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PiousTemplar
Guest
Quick question,
God Bless.
PiousTemplar.
God Bless.
PiousTemplar.
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Rence
Guest
Ok, I know this is going to sound weird, but I do think you can change God’s mind. When my mom had her stroke, I think she was supposed to die. Her stroke was very significant, and the sad reality is, the only reason why they attempted surgery was because her husband was a doctor on staff there, and they actually said so. They sent the hospital chaplain down to support me when her CT scans were done. Her prognosis was poor.
I prayed and prayed, every spare second: in the car, in the shower, between completing tasks at home and at work. I think I talked the paint off the walls of Heaven and gave God a collossal headache. We decided as a family to give her two weeks before pulling the ventilator. But 14 days after her stroke and surgery, she started to wake up. When she woke up, the only thing she could move was her right hand, and she started writing: Creed. She wanted us to recite the Creed for her. Without going into too much details, and to keep a long story short, soon after that she told us that she talked to God, that he gave her a choice of staying or going back.
It’s not that she woke up that convinced me that she was supposed to die and that God had mercy on us and spared her. It wasn’t that. It’s the whole cascade of events that happened after that: she lost her husband before she even woke up from the coma, her friends disappeared for one reason or another, we moved to another state, our lives changed completely as if it was directed to a completely different course. It’s like she did die and everyone’s life around her changed as if she wasn’t there (except for me and my brother). She talks to her friends once in a while on the phone, but the relationships are completely different.
That said, I do think He changed His mind. You just have to believe that He’s the One in control, and you have to trust in His Mercy and Love. That’s not to say that He always will. But I do think it can happen, if He wants it to happen.
I prayed and prayed, every spare second: in the car, in the shower, between completing tasks at home and at work. I think I talked the paint off the walls of Heaven and gave God a collossal headache. We decided as a family to give her two weeks before pulling the ventilator. But 14 days after her stroke and surgery, she started to wake up. When she woke up, the only thing she could move was her right hand, and she started writing: Creed. She wanted us to recite the Creed for her. Without going into too much details, and to keep a long story short, soon after that she told us that she talked to God, that he gave her a choice of staying or going back.
It’s not that she woke up that convinced me that she was supposed to die and that God had mercy on us and spared her. It wasn’t that. It’s the whole cascade of events that happened after that: she lost her husband before she even woke up from the coma, her friends disappeared for one reason or another, we moved to another state, our lives changed completely as if it was directed to a completely different course. It’s like she did die and everyone’s life around her changed as if she wasn’t there (except for me and my brother). She talks to her friends once in a while on the phone, but the relationships are completely different.
That said, I do think He changed His mind. You just have to believe that He’s the One in control, and you have to trust in His Mercy and Love. That’s not to say that He always will. But I do think it can happen, if He wants it to happen.
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FaithJoy
Guest
Praying is not for changing God’s mind, but your mind. Once you get closer to God through prayer and understand what He wants from you,He will answer,if that is His plan. His plan is something ongoing also,something you might not understand at the moment and maybe years to come. But, answer He will if it doesn’t interfere with His ultimate plan.
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PiousTemplar
Guest
Wow, thanks for such an amazing post.
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WoundedIcon
Guest
Remember that God is timeless. So no, He can never change His mind. But what happens from a temporal perspective is that our prayers are already incorporated into His providential plan. God has us pray for our own good, to build a stronger relationship with Him, and (as St. Thomas Aquinas said) to bestow human beings with the gift of causality. In simpler terms, He foreknew our prayers and already took them into account, thus graciously letting us cooperate with Him in His providential plan.
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SGWessells
Guest
Scripture mentions several occasions when God changed his mind. In Num. 14:19,20 God pardons Israel at Moses’ request. In Num. 22:12-22, God tells Balaam not to go with Balak, changes his mind and tells him to go, then gets angry at him for going. In 2 Kings 20:1-6, God relents at Hezekiah’s prayer and gives him 15 more years of life. This has unsettling implications regarding the common notion that God has a fixed and unalterable plan for everyone’s life, and the idea that all times are simultaneously present to him. If that were the case, he would be telling Balaam not to go and to go simultaneously; he would be telling Hezekiah “you shall not live” at the same time he told him “I will add fifteen years to your life.” The notion is nonsensical.
And yes, before you all throw God’s convenient incomprehensibility at me, he allegedly gave us the Bible to teach us about his nature in a way we could understand. He tailored it to our level of understanding which, if he created us, he knows very well. If we take refuge behind “his thoughts are higher than our thoughts” every time we don’t understand something in his revelation, we confess that he is a poor communicator.
The idea of God living in an eternal Now is merely a human interpretation designed to dodge the incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and our free will. It doesn’t solve it, but it confuses people enough that they forget about the whole thing, and recite “God transcends time” as a handy incantation to banish the problem whenever it comes up.
And yes, before you all throw God’s convenient incomprehensibility at me, he allegedly gave us the Bible to teach us about his nature in a way we could understand. He tailored it to our level of understanding which, if he created us, he knows very well. If we take refuge behind “his thoughts are higher than our thoughts” every time we don’t understand something in his revelation, we confess that he is a poor communicator.
The idea of God living in an eternal Now is merely a human interpretation designed to dodge the incompatibility of God’s foreknowledge and our free will. It doesn’t solve it, but it confuses people enough that they forget about the whole thing, and recite “God transcends time” as a handy incantation to banish the problem whenever it comes up.
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fixxer
Guest
I agree God’s Will doesn’t change through prayer, prayer changes us. His Will is what is best for us because He loves us so much. Our prayer gives Him an opening to us which He fills with that love and grace to bring us closer to Him if we allow it to. Because of our weaknesses we sin, which causes breaks in this relationship but prayer heals these breaks and like any relationship communication is so very important.
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Credo_in_Deum
Guest
We don’t pray to change God Will, we pray to accept God’s Will. Anyone who thinks they know better than God has a serious pride issue going on.
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Pfaffenhoffen
Guest
Look at the Gospels, Jesus changed His Mind several times and healed the people who insisted on praying, so both sentences are wrong.
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JRKH
Guest
Your question brings to my mind a line from the movie “Shadowlands” in which Anthony Hopkins portrays CS Lewis.
Harry: Christopher can scoff, Jack, but I know how hard you’ve been praying; and now God is answering your prayers.
C. S. Lewis: That’s not why I pray, Harry. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God, it changes me.
I cannot think of a better answer to your question.
Peace
James
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WoundedIcon
Guest
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_L
Guest
perhaps it IS the very will of God to answer His children’s requests when asked, and if these requests are in accordance with His plan which always has everyone’s best interest at heart whether that is immediately apparent to us or not. Prayer is not only a one way asking of things from God, it is a two way communication that strengthens us whether our prayer is answered or not. Prayer makes us more humble by realizing we are truly powerless and must rely on God for everything in our lives, this is a valuable lesson regardless of whether some of our prayers are answered or not. And so I think it is a mistake to look at God’s will as a set plan that does not affect us or take us into account; and as I said before perhaps one of the key components in this very plan presupposes our active participation in it where we pray to God for a specific intention, and if it is granted God’s plan all along may have necessitated those prayers (not that God needed prayers but that the prayers were foreknown and thus the answer to the prayer was part of His divine plan all along)
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TimothyH
Guest
Jesus emptied himself, taking the form of a slave. He came not to do his own will but the will of his Father in Heaven.
My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet, not as I will, but as you will. (Matthew 26:39)
-Tim-
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Pfaffenhoffen
Guest
He said those sentences as God. He is God … not matter how slave He was …
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chris62
Guest
I’m still confused.
If I pray to God asking for the continued health of my family or for the Church to get stronger, does the prayer have no use, if things are already predistined?
Some are saying yes, some are saying no.
Is there an apologetic in the room?
If I pray to God asking for the continued health of my family or for the Church to get stronger, does the prayer have no use, if things are already predistined?
Some are saying yes, some are saying no.
Is there an apologetic in the room?
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Jkimbo
Guest
I have difficulty with predestined, I mean I’m sure God had a plan of course and He most likely knew all the possible out comes too, but our lives are not predestined, we are not hot wired to chose certain ways, if so, what is the point? I believe we all have free will and as such a infinite number of possibilities exist. Of course God being GOD is aware of each possible infinite possibilities, and of course this has no real effect in His Master Plan which can not be thwarted, we are free to make our choices and those choices and effects are not what’s predestined, only God’s Plan is predestined. Now my head hurts 
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JRKH
Guest
Well I am no apologist but I will let God, in the person of Jesus Christ, speak for Himself
Matthew Chapter 6:
5 "And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. 6 But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you. 7 "And in praying do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do; for they think that they will be heard for their many words. 8 Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.
9 Pray then like this: Our Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. 10 Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, On earth as it is in heaven. 11 Give us this day our daily bread; 12 And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors; 13 And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. 14 For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; 15 but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
Note above that Jesus, who is the Son of God, and God Himself tells us to pray and He tells us how to pray. He does not say - “Don’t pray because you can’t change God’s mind”. He says TO pray and to Pray quietly (in your room) and humbly for Gods Will and not ours to be done.
Add to this, the fact that the Gospels record several instances of Jesus praying and/or going off to pray, Mt 14:23; Mt 19:13; Mt 26:36: Luke 6:12; Luke 9:28; John 14:26;
The entire Chapter of John 17 is a prayer by Jesus to the Father.
So - We pray because we are commanded and commended to Pray.
We Pray because it strengthens us to Pray.
We Pray because Christ Himself Prayed and we seek to imitate our Lord.
We Pray to place ourselves in God’s Holy presence, opening up to Him ourselves and our desires.
We Pray to better understand God’s Will in our Lives.
We Pray that we may Learn
We Pray that we might grow closer to God in Love.
For all these reasons we pray.
I hope this helps some.
Peace
James
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WoundedIcon
Guest
Yes, but God’s plan is intertwined throughout the free will choices God foresaw us making. I think a lot of people don’t know that the Church actually teaches that God has meticulous providential control over everything, and that we also have free will. He causes all good, whether creating the good according to nature (our talents, etc.) or, in the case of salvation and good works, through grace. He permits all evil, allowing it to stay because He needs it for a greater good. And even more, the Church teaches that those who are saved are saved by predestination and those who are lost are lost through their own fault. It’s confusing, but I see that many Catholics hold to an almost Semi-Pelagian position and it’s not true. Neither is an Arminian one. The Catholic position is kinda like a 3 or 4 point modified Calvinism.I have difficulty with predestined, I mean I’m sure God had a plan of course and He most likely knew all the possible out comes too, but our lives are not predestined, we are not hot wired to chose certain ways, if so, what is the point? I believe we all have free will and as such a infinite number of possibilities exist. Of course God being GOD is aware of each possible infinite possibilities, and of course this has no real effect in His Master Plan which can not be thwarted, we are free to make our choices and those choices and effects are not what’s predestined, only God’s Plan is predestined. Now my head hurts
Look up Thomism and Molinism if you want to see how these mind-benders can be reconciled, but be forewarned that the Church hasn’t given a definite answer as to how.
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SGWessells
Guest
CCC: “Quote:
CCC 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: “In this city, in fact, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, gathered together against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed, to do whatever your hand and your plan had predestined to take place.” For the sake of accomplishing his plan of salvation, God permitted the acts that flowed from their blindness.”
I post here a reply I made in the "Incarnation (Thomists vs. Scotists) thread (post #7):
Trevor Stamm wrote: “Remember, this eternal now is only applicable to Him. Which is why what was willed was eternally willed. Malachi 3:6 “For I the LORD do not change”. Our future is being observed in His eyes now and in the past. Though what is observed by Him in future tense is observable, it is not our present selves in those future points in time.”
I don’t see how this meets the problem. It is not that God sees our future selves as different, but that God sees our past, present, and future selves all at once. As I sit at my keyboard now, I remember things that happened earlier; getting out of bed, eating breakfast, cleaning the apartment, going out to lunch and so on, but I am not still doing all those things; but as I understand the theory, God sees me doing all these things with no interval of time elapsing for him. Not only that, but he sees the earth forming from the sun, the evolution of life, the first humans, the development of architecture, the first cities, the early empires, and (not to be tedious), the incarnation, ministry, crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ, all the way to the sun going supernova and incinerating the earth (or however time ends), all at once, as if they were all happening “now.” There is no event in all of history which is future to God, which he does not see in the same way that we see events happening in our “now”. If that is so, scripture becomes even more nonsensical than it is without that theory. How can God influence the course of history when to him, there is no course of history, but everything is happening at the same time? No before or after. Since to God, no event follows another, there is no way to make an event happen the way he wants; it is already happening. The only way to be “in control of history” is to determine absolutely and unchangeably everything that happens before creating the world, then make it all at once. But then, where is free will?
Not only that, but how long will each event endure in God’s knowledge? Does God see events as we do, each one morphing into the next before we are hardly aware of it? That would be sequential, and would mean God was in time, not outside it. So God must see all events happening eternally and everlastingly the same; not one can slip from his present consciousness into a “past.” That means Christ hangs ion the cross in agony forever (because if he doesn’t, then it happened in God’s past, and God doesn’t have a past). Same with the resurrection, the ascension, the incarnation, the birth, etc. and with every other event. This is absurd and unthinkable. Nor can you take refuge behind God’s incomprehensibility, because this theory of God’s temporal transcendence is proposed as an explanation of why his foresight and our free will are both possible, and why he can prophesy events and so on. But an explanation that makes no sense cannot explain anything; an explanation that nobody can understand cannot resolve a contradiction. All it can do is give those who want to believe two incompatible things an excuse to ignore the contradiction.
In addition, God does change his mind, according to the Bible. He is sorry he made man (Gen. 6:6,7), repented of the evil he had thought to do to Israel (Ex. 32:14), sorry he made Saul king (1 Sam 15:11); when David made a census, God sent a plague, but 1 Chron 21:15 says that when the angel was at the point of destroying Jerusalem, “the LORD saw, and changed his mind, about the calamity, and said to the destroying angel, 'Enough…” (NAB). There are many more examples, but check out Jer. 18, 7-10; those verses refute both your contentions, by reporting God as saying, “At one moment I may decree concerning a nation or kingdom that I will uproot and tear down and destroy it; but if that nation against whom I have decreed turns from its evil, then I will have a change of heart regarding the evil I have decreed.” [Verse 9] “And at another moment…”. Here we have God living in a succession of moments, speaking as if he does not know yet how the nation will ct, and stand ready to change his mind accordingly. So much for “I the Lord do not change.”
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Crumpy
Guest
If you check out the Old Testament, you know, and all that stuff about the Isrealites being in slavery in Egypt? As you read on, you will see that God wants Moses to take the Israelites out into the desert, three days distance from Egypt, to pray and worship Him.
So, you might say, that is the command of the Creator to the Created. That is God’s will.
Back there in the Old Testament, again, starting around Deuteronomy 6:4 and the verses that come after it? Like it says, you shall worship the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.
That pretty much lays it on the line. I haven’t seen a Christian commentary on what it means to worship God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. Jesus repeats this in the New Testament, in Mark 12:30. Jesus adds one more condition: you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength.
Nevertheless, the Jewish interpretation of loving God with all our heart is that we will pray to God in worship and praise. Loving with all our heart is a Biblical term, although we hear it secularized a lot, in particular on Valentine’s Day cards for example.
The Psalms are prayers, and there are many examples of how to pray to God. And, within the psalms, there are many prayers with intentions in them.
even Jesus taught us to pray – the “Lord’s Prayer” – and there are FIRST expressions of praise to God OUR FATHER, and then there are BOLD petitions of prayer to the Father:
GIVE US TODAY such and such.
Catholic faith is based on Scripture and Tradition. We are to pray. And, we leave the rest up to God.
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