will happen is already eternally settled in his unchanging mind, why pray?'

If nothing changes in his experience, if there’s no way I can genuinely interact with him. If it is all eternally settled and unchangeable, why pray?

I don’t feel like I can have any response to that other than passivity.

So before you panic - it's the underlying assumption all change is for better or for worse that is at the heart of the problem, and I want to say that I reject that assumption.

Greek philosophy is not derived from the Bible but a lot of our Biblical interpretation is derived from Greek philosophy which is unfortunate.

But we need to remember that when we talk about God's changelessness, we're referring to his character. He is always loving and always just and always good, but the precise way in which he chooses to express that can take many different forms, and, I believe, can change in response to our prayers.

If I'm asking him to do something he wasn't already planning to do, surely it wasn't the best thing? But, we see in Scripture God accommodating and even inviting our input. As risky and ungodlike as it might sound, he invites us to engage with him and he responds to our engagement. His character will never change and he'll never act contrary to his essence, but still he wants to give us say-so in our relationship with him.

It’s almost a bit like being married in community of property - you need a co-signee to do things like open a bank account. God invites us as his bride, in community of property, to be his cosignee. There’s things he wants to do for both of us, there’s things that he wants to accomplish, things that he wills, but he needs (requires?) our cosignature on it. Without that second signature, without us aligning ourselves and agreeing to his will through prayer and action, he can’t do what what he wants to do.

That’s huge.

And quite sobering.

It made me realise how lightheartedly I’ve taken prayer, glibly declaring, ‘Let’s pray.’
God is restoring a sense of gravity to ‘let’s pray’. We know that when we pray, something is going to  change or happen ormove because he's chosen to assign that importance to prayer.

Having said all that, I'm not sure getting things done is God’s primary purpose for prayer.

I believe the primary purpose is to build relationship. It’s not just for us to get our needs met, like some kind of transactional thing. He wants relationship with us because he loves us. He is so good. He wants to draw us in - he wants to engage with us.

Otherwise this incredible gift of prayer, this intimate engagement and dynamic relationship is reduced to a transaction - the bank teller in the sky where you punch in the right numbers and put in your request and your wish is granted.

Even with the risks, he’s chosen for us as the church, his bride, to rise up into our authority and co-reign with him. It seems the most insane thing to say that we are called to co-reign with God - but it's right there in Revelation 5:20:

You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God, and they will reign on the earth.

Some translations even say 'they reign' in place of 'they will reign'.

I am continually in awe that he refers to us as co-laborers, co-rulers, even as a marriage partner - even though we sometimes act like employees or even beggars. We come primarily to get our basic needs met when God has called us into intimacy. Having said that, it is by no means a symmetrical relationship, but it is definitely a reciprocal one.

For there to be any real intimacy there has to be mutual influence, give and take, like a dance where each impacts the other, where we actually have some way of effecting change.

So prayer makes a difference, because God has chosen for that to be one of the methods to accomplish what he wants done on earth.

But, prayer is not magic. When prayer works like magic, then we've lost the relationship again.
So why aren't all our prayers answered? More on that in Part 3.

Do you feel the post answered the questions raised in Part I: What difference does it make?

Did you have any, 'Yes, but what about...?' moments? Please share below.
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Why pray? Part 1: What difference does it make?

Why Pray?

Does prayer change God? Or me? Or circumstances?

I get demotivated when I feel like what I’m doing isn’t making a difference. That’s probably why I really struggle with housework so much.

It’s also one of the main reasons I have a blog.

No one can draw on it, no one can puke on it, no one can unpack it, no one can do anything to it, it’s just there.

Unlike the laundry pile that never seems to reach its end.

Not feeling like I was making a difference was part of the reason why I really struggled with the whole idea of prayer for a while. In short, why pray?

My logic was this: God is all good. So if he’s all good, he’s always doing everything he can to ensure the greatest good and the least evil. So when I pray, what am I really doing? Am I trying to twist his arm to get him to do something he didn’t want to do in the first place? Who am I to think I know better than him?

If he’s all good and he’s all wise and he didn’t already want to do that thing I’m asking him to do, and I’m still asking him to do it, then that’s a bit stupid. It’s clearly not the best thing.

But, if I’m only asking him to do what he already wants to do anyway, then why ask, why pray? Surely he would do it, whether I pray or not, because that’s what he wants to do.

I give food to my kids without them needing to ask because that's what parents do. Being kids, they ask me for food anyway, but I do have a plan to give them food on a daily basis. Genuine. A number of times a day even. (Totally winning at parenting, I know)

If God is good then I assume he never refrains from doing the best thing. So then why must I ask? It’s not like he forgot and needs to be reminded. It’s not like he doesn’t know what I need.

If it isn’t good then hopefully he won’t give it to us even if we do ask. So what do we do?

Either way praying seemed pointless - whether I was praying in accordance with God’s will or not, I didn’t feel like my prayers made a difference and that, like I said, demotivated me and sucked the life out of prayer for me.

Amidst all these questions, we have the Bible. In it we are commanded to pray; expected to pray. Jesus says, "When you pray." Prayer is assumed.

When I felt like there was no purpose to prayer other than to tick the prayer box, I trusted that there had to be a purpose.

Some say God knew what he was going to do all along, and so prayer doesn't change him, it is meant to change me.

Another possibility is that God merely lets us think that our prayers are being answered while doing what he intended to do all along - he is just testing us.

He says that he is going to do X and unless we pray, when he’s actually intending to do Y all along. Then we pray, and he does Y and gets his desired outcome anyway. But if he ends up doing what he was intending to do all along, then did I really have a choice whether or not to pray? And did my prayer actually make a difference? And if I did have a choice and I didn’t pray, then he wouldn’t get the outcome he wanted. It felt like a case of she knows that he knows that she knows that he knows and it’s all just a test or whatever. So that got my brain all stuck again. I remember driving home and thinking, “I just can’t do this. I can’t. It just doesn’t work. If this is how it’s going to be, I’m out.”

I suppose you could call it a crisis of faith because it was a make or break moment for me.

The idea that God lets us think that our prayers make a difference, or that prayer is to change me, not to actually change the circumstance feels patronising and humiliating. To be told that something can make a difference, because that’s what the word tells us, but actually it doesn’t really make a difference, in actual real life - I couldn’t deal with that.

It’s not that my theology is based on what I find acceptable about God’s character or not.

It’s not as though I just chose to reject prayer because I wasn’t happy about it worked. I felt like this view of prayer only serves to diminish God’s relationship with us. If we don’t genuinely have agency or some kind of say-so in our relationship, is it even worth it?

About the whole idea that prayer primarily changes us, it doesn’t actually change circumstances, my reply would be that Jesus said to tell the mountain to move and it would move. He didn’t say our attitude to the mountain would change, or our perception of the mountain would change, or that our feelings about the mountain would change, He said the mountain will move.

He assures us that things change when we pray.

He also taught us in the Lord’s Prayer that we should pray that God’s will be done on earth: “Let your kingdom come, let your will be done.”

That would assume that there are elements on this earth that are not in line with God’s kingdom, that are not in line with God’s will - otherwise why would he command us, in his summary of how to pray, to ask for his will to be done and his kingdom to come?

It only makes sense if there are some things that are not in line with his will and his kingdom and it’s our job to partner with him and pray those things into being.

It only makes sense if it actually makes a difference.
If it doesn’t make a difference, then why pray?

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Have you ever asked these questions? How did you feel about the answers you were given?Did you have any, 'Yes, but what about...?' moments while reading? Please share in the comment section.

You can listen to all three parts of the series as an audio teaching using the link below: