God's Will Vs. Prayers?

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Destiny93

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Okay first I will start by saying I really don’t know under what section this thread would fit best . If you have other suggestions, please let me know so I can post in the more appropriate section.

I was just thinking randomly about different aspects of my Catholic faith. More specifically I was kind of confused about one thing and didn’t really know how to explain it:

So…this is just a made-up scenario for the sake of asking the question.

When someone is dying and/or ends up dying (in this particular scenario, I’m referring to death from an medical condition/illness though it might not necessarily matter), people say it was God’s will. That there was nothing that could be done, nobody could do anything to stop it from happening, it was God’s will for that to happen.

However, also when someone is really sick and could die, people say to pray a lot and get more people to pray for that person so that they may recover and be healthy again.

But I was thinking then - wouldn’t it be pointless to pray for the sick person? I mean if it’s God’s will that someone dies or not, then that person will either die or not, depending on whether God wills for that to happen or not, no matter how much or how many people pray for this sick person. Would God’s will then not be independent and dominant over any prayers other people would say for this person?

Or I guess on the flip side, if God already knows what he wills to happen, do prayers even really do anything or help in any way? Prayers don’t/can’t change “God’s will” to my understanding, can they?

Again this is just a fictional scenario made up about a hypothetical person. But it was just something I was thinking about, that I couldn’t explain. I can’t tell if it’s one or the other, or I guess it could be both but in that case, I can’t really see how that would work out or make sense.

Anyways I was just wondering and maybe someone here who knows more can help enlighten me. And once more, this is likely the wrong section in which to post this question, but I really can’t say where the adequate section would be.

Thanks!
 
In contemplating the issues you raise, I like to consider the story of the Wedding at Cana and Jesus prayer in the garden of Gethsemane.

At the wedding, Christ states it is not yet His time. Yet, He goes ahead and performs the miracle. To me, this emphasizes that Christ will respond to our prayers- the miracle wasn’t in God’s will per se, I mean He was aware that Mary would ask, but I take it that the miracle would not have been performed if she hadn’t asked Jesus. There are those things Christ wants us to ask Him for, He wants us to pray to Him.

In the garden, Christ Himself has a specific request but, asks in the context of putting God’s will if necessary ahead of His own desires. God’s response is to send an angel to strengthen Him to do what is necessary. God does not provide Jesus what He asks for but does give Him what He needs.

So, I think in prayer one should ask in confidence for what one desires while being willing to accept the answer God provides. Only be praying will we get the response.
 
We do not necessarily have to understand the “mechanics” of prayer and God’s will in order to recognize that divine revelation teaches us to pray. It could be God desires us to pray that we might participate in someone’s healing. Certainly there are accounts of miracles associated with prayers.

Think also of another analogy I similarly heard somewhere. Let’s say a man plans to walk through a rough neighborhood in order to get to his destination. His friend says, “Here, take this baton, that you can repel attackers who might beat you to death.” The man says, “If it is God’s will that I be beaten to death, then whether or not I take the baton is irrelevant, therefore, I shall not take the baton.” But the friend says, “But what if it is God’s will that you avoid being beaten to death on condition that you take the baton?”

In other words, in some mysterious way, God may will a certain effect on condition of someone’s prayer. And as I said above, divine revelation teaches us to pray. We needn’t worry about the mechanism of how it works, but only trust God as children of a father.

:o
 
Part of the problem is that we are limited in our capacity to understand. God exists outside of space and time - they are creations of His. So it’s not accurate to say, for instance, that prayer “changes” God’s mind from one thing to another - God does not change, He simply Is. But prayer does change us and help us to grow in grace, and sometimes that grace will bring physical healing, or emotional healing, or both. But we also have the free will to accept or reject those graces. (This isn’t to say that if a person prays for healing and doesn’t get it, that they just “didn’t pray hard enough.” We can’t fathom the mind of God, and there is, unfortunately, evil afoot in the world as well.) Prayer helps us to accept God’s will.

I’m not sure if this helps, because this is definitely difficult (impossible, I think :)) to understand, but this way of thinking has helped me. 👍
 
In my understanding, God’s will is not about Him micro-managing events here on earth. His will is that we choose the right path. I don’t believe illness and injury reflect a decision by God to inflict them. I don’t believe that what happens to us in circumstances where we decide to exercise no influence over events is that which God ordains.

Prayer may or may not see the result we sought delivered. But the unfolding of events is not itself an impediment to prayer.
 
Luke 18:1-8 Is a passage that has to do with persevering in prayer. We are to pray without ceasing is the message from the first part of the passage. It ends with Jesus telling us that those who pray unceasingly will be “vindicated speedily.” It is not necessarily because we asked, but because of our faith (shown with prayer that is constant) that will vindicate us.

Now in John 5:1-9 Jesus takes pity on a paralyzed man who was waiting at the pool. Jesus notices him and takes pity on him. This is just one example of the love Jesus shows for those in need. He shows all that he is above the law of men and is God and has the power to heal.

Jesus also shows us his love and pity for our human condition when he brings to life the son of the widow. Luke 7: 11-17. He had compassion for the woman in her human sorrow. He will comfort us in our sorrow and grant us what He knows will provide for us a path to Him.

Together these passages help to explain God’s ability to heal, God’s willingness to heal and our part in the process. 🙂

Hope this helps!
 
God can will that the outcome depend upon our prayers (and He knows whether or not they will happen, even though we decide whether or not to make them).

So God may decide that one person’s miraculous recovery is the result of prayers. He could potentially decide that another person’s death could have been delayed by prayers which didn’t happen. (Which is absolutely NOT to say that we should feel guilty for “not praying enough” if a loved one dies - we can’t know these things. Best to pray, do what we can in other ways also, and just try to make peace with whatever happens.)

So it is true that what happens is God’s will, but it is not true to go from “it was God’s will that he die at this time” to “so there was no possible way for things to happen differently.” God wills that we participate in what happens in a real way, by our actions, by our prayers, by our medical expertise.

So if you hear people saying that someone’s death was God’s will and hence unavoidable, chances are they are trying to comfort themselves and others, not actually being correct. Deaths are avoidable at times. We should work to save the sick and dying as we can. And when we fail, we should make our peace by saying we did our best, and it didn’t work, and that’s ok because we’re not and not expected to be all powerful - but not that there was nothing that could have worked. There may have been. And if we can figure out what it was, we may be able to use it to help someone else.
 
This is a deep mystery. One way I’ve heard it explained is that God has chosen to include our prayers in His plan. He wants to have us involved. Meaning, yes He has His plan, and no, no one can manipulate or change Him. But part of His plan is that He would do certain actions in RESPONSE to our prayers. He exists outside of time remember. He sees everything we do as one eternal Now.

Since we don’t know for sure which of our prayers are part of God’s plan and which aren’t, we should err on the side of praying.

Plus, prayer always serves as a way to change us. To keep us in loving communication with Him. To help us do His will in our lives.
 
God’s eternal divine plan in daily life has been designed with account of the prayers foreknown that His creation would lift up to him, for aid, for guidance, and for thanksgiving. The gospel of Matthew tells us that God knows what we need before we even ask Him.

Remember that ours is an active faith, not a passive one, and this does not at all mean that we ought not bother to pray. If our faith is genuine, than it is always put into action. We cannot say that we intend to be baptized, and then never be baptized, or say that we intend to confess, and then never confess, or say that we intend to put our life in accordance with God’s commands, and then never do so. Just as it is with all of these things, it is the same way with prayer.
 
Most so far are correct in that…it is a great mystery…it is difficult to understand…we can’t understand…etc. IMO, it simply does not make sense.

I have a friend who is very smart, very logical, very methodical in his approach to things. He is a devout catholic and I laugh how he handles these types of things whenever a topic like this comes up … he invariably says, "Don’t think about it, b/c it will just befuddle you 🙂 " He simply refuses to think about it or try to make sense out of it…which is completely out of character for him. I think he realizes where it leads and so refuses to go there.
 
It is not that we will be able to change God’s mind, but He enjoys our supplication to Him ans the love and trust that we must give Him to ask for things in prayer. Also, He may grant us things that we ask for if He believes that they will help us along the path of truth that He has already planned for us. Finally, it is not always necessarily God’s will that someone dies. It is only the devil who causes suffering and death. However, God only allows it due to the sin of mankind with His Son as the ability for life to be renewed.
 
Think of this in terms of parent-child relationships in your own life. Is it pointless for children to ask for things from their parents, to share their concerns and ask for help, to say “please” and “thank you” for that matter, when the child cannot predict what requests the parent will grant and which ones the parent should not grant? Is it a sign of a good relationship when a child has a concern and does not share it with the parent because “Mom won’t do anything, anyway” or “Dad will just say ‘We’ll see’ and then do what he was going to do all along…he does the same things for me, whether I ask or thank him or not or anything!” We can see in human relationships that in the mature view it is the relationship that matters the most, even if the mechanics of getting our needs met do not change a lot if the relationship is better between the parent and one child than between a parent and a more distant, uncomprehending or unappreciative child.

God, like our parents, is more to us than a wish-granting entity. God is our sustenance–an infant is more capable of caring for himself without parents than we are capable to care for ourselves without God!–but it is not in the nature of our relationship with God for Him to be sustenance and nothing more. We are meant to have a shared life, we are meant to grow in the degree to which we “take after” God, and in order to do this we have to make communication with God and appreciation of our relationship with God an integral part of our life. Just like with our own parents, too, sometime communicating with God leads to a greater appreciation of why what we originally had wanted is not in the cards.

That is why we make our petitions and give our thanks to God, even though God does not give us everything we ask for just as we imagined when we asked.
 
Just because something is God’s will doesn’t mean it will actually happen. 🤷 It may be God’s will for someone to live to be 100 years old but if that person smokes, drinks and eats in an unhelathy way, they could shorten their life even though it’s God’s will for them to live long. In cases like that, prayer can do things spiritually that will help God’s will to come about, the connection to God we get from prayer can create a spiritual force that overcomes the mistakes that caused the early death or near death. So prayer matters. It’s God’s desire or will for everyone to go to heaven but not everyone will. Things happen as a ripple effect of choices that either we make or others make, and it may be God’s will for someone to live but prayer helps create the spiritual force to bring God’s will to pass. It makes people feel better when someone dies to say it was God’s will, but I don’t believe that every death of a person was God’s will. I know someone dying was just an example but I’m saying that anything in any area that may be God’s will will not necessarily actually happen, because we have free will and our choices affect things and create ripple effects.
 
Rau said:
How do you come to this view?

Is it God’s will that crimes and sins are committed?

Why do reject the idea that Man can act contrary to God’s will?
Click to expand...
Ah, different uses of the term. We act contrary to how God wills that we do, but it is God’s will that we be able to do so if we so choose. God absolutely could cause things to turn out any way He likes, however He wills that we participate in what happens.

So we can act contrary to God’s will in that we can make choices opposed to God, but not in that we can cause things to happen without God at least having decided that we can do so.
 
Thank you all for your responses! They’ve been helpful and have given me a lot more to think about.
 
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