Why pray if God has already made up his mind?

[cazayoux]

I have a friend that is finally coming back to his faith, but has questions.
He trusts, but still would like to see what answers are out there to consider.

“why do we pray if god has already made up his mind…does prayer help? can we actually change god’s mind?”

Please help me with discussion points to bring up to him.
Thank you!

michel

 

[300WhiteKnights]

This question always bothered me too to some extent. I think God already knew that we were going to pray and incorporated those prayers into his plan since the beginning of time.

As to how prayers work, I think that prayers are conduits of grace from God, and the more we pray, the more of God’s power is able to work in the world.

 

[cpayne]

Think of it, perhaps, something like this:

God, being timeless, sees everything as if in a single moment. He “sees the end from the beginning.”

So if God sees your prayer, He also sees His answer.

But if God does not see your prayer (because no prayer was offered), then He also does not see His answer to your prayer. (Again, no prayer equals no answer to prayer.)

So why pray? Because if God sees your prayer, He also sees the answer, whatever form that answer may take.

In our perspective, of course, the answer may come later, or even much later, after the prayer. But God’s perspective is not ours. So I pray.

 

[Jelrak_TB]

Think of it, perhaps, something like this:

God, being timeless, sees everything as if in a single moment. He “sees the end from the beginning.”

So if God sees your prayer, He also sees His answer.

But if God does not see your prayer (because no prayer was offered), then He also does not see His answer to your prayer. (Again, no prayer equals no answer to prayer.)

So why pray? Because if God sees your prayer, He also sees the answer, whatever form that answer may take.

In our perspective, of course, the answer may come later, or even much later, after the prayer. But God’s perspective is not ours. So I pray.

A good response, but could it not equally be said that prayer might seemingly be a sign of a lack of faith in God’s providence or beneficence? If a child were to beg a parent for food everyday might not such necessarily make the parent at the very least suspect?

 

[sllhouette]

A good response, but could it not equally be said that prayer might seemingly be a sign of a lack of faith in God’s providence or beneficence? If a child were to beg a parent for food everyday might not such necessarily make the parent at the very least suspect?

Does a mother suspect her child who begs for milk?

 

[Iron_Donkey]

A good response, but could it not equally be said that prayer might seemingly be a sign of a lack of faith in God’s providence or beneficence? If a child were to beg a parent for food everyday might not such necessarily make the parent at the very least suspect?

Possible, except that God has told us that some of His actions will be in response to our prayer. So it cannot be from lack of faith, because faith tells us to pray. You could ask why it is that God has decided to act this way, but that’d be a different question.

 

[ByzCathCantor]

This question is in many ways a take on the Calvanist idea of Predestination. If God had already made up his mind, then the Perfect Sacrifice of Our Lord would not have been necessary. Christ’s entire ministry suggests that (i) God loves us; (ii) God wants us to love him back and (iii) the promise of salvation has been made, but must be earned through faith. All of that (as can likely be better articulated by others) is completely at odds with Predestinationism.

 

[cpayne]

Dear Jelrak TB:

I wouldn’t think of it that way. Think of it rather as God in His graciousness allows us actually to have a part in His universe, as His children. If you think of it that way, you would see it’s not “begging.”

(Even though, I admit, a lot of my prayers do sound a bit like begging.)

 

[TimothyH]

Asking for things is only a small part of prayer.

Prayer is first and foremost an intimate, two-way conversation between lovers. We pray mostly because we want to converse with the one we love.

Sometimes when I am worried and try to pray, and my mind is all scattered, I hear a little voice, a whisper which says, “Shhhhhh… be quiet… take a deep breath and everything will be all right.” And then the voice says, “Pray to me. Just tell me that you love me.”

Abba… Father… I love you more than I love my own life.

That’s why we pray. If you don’t pray like that, then ask God to teach you how to love him. That’s what we should be asking for.

-Tim-

 

[danserr]

I have a friend that is finally coming back to his faith, but has questions.
He trusts, but still would like to see what answers are out there to consider.

“why do we pray if god has already made up his mind…does prayer help? can we actually change god’s mind?”

Please help me with discussion points to bring up to him.
Thank you!

michel

One option is to think of it not so much as prayer changing the mind of God as prayer putting us in a position for God to give us the things that he already wants to give us. This is kind of a nice video by Fulton Sheen here.
youtube.com/watch?v=APkZU9C8xZg

I don’t remember at exactly what point he addresses your question, but he does mention it somewhere.

 

[Gods_Peace]

God doesn’t change, so it is your friends heart that has to change.

 

[slotty]

(iii) the promise of salvation has been made, but must be earned through faith.

Earned makes it sound transactional.

Would it be more accurate to say the gift of salvation has been offered and the receiving of the gift requires faith?

 

[Linusthe2nd]

A good response, but could it not equally be said that prayer might seemingly be a sign of a lack of faith in God’s providence or beneficence? If a child were to beg a parent for food everyday might not such necessarily make the parent at the very least suspect?

No. We pray to God because it is one of the means by which we develope a relationship with Him and because he asked us to… Remember Christ was continually praying to the Father, eventhough Christ himself was also God ( the Son of the Father eternally begotten in the Godhead). Why was he constantly praying when He was also God? Because he loved the Father and that love was the motive for his prayer. So if we love God and wish to have a relationship with him we will pray often, morning and evening at least. But actually we should have him at the back of our minds all the time - sort of a perpetual, background contemplation.

 

[StLudmilla]

The saints are great witnesses on the topic of prayer.

“We don’t pray in order to change God’s arrangements, but in order to obtain effects that God has arranged will be achieved through prayers of his chosen people. God arranges to give us certain things in answer to requests so that we may confidently have recourse to him, and acknowledge him as the source of all our blessings, and this is all for our good” Saint Thomas Aquinas

“The whole of our life should be a season of prayer” Basil the Great

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

I have a friend that is finally coming back to his faith, but has questions.
He trusts, but still would like to see what answers are out there to consider.

“why do we pray if god has already made up his mind…does prayer help? can we actually change god’s mind?”

Please help me with discussion points to bring up to him.
Thank you!

michel

Hi Michael,

From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
“600 To God, all moments of time are present in their immediacy. When therefore He establishes his eternal plan of “predestination,” He includes in it each person’s free response to his grace.”

As it applies to your question, God includes your prayers and His answer to them in His plan.

 

[Bill_Martin]

Prayer is for our benefit. We would never develop a relationship with God if we never had to talk to him.

 

[djames99]

We call God our Father, and a really great Dad he is. I find it how remarkable how he acts similar to my late biological father. How many times he would say no when I wanted to borrow the car. After all my hounding and being a PITA, he finally give me the keys and say, “Be back by midnite, … what else?..”, then I would give the answer he was waiting for, “I know I know, scratch it and I pay for it.”

Sometime I wonder if he actually enjoyed this give and take of wills, savoring the relationship.

The reading for the case of Sodom and Gomorrah is a shoe in as well as when God had to do some back peddling in Lazarus’s case. God even relented to cases where he knew was a bad thing for the Hebrews. Feeling let down and seeing into their hardened hearts, he gave them what they wanted even though it wasn’t the best thing for them.

So I would say persistence pays, and maybe after a while one could cut God some slack, and stop hounding him. He got the message. Maybe later you can ask again. But sometimes we simply need to accept that another plan is in the works for us, and perhaps it is here he watches if we ignore the lessons of the Hebrews by letting our hearts be hardened.

 

[DaveBj]

God doesn’t change, so it is your friends heart that has to change.

Bingo. We have a winner.

Back when I was a child in a small Pentecostal denomination, there was a popular slogan: “Prayer changes things.”

Then someone came up with a better slogan: “Prayer changes me.”

 

[Fr_of_Jazz]

Prayer is for our benefit. We would never develop a relationship with God if we never had to talk to him.

Umm . . . well . . . we’re talking about prayer of petition–not the other types of prayer.

So if you are in effect saying in your response: “No. Your’e off target. Prayer of petition is only for our spiritual benefit because it helps to develop our relationship with God: it is not efficacious as regards our intention,” then in that case I don’t think you’re with the teaching of the church. The CCC §s 2734-42 make it clear that prayer is efficacious and sometimes for the intention. Also the section on merit specifically says: 2010 “. . . we can then merit for ourselves and for others the graces needed for our sanctification, for the increase of grace and charity, and for the attainment of eternal life. Even temporal goods like health and friendship can be merited in accordance with God’s wisdom. These graces and goods are the object of Christian prayer. Prayer attends to the grace we need for meritorious actions.”

If you’re simply pointing out in your response that it is both-and (your point and mine . . . especially when prayers aren’t immediately answered), I agree.

 

[shoe]

I have a friend that is finally coming back to his faith, but has questions.
He trusts, but still would like to see what answers are out there to consider.

“why do we pray if god has already made up his mind…does prayer help? can we actually change god’s mind?”

Please help me with discussion points to bring up to him.
Thank you!

michel

I think that since time does not restrict God, since God created time, He is able to know (by His omniscience) the time before, during, and after we send up our petitions not only for our own personal needs but also for the needs of others as well. Therefore, I believe that one of the reasons that the Bible says “…your Father knoweth what is needful for you, before you ask him” (Matthew 6:8) is that in God’s eyes we are about to make, are making, and already have made our prayers in the now moment of eternity. Therefore, the statement that God “has already made up His mind” would indicate that we have already finished our prayer before God; otherwise, it would not be logical to say that God “has already made up His mind.” And so I think one of the reasons that we should always pray is that the prayers that the eternal God hears us making, and responds to either practically or spiritually, are one means by which He uses to bring about His will on earth.