I know many Christians who struggle with the thought that their prayers don’t matter because God is sovereign, all-knowing, and unchangeable. They ask questions like, if God eternally decreed all things, then how could our prayers affect anything? If God knows all things, then he doesn’t need us to tell him what we need or want, right? If God is unchangeable, then surely our prayers can’t change God’s mind, right? These are challenging questions. As I have wrestled with these questions in my own life, developing a rich understanding of what prayer is as well as a theological vocabulary for describing and summarizing Scripture’s teaching on God’s sovereignty have helped me and encouraged me in prayer.
Recognizing Mystery and Cultivating Patience
But before we address our topic directly, we should remember that mystery is a real biblical category. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God” (Deut. 29:29). God’s judgments are ultimately unsearchable and his ways are ultimately inscrutable (Rom. 11:33; see also Isa. 55:8–9). Since God is infinite, our finite minds will never be able to comprehend God fully. This is especially important to remember when dealing with a topic like the relationship between God’s sovereignty and our prayers. In addition, we should also cultivate patience. Some things in Scripture are hard to understand (2 Pet. 3:16). We might grapple with certain hard doctrines for a long time, maybe even years or decades. Since we worship an infinite and eternal God, that should not be surprising!
What Prayer Is
Now, to explore prayer’s relation to God’s sovereignty, we must first understand what prayer is. According to the Westminster Larger Catechism, “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies” (WLC 178). In prayer, we offer our desires unto God. And yet, that is not all the WLC says; it also mentions confession and thanksgiving. Prayer is more than petition—much more. In addition to petition or supplication, biblical prayers include praise, adoration, thanksgiving, confession, and lament.
Often, when we ask “if God is sovereign, all-knowing, and unchangeable, then why should we pray,” we are really asking whether our petitions can affect the unfolding of events in our lives—and that is a valid question! But, before we explore that question, we should note that petition is not a sine qua non of prayer. It is possible to pray without asking God for a single thing. For example, Psalm 92 is a hymn of thanksgiving for believers to pray to God (note how the psalmist directly addresses God with second person pronouns throughout), and it includes a grand total of zero petitions. The psalmist doesn’t ask God for anything. So, the foremost reason to pray is that our sovereign and omnipotent God deserves adoration and gratitude.
And not only is God deserving of prayer, but prayer is also a Christian duty. God commands us to pray (e.g., Eph. 6:18; Phil. 4:6; Col 4:2; 1 Thess. 5:17). God is the Most High King. As the almighty creator and governor of everything and everyone, we owe him our obedience, including obedience to the commands to pray. Now, the concept of duty is not likely to induce “warm fuzzies,” nor does it resolve the tension between God’s sovereignty and prayer. However, duty is an important lens through which we must view prayer. Prayer is not merely for our wellness. It is not simply a helpful spiritual practice. Christian prayer is a moral prescription.
Lest we begin to render empty obedience, we should be quick to add here that God’s binding command to pray is also a warm invitation. God commands us to pray because God wants to hear our prayers. This is a staggering thought. The God “who made the world and everything in it” and who “gives to all mankind life and breath and everything” (Acts 17:24–25) wants his people to be in a real relationship with him. We worship a God who listens. J. I. Packer said it well: “Praying is not like carpentry or cookery; it is the active exercise of a personal relationship, a kind of friendship, with the living God and his Son Jesus Christ.”[i] Just as a husband wants to hear his wife’s desires, just as a mother wants to hear her child’s aspirations, so God wants us to share our lives—including our longings, aspirations, and dreams—with him in prayer. Do you long for a family, maybe a spouse or a child? Do you need a job? I bet you share at least some of those yearnings with the people closest to you, not because they are able to solve your problems, but because you want a friend to be with you in them. In prayer, God listens to the yearnings of our hearts (Ps. 37:4). We can draw near to God’s throne of grace with confidence because Christ sympathizes with us (Heb. 4:14–16). We can cast all of our anxieties on God in prayer because he cares for us (1 Pet. 5:7). We can bring our laments to God because he keeps all of our tears in his bottle (Ps. 56:8). We do not pray to an impersonal force but to a personal God. Scripture reminds us over and over again that God listens to the prayers of his people (Ps. 18:6; Prov. 15:29; 1 Pet 3:12; 1 John 5:14). The command from God our King to pray is an invitation to have fellowship with God our Savior.
As an active exercise of our personal relationship with God, prayer is one of the ways we can grow in our relationship with God. In fact, prayer is one of the most important tools that God uses to grow us. The Westminster Larger Catechism again makes a helpful statement: “The outward and ordinary means whereby Christ communicates to his church the benefits of his mediation, are all his ordinances; especially the word, sacraments, and prayer; all which are made effectual to the elect for their salvation” (WLC 154). God’s “ordinary means” are simply the main instruments that God has promised to use to communicate his gospel grace to us. They are the places where God has promised to meet us. As one of God’s ordinary means, prayer is an important practice for spiritual growth and change. For example, think of how many psalms of lament begin with expressions of anguish and end with expressions of worship (e.g., Psalms 7 and 13). In Psalm 51, David moves from confession of sin, to praise, to petition for the people of God. Such psalms demonstrate God’s people being transformed through prayer. Similarly, in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10, Paul says that God used a season of prayer to instruct him in the sufficiency of grace.
The example of Paul’s prayer in 2 Corinthians 12:7–10 is especially stunning since God did not grant Paul’s request. It demonstrates the way that God meets us in prayer to bring us comfort and spiritual life even when he does not answer our prayers in the way we hope. Sometimes, however, perhaps even many times, God does grant our prayer requests. Jesus himself said, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened” (Matt 7:7–8). Likewise, James says, “You do not have, because you do not ask” (James 4:2). Now, neither Jesus nor James means that God is a wish-granting genie. James is quick to qualify that “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions” (James 4:3). Nevertheless, Scripture everywhere testifies to the fact that there is power in prayer. Petition is not a sine qua non of prayer, but God does tell us to make our requests known to him (Phil 4:6). And if God does tell us to bring our requests to him, then he must be willing to answer those requests in some real way. Some Christians need to be reminded that Elijah prayed for rain seven times before rain came (1 Kings 19:41–46) and that Paul prayed three times for his “thorn in the flesh” to be removed while God did not grant that request (2 Cor. 12:7–10). But, some of us need to be reminded that prayer does actually make things happen. Hannah poured out her soul before the Lord, and he answered her prayer (1 Sam 1:9–20). The reason Peter did not totally fall away after he denied Jesus was because Jesus prayed for him (Luke 22:31–32). However we resolve the tension between God’s sovereignty and our prayers, we must never conclude that our prayers don’t matter. Hannah and Peter were real people whose lives were really changed through prayer.
How God Responds to our Petitions
But if God really does respond to our requests, then does that somehow conflict with Scripture’s teaching on God is sovereign, all-knowing, and unchangeable? Does a God who foreknows and foreordains all things have the capacity to respond to prayers? While no finite mind will ever be able to fully comprehend the realities of an infinite God, the Westminster Confession of Faith discusses two theological concepts that will at least help us describe and categorize Scripture’s teaching: causality and contingency.
First, the Westminster Confession distinguishes between primary and secondary causes: “God, from all eternity, did, by the most wise and holy counsel of his own will, freely, and unchangeably ordain whatsoever comes to pass: yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures; nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established” (WCF 3.1). Events occur based on both primary (or ultimate) and secondary (or proximate) causes. For example, say I dropped a coin onto the floor. What caused the coin to fall: God’s eternal decree or the force of gravity? Well, according to the Confession… yes. God’s eternal decree would be the primary cause of the coin’s descent, and gravity would be the secondary cause. When dealing with primary and secondary causes, we are dealing with “apples and bananas,” so to speak, and not “apples and apples.” God’s eternal decree is a spiritual, divine reality; gravity is a physical force. So, while our finite minds cannot fully comprehend the relationship between primary and secondary causes, it is helpful to recognize the distinction between primary causes (God’s decrees) and secondary causes (like gravity or prayer). Moreover, Scripture regularly recognizes the reality of both primary and secondary causes(e.g., Gen. 50:20; Acts 2:23).
In addition to the concept of causality, the Westminster Confession acknowledges the reality of historical contingencies: “Although God knows whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions” (WCF 3.2). Consider 1 Samuel 13:13: “And Samuel said to Saul, ‘You have done foolishly. You have not kept the command of the Lord your God, with which he commanded you. For then the Lord would have established your kingdom over Israel forever.’” After Saul sinned by offering unauthorized sacrifices, Samuel told him that God rejected him and that if Saul had not sinned, then God would have established his kingdom forever. This passage describes a real historical contingency. God clearly knows not only what will happen, but also what could happen, and sometimes he reveals those contingencies to us. To be sure, as the Westminster Confession says, God does not decree events by picking the best outcome out of a selection of possible outcomes. He is not an unbeatable bridge player who can win regardless of what hand he is dealt. God invented cards and the game of bridge, and he also decides exactly which hands will be dealt when. Nevertheless, God does know everything that could happen.
The concepts of causality and contingency can help us understand passages about prayer like James 4:2: “You do not have, because you do not ask.” Here, James explains the secondary cause behind why his audience does not have: they do not pray. This does not negate the reality of God’s eternal decree. Additionally, James seems to imply that they would have if they had asked. This is an example of an historical contingency that God chose to reveal in order to teach a lesson about the importance of prayer.
These concepts can also help us describe the relationship between God’s sovereignty, omniscience, and immutability and our prayers. J. I. Packer says, “There is no tension or inconsistency between the teaching of Scripture on God’s sovereign foreordination of all things and on the efficacy of prayer. God foreordains the means as well as the end, and our prayers are foreordained as the means whereby he brings his sovereign will to pass.”[ii]God is the God of ends, but he is also the God of means. In other words, God not only decrees that certain things will happen, he also decrees how those things happen. God eternally decreed that Hannah would have a son named Samuel and that Peter would not apostatize, and he eternally decreed to execute those plans via the real, voluntary prayers of Hannah and the Lord Jesus. The primary cause of Hannah’s pregnancy and Peter’s perseverance was God, but ultimate causality does not negate the reality of secondary causality.
Or consider Exodus 2:23–25: “During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” Notice what the text does not say: it does not say that God was planning to leave the Israelites in Egypt until they convinced him otherwise. Notice the sequence of events: the Israelites pray for help, God hears their prayer for help, and then God moves to help them on the basis of his covenant promises. It’s important to note that the Hebrew verb translated remember does not suggest that God forgot about his promises. Rather, this verb (זכר; zakar)refers to calling something to mind in preparation for action. So, in Exodus 2:23–25, we see God hearing and responding to prayers in real time, but God’s real-time response is based on his 400-year-old promise to save his people (see Gen. 15:13–16)! God did not change his mind. The Israelites’ prayers did not alter God’s eternal plan. Rather, their prayers were the means by which God executed his plan. As Douglas Kelly explains,
Prayer changes the world: it makes good things happen because it gets God’s will done and thus brings down His best blessings. This is the message of the Old and New Testaments, as well as the experience of God’s people throughout the ages. The God of the Scriptures has great blessings stored up for His people, but He has so planned it that those blessings can only be released by the prayers of His people.[iii]
God had been planning to bless the Israelites for a very long time, and he so planned it that their prayers would be the vehicle of his blessing. In prayer, we are graciously invited to participate in the execution of God’s sovereign and eternal decree.
Conclusion
While the Westminster Confession provides language and categories to help us understand the mysterious relationship between God’s sovereignty and our prayers, we are nearing the limit of our capacity to explain that mystery. Scripture clearly teaches that God is in control of all things (Eph. 1:11), knows all things (1 John 3:20), and never changes (James 1:17). Additionally, Scripture clearly teaches that our actions, including our prayers, have real consequences (Matt. 7:7–8; Gal. 6:7; James 4:2). God’s sovereignty is not baptized fatalism. Ultimately, no finite human will ever be able to understand and explain comprehensively how God’s sovereignty, omniscience, and immutability fit together with human free agency, the real power of prayer, and historical contingencies. We should remember that there are some secret things that belong to the Lord (Deut. 29:29), and there are some revealed things that are hard to understand (2 Pet. 3:16). But we can also be encouraged to pray as we understand that prayer is much more than petition and that, without cancelling out our free agency, God graciously desires to use our prayers in his sovereign and mysterious plan to work all things for his glory and our good.