What's the point of prayer if God can't change his mind?

[michaelmas]

I know that God knows all, God is the beginning and the end. I also know that since God knows this then God cannot be persuaded. So why then do we pray for things? Why pray for the family that is in need of some medical miracle when the end is already known? Prayer doesn’t make a difference in the outcome because God already knows the outcome.

 

[Michelle_Arnold]

I recently found a helpful answer to this question given by a Dominican priest:

The purpose of prayer is not to change the order established by God, but to obtain what God has decided to accomplish by means of our prayer. God wants the working out of certain things to depend on our desire and our prayer (Fr. Bernard Bro, O.P.).

God wants us to join him in the accomplishment of certain acts because he desires to include human beings in the work of the sanctification of the world. So he makes whether or not certain things happen dependent upon our prayer. Yes, he knows whether or not we will pray and therefore make the act possible. No, we do not know whether or not a particular intention is something God has made dependent upon our prayer. All we can do is to pray and to trust that he will act according to his will.