Matthew 6:7-9 Prayer Questions: Does Prayer Change God?
A Public Theology Debate
On Monday night the Pittsburgh Steelers lost a playoff game to the Houston Texans. It’s not official yet, but a lot of people think that was the last game of Aaron Rogers’ career.
That made me think of a story from about 10 years ago, where noted theologians Aaron Rogers and Russell Wilson had a sort of theological debate in public.
Aaron Rogers and Russell Wilson are both NFL quarterbacks. And back in 2015, when Rogers played for the Green Bay Packers and Wilson played for the Seattle Seahawks, they had a playoff game against each other. This was the year that the Seahawks went to the Super Bowl and lost to the Patriots on a last second interception.
Anyway, in the playoff game the Packers had a pretty decent size lead with about 5 minutes left when Seattle scored, recovered an onside kick, scored quickly again and then converted an unlikely two point conversion to take a three point lead. Green Bay still had time on the clock, though, and drove down for a game tying field goal. The game went into overtime, and Seattle got the ball first. It took them just two long pass plays to score a touchdown and win the game.
In the euphoric moments after the game ended, a sideline reporter caught up with Seattle quarterback Russell Wilson who tearfully said into the camera: “God is too good all the time, man. Every time.”
Then, later, a reporter caught up to him in the locker room and asked him about an up and down game that saw him throw four interceptions before leading the stunning comeback. Here’s what Wilson said:
“That’s God setting it up, to make it so dramatic, so rewarding, so special.”
It’s normal for athletes to thank God after getting a big win, but something about this quote took it a little farther. It seemed to imply God had a special interest in seeing the Seahawks win. A couple days later, Rogers was on a radio show and they asked him for a reaction to what Wilson had said. Here’s what he said:
I don’t think God cares a whole lot about the outcome. He cares about the people involved, but I don’t think he’s a big football fan.
It’s created an interesting debate. Not too often my interests in sports and theology overlap, so I paid careful attention to what the sports talking heads had to say. Does God actually favor one team over another because they are more moral or represent Him better than another team? Does it come down to which team has more faithful believers on its roster?
I heard a lot of people say that God “has more important things to worry about than football games,” and that seems to make sense. Except that we believe God is intimately involved in the smallest details of our lives, including the number of hairs on our heads. So it’s hard to argue that He wouldn’t take at least a passing interest in the outcome of an event that millions of people have invested a great deal of emotional energy into. Besides, I don’t believe in a God who works with a limited amount of time. It’s not like if He pays attention to a football game He’ll be less aware of what is happening in war torn Ukraine or even in Allison, Iowa.
Or, think about it in terms of prayer. Since the Packers were doing so well for the first 55 minutes of the game, are we supposed to believe that their fans were so confident of the win they stopped praying? Only to have the Seahawk fans pray that much more in the final 5 minutes so that their team could catch up and win? Obviously, I don’t think prayer works that way.
But the debate about a football game does lead into the tough prayer question I want us to consider today: does prayer change God? Or, to put it another way: If God already knows everything that will happen, can prayer really make any difference? In terms of a football game: if God already knew that Seattle was going to win, does it matter if people were praying? Did God originally intend for Green Bay to win, only to change His mind according to Russell Wilson’s (or someone else’s) prayers?
Or, more seriously, if God already knows someone is going to die, does it matter if I pray for them to live? If God already knows He is going to heal someone, do my prayers really make any difference?
These are not questions with simple answers. Thinking about this for very long can make you feel like your head might explode. But I do think it is important that we affirm two Biblical truths: 1) God knows what is going to happen, and 2) God responds to our prayers. Those two ideas are clear in the Bible and if we want to be Biblical Christians, we must affirm them. How we reconcile them to each other is a bit more of a mystery.
Your Father Knows…You Should Pray
You can find both of these truths side by side in the Bible. The text I’ve chosen as our starting point for this morning is a great example. It’s the introduction to Matthew’s version of the Lord’s Prayer. Matthew 6:7-9. This is what Jesus says:
7And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. 8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9This, then, is how you should pray:
Two Biblical truths that I’m saying we must affirm, and they’re both right here: “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” God knows what is going to happen. He has a plan.
And yet, Jesus says: “you should pray.” The implication is that God responds to our prayers. Our prayers matter.
Now, I should point out the context. One of the things Jesus is saying here is that the effectiveness of our prayers is not dependent on the number of words that we speak. There were competing religious systems in that day that believed if you used the right prayer formula, or spent enough time praying, the gods were obligated to give you what you wanted. An idea like that reduces prayer to the level of magic or a machine, where if you input the correct words you’ll always get a certain result. Jesus is denying that that’s how it works. He calls God our “Father”, reminding us that God answers our requests as a parent responds to His children, not always giving us exactly what we want but what He knows to be best for us.
But, at the same time, Jesus affirms our two Biblical truths: God knows what is going to happen. And God responds to our prayers. God knows what is going to happen, and we should pray anyway.
His Purpose Will Stand
Let’s take both those Biblical truths and dig into them a bit further. First, God knows. God knows everything that will happen. Nothing is a surprise to Him. There are a number of Biblical passages that teach this truth. For example, 1 John 3:20:
God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.
God knows everything. The theological word for this is “omniscience.” In Latin, the prefix “omni-“ means “all.” Put omni- in front of another word and you are saying something is universal. We also say that God is “omnipotent” for “all powerful” and “omnipresent” for “all places.” The word “science” has to do with knowledge. So when we say that God has “omniscience” we are saying exactly what this verse says: “he knows everything.”
That means God knows the future as well as the past. He knows what will happen just as well as He knows what has already taken place. In fact, since we believe that God is eternal and thus stands outside the constraints of time, we believe that every moment on the earthly timeline is constantly present to Him.
So we can consider a passage like Isaiah 46:
9Remember the former things, those of long ago; I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me. 10I make known the end from the beginning, from ancient times, what is still to come. I say: My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please. 11…What I have said, that will I bring about; what I have planned, that will I do.
This is a wonderful passage for considering the utter uniqueness of God. There is no one to compare Him to. He knows the end as well as the beginning. Ancient times are as familiar to Him as what is still to come. He has a purpose and a plan and He will not fail to bring it about.
In other words, it is impossible to surprise God. I cannot imagine a scenario where God is watching my life and says something like “I can’t believe that is happening to Russell. I did not see that coming.” It’s not possible! I don’t think God can ever be caught off guard.
Or, to bring it back to that football game: When many of us were sitting on our couches saying things like “I can’t believe Green Bay is letting this game get away” or “I can’t believe that Seattle is making this comeback”, God was not. He wasn’t surprised. What makes Him utterly unique from everyone else is that He already knew exactly what was going to happen.
Or, take a look at Malachi 3:6:
6For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, have not perished.
This verse might be a little more relevant to our prayer question because it uses the very word I put in the title: “change.” And it says, categorically, that God does not change.
The theological term for this is “immutability” from the Latin for “unchangeableness.” The doctrine of immutability says that God is unchanging in his character, will and covenant promises. The Westminster Shorter Catechism says “God is a spirit, whose being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth are infinite, eternal, and unchangeable.” The New Testament puts it like this in James 1:17:
Every generous act of giving, with every perfect gift, is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
You might think that we have our answer to the question right there: “Does Prayer Change God?” No. The Bible says God cannot and does not change, so prayer must not have any effect on Him.
But that’s not exactly right. Most theologians understand God’s unchangeableness as relating to His character and will, but not necessarily to His interactions with us. In fact, you could make the argument that because God does not change, we should feel free to pray to Him more. That’s the context in which the Bible talks about it. James is saying that God is the giver of good gifts precisely because He does not change. He always acts in accordance with His character. He always keeps His promises. And so we can come to Him and pray on the basis of that character and in keeping with those promises.
Charles Finney, a nineteenth century revivalist who was raised to believe in a God who is sovereign over everything, grounded his belief in the power of prayer on the doctrine of God’s unchanging character. He said: “If you ask why he ever answers prayer at all, the answer must be, Because he is unchangeable.” (quoted by Yancey, Prayer, p. 134)
That doesn’t entirely answer our question of whether our individual prayers can influence God’s plans, though. For now, we can simply affirm this to be true: God knows what is going to happen. He has a plan and He will carry it out. God cannot be taken by surprise.
Bargaining and Arguing with God
But there is a second Biblical truth we must also consider: God Responds to prayer. God invites our prayers and, at times, does things He would not have done otherwise because of our prayers.
Let’s go back to our verses from Matthew for a moment:
8Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. 9This, then, is how you should pray:
Even though God knows all of our needs already, Jesus still encourages us to pray. The implication is that our prayers matter. God responds to our prayers. Not, as we’ve said, like a genie in a bottle, but like a Father responding to a child.
And so, we can find episodes in Scripture of God “changing His mind” because of a human request. For example, in the story of Abraham there is an incident in Genesis 18 where God and Abraham stand on a hill that overlooks the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah.
Sodom and Gomorrah were, well, I guess you could say they were the Sodom and Gomorrah of their time. They were towns where the sin and lawlessness were so bad that to this day if you want to describe a city as a sinful place, you use their names. And so, as God looks down upon them He announces to Abraham His intention to destroy them. This is Abraham’s response:
24What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? 25Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?
Abraham literally begins to bargain with God, like a customer buying a rug at a Middle Eastern market. When God says He’ll spare the cities for the sake of 50 righteous people, Abraham asks for 45. When God agrees to that, Abraham asks for 40. Then 30. Then 20. Then 10.
At each point, God agrees with Abraham. He appears to change his mind in accordance with Abraham’s prayers. In the end, 10 righteous people cannot be found, and the cities are destroyed anyway. But we are “left with the tantalizing fact that Abraham quit asking before God quit granting.” What if Abraham had pressed harder and asked for the cities to be spared for the sake of just one person, his nephew Lot? Would God have agreed? (Yancey, p. 91)
Or, another story. After the miracle of the Red Sea Moses met with God on the top of Mt. Sinai and received the 10 commandments. But while Moses was up the mountain, the people got restless and decided to make a god they could see and touch. They craft the golden calf, and God grows angry. Moses recounts what happened in a sermon in Deuteronomy 9. God said to Moses:
14Let me alone, so that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make you into a nation stronger and more numerous than they.
It looks like curtains for Israel. The fearsome God who destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, the same fearsome God who rained down plagues on Egypt and drowned their army in the Red Sea, has had quite enough of these ‘stiff-necked’ people and decides He’s going to start over with Moses. Except, Moses isn’t ready to accept that.
After he goes down and destroys the calf and the tablets inscribed with the 10 commandments, he goes back up the mountain and spends another 40 days fasting and praying to God. He says:
25I lay prostrate before the Lord those forty days and forty nights because the Lord had said he would destroy you. 26I prayed to the Lord and said, "O Sovereign Lord, do not destroy your people, your own inheritance that you redeemed by your great power and brought out of Egypt with a mighty hand.”
He throws argument after argument after God: “What will the Egyptians think? What about your reputation? What about all the work you’ve done?” In fact, he flings God’s promises back at Him, attacking God with His own weapons. God promised to build a nation out of Abraham’s descendents, how can He back out now?
And what does God do? He responds to Moses’ prayer:
10Now I had stayed on the mountain forty days and nights, as I did the first time, and the Lord listened to me at this time also. It was not his will to destroy you.
If Moses had not pleaded and argued with God, would Israel have been destroyed? Apparently so. To say otherwise is to call God a liar. Did Moses’ prayer change God? Apparently so.
Did God know that Moses would pray on Israel’s behalf and did He factor that in to His plan for the Exodus? We’d have to say He did. Certainly He was not surprised by Moses’ prayer. But the fact remains that God is responding to Moses’ prayer. Without the prayer, things would have gone very differently indeed.
The Bible tells us that God responds to our prayers. James 5:16:
15The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
There is power in prayer. Our prayers can be effective. In context, this verse is talking about prayers for healing. The implication is that God responds to those prayers. Prayer changes things.
Wisdom from C.S. Lewis
So, the Bible teaches both of these things: 1) God knows what is going to happen. He cannot be taken by surprise or caused to do something He did not plan to do. And 2) God responds to our prayers. He invites us to pray and promises to listen to our prayers and clearly tells us that our prayers can be powerful and effective in changing things.
The Bible affirms both of these truths and does not see them as contradictory. In fact, as we’ve seen in Matthew 6, Jesus is not afraid to talk about both ideas in the same breath.
So how do we bring these two truths together? How do we make sense of prayer?
C.S. Lewis, the English professor who wrote the Narnia books and who did so much around the time of World War II to bridge the divide between the academic world and Christianity, may be of help to us here. In a couple of essays, one entitled “Work and Prayer” and the other called “The Efficacy of Prayer” he attempts to explain how an omniscient God might listen and respond to our prayers.
Lewis begins by asking: If God already knows everything that is going to happen, why pray? What difference can it make if God already knows what is best and has everything planned? Lewis responds by saying that if this is a sound argument against prayer, it is really an argument against doing anything. He writes:
Why wash your hands? If God intends them to be clean, they’ll come clean without your washing them… Why ask for the salt? Why put on your boots? Why do anything?
God could have chosen to repair our bodies miraculously without food, or cause seed to grow without farmers, or give us knowledge without studying, or convert nonChristians without missionaries. He could have, but that’s not the world He created. Instead, He has given the gift of agency to human beings. “He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of men to co-operate in the execution of His will.” Lewis writes:
For He seems to do nothing of Himself which He can possibly delegate to His creatures. He commands us to do slowly and blunderingly what He could do perfectly and in the twinkling of an eye.
Lewis is not arguing that God has given up control. Rather, he is saying that plenty of people believe God is in control and yet they still look both ways before crossing the street. Plenty of people believe God has a good plan for the future and yet still save money in the bank. Very few people ever wonder: “Does eating work?” We understand it is part of how God created our world to work, and so we do it. Why not have the same attitude toward prayer?
Lewis quotes the French philosopher Pascal who said:
“God instituted prayer in order to lend to His creatures the dignity of causality.”
The skeptic who objects to prayer might as well object to the basic rules of creation. Prayer is used by God just as much as He uses the physical acts of throwing and catching a football to determine the outcomes of a game. Lewis again:
He made His own plan or plot of history such that it admits a certain amount of free play and can be modified in response to our prayers. If it is foolish and impudent to ask for victory in a war (on the ground that God might be expected to know best), it would be equally foolish and impudent to put on a raincoat—does God not know best whether you ought to be wet or dry?
It is the nature of the world God created that He has given us the gift of agency. The things we do, the choices we make, are somehow accounted for in God’s plans for the world. And that includes our prayers. You cannot surprise God. But He does respond to our prayers.
If you fail to put on a raincoat in the rain, you are going to get wet. If you fail to pray, there are certain things that could have happened that will not.
Wrestle with God
Finally, I want to leave you with this thought: the name Israel actually means “struggles with God.” Israel is the name Jacob received from God after he spent a night wrestling with God alongside the Jabbok river. God told Jacob to let Him go, but Jacob refused to release Him until he received a blessing. So God called him Israel. God-struggler. (Gen. 32:28)
I think it is interesting that God’s people have been known ever since by this unusual name. The descendants of Abraham, who bargained with God on a hill over Sodom. The ones who revere Moses, who laid down on a mountain and refused to get up unless God changed His mind.
I think the point is that God welcomes our wrestling. He invites us to struggle with Him. Whatever you think about how or why prayer affects God, it’s clear that He wants us to pray. Bring Him your arguments. Throw His promises back at Him. Plead your case.
God’s not bothered by that. It seems, in the mystery of His Will, that’s exactly what He wants.
