ST110: Does Prayer Change God's Mind (And Is That Even the Right Question)?

Speaker 1 You're listening to Slow Theology, Simple faith for chaotic times with AJ Swoboda and EJ Gupta. Welcome back to Slow Theology. Hope you are enjoying the ease into fall here. We're in September. AJ, how are you doing kicking off fall here? Speaker 2 Yeah, man, I there's a lot going on right now. Nije, First things first, I am so delighted. My son is is now in high school. He just started and he got his driver's permit. So. So that's a whole new world. Speaker 1 My daughter got hers. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 2 I've actually nije kind of kind of had some like pretty intense emotional ups and downs, like realizing there's a a lot of parents say this ninja, you probably heard parents say this like, well, you got three years left with their kids. I mean, I hate that sort of thing. I've got year until I'm dead. My son's not getting rid of me. But but there is a sense of like realizing there is a a time stamp on how much time we have in the home and I'm experiencing all this stuff. So anyways, it's AI love the fall. It's my favorite time of year, but there is a lot, a lot going on. How about you? How's how's the fall going? So start of the. Speaker 1 Year going same same my youngest so my youngest right so this is the one that's meant to be at home forever with me and. Speaker 2 We'll never leave. Speaker 1 Got her driver's, her driver's permit. And so we've been driving everywhere and, and it is sort of like now you look around and wonder, you know, what am I going to do in my life when she leaves? But, but it's exciting too, because I feel like in America, we don't, we don't have these really huge rites of passage. And this is I feel like one of those is getting your license and having the independence and driving around, you know, a $20,000 killing machine. But but it's so fun to see them. I remember just even a year ago thinking, Oh my gosh, there's like, no way I can imagine my kid driving, you know, she's so little. And then now she's doing it. So Speaking of kids, AJ, over the summer, my oldest was home, Simran. She's in college and we don't have a lot of deep theological heart to hearts, But when it was like midnight and she's like, Hey, I have AI. Have a question we end up she end up asking, you know, more or less the question, does prayer change God's mind? And I'm like, this is the moment I've been waiting for my entire life to have a deep theological question at midnight with one of my kids. It's like one of those dorms sort of conversations and we had a great, you know, my wife was came down like, are you coming to bed? I was like, no, just go, just go. I've been waiting for this moment and we had a really, really lovely conversation because she's been, you know, discerning stuff and and praying and, you know, has kind of life stuff to think about. And I just think it is it's one of these questions that everybody just has to wrestle with is, is what difference does prayer make? And I got to confess something to you, AJ. This is probably one of the areas of my Christian life I struggle with the most in terms of spiritual disciplines, growth. You know, I meet with the spiritual director, we talk about this a lot. I definitely need to pray more. I'm really good at Bible reading. I am great at Christian fellowship, but prayer is, is an area that I, you know, I really, I really struggle with and so. Speaker 2 Can I, can I ask you need you like what? What is it about prayer? I think you know you're both similar about threes on the Enneagram. Very driven. What is it about prayer? I can. I can say for me, I've often felt like this is not right, but I've often felt like prayer feels like a waste of time, like I could get things faster done than God could. Speaker 1 Right. Speaker 2 You know, kind of, yeah. I don't know. What do you what's for you? The. Speaker 1 Well, I think, you know, for just being super honest, I think it's that sense of like, you know, over, over the course of, you know, 30, now 3031 years of being a Christian, you know, there, there's a lot of stuff I've prayed that God does and he doesn't do it. And so is there that sense of like trial and error, maybe just subconsciously, Hey, I asked you for these 100 things. I got maybe one of them, you know, or I asked you to, you know, so for example, I have a chronic illness. I've had it for almost as long as I can remember and it's just there with me all the time. And I pray for it to go away or I pray, you know, that this pain doesn't happen or this issue doesn't happen. And it happens And, and, you know, when it doesn't happen, yeah, that's great. But was that God or was it just, you know, a break from the pain or was it the medicine or was it, you know, that sort of thing? So I think some of that, that's some of it. Some of it is that sort of, you know, efficiency. Some of it is, I mean, some of it too is. And maybe this is a good thing that we'll talk about later. It's not always in our best interest for God to alleviate our suffering. I've had a lot of conversation with folks that deal with with pain and and illness and a constant theme that I hear for those people are people will pray for me for complete healing. But often my prayer is God be with me in this, God comfort me in this. And they actually know how their illness has actually brought them closer to the Lord rather than further away. That doesn't mean we don't pray for people to be healed. We'll talk about that later. I looked up, I looked up the top six things that the top six prayers most common prayers in the Bible. And we'll talk about that maybe later. But healing is, is, is a biggie. But I think everybody has to wrestle this question. Does prayer change God's mind, God's heart, God's will, God's activity? I want to hear what you think about this. But let me, let me just get us started with, I think if I'm having a conversation with my daughter or with somebody that comes to my virtual office, I'd want to say two things at the same time. I want to start out with two theological truths that I, that I just want to just have as the foundation #1 God loves to bless us. He loves to bless us. So for example, Matthew 7, it's also in Luke. You know, we parents, even though we're evil, it says love to give good things to our children. How much more the heavenly Father. So God loves to bless us. So when we come to God in prayer, he's not a curmudgeon miser who's like, oh, no, you need another thing. He's like, great, let's open up the, you know, the storehouse, the treasure, you know, chest. Let's open it up. There's so much in here. Second thing that I'd want to affirm is God disciplines those he loves. So the suffering, the challenges we have, they, they actually might be for our good. I try when I pray, when I think about God and the character of God, I try to keep those two things together to guide my prayers. God loves to bless us, but he disciplines those he loves. But I still wrestle with this question of like in the Bible, AJ, you have these texts where God quote UN quote relents and relents is just a fancy word for changes his mind. He relents. So he was like, I was going to do this thing and then you prayed and you convinced me and now I'm not going to do it. And so on the one hand, I totally believe that the main purpose of prayer is to align our will to God's will and to be in a loving personal relationship, to grow closer and loving personal relationship with God at the same time. It blows my mind there are these biblical figures that seem to change God's mind on something. How do you wrestle with? Speaker 2 That need you. I mean, you're sitting the table here for what is what is of course, the ultimate theological conundrum that that is like, but we would be so deceptive to figure it out in 30 minutes in an in an episode. But but that said, the quick and dirty is that this conversation, you lift the hit the hood up and look underneath. There are basically kind of two major theological systems that are kind of are kind of having an awkward dance here. So on one side would be kind of this view that would say that would that would represent kind of the reformed view of God's sovereignty, would say that everything is predetermined, pre ordained by God to happen and no human can do a thing to impact the future. It is it is determined, it's written, it's finished, it's set. And, and on the other side, which has been kind of a, a perspective that's risen in the last 40 or 50 years is kind of a view that would say, hey, hey, all these stories in the Bible with people praying, you know, Hezekiah's these stories of like people in the Bible who pray and God appears to change his, his will or his mind. And on this side would kind of be, I almost want to call it kind of the open theology side that would say that God, God has a very malleable will and responds to humans and can change his mind. So, so these are two theological systems. Those are the, those are the extremes, right? You've got so the on one side, the reformed sovereign view, and on the other, you've got this kind of open, open theology view. And Nije as as often as the case for me and, and I suspect probably for you too. I'm pretty uncomfortable with both of those options. Speaker 1 They're extremes, yeah. Speaker 2 They're extremes that I think give the boundaries of the debate, but they don't satisfy what I perceive to be the biblical data. I remember our our mutual friend Gary Beshears. This is one of the things he like pounded into my brain over a couple years of mentoring is that part of being a good theologian and part of being a good thinker is you got to take as much of the biblical data as possible and make sense of all that's there. You don't take one verse, you don't take 1 chapter. You try to take a holistic perspective of everything that is there and there. There are moments in Scripture, Nietzsche, where God has made predeterminations about what's going to happen and, and it is unchangeable. It doesn't matter what a human does. But there are other times that it seems as though God is responsibly doing something different because a person has prayed or or talked to God. But I, I do want to name this Nietzsche. I think I'm uncomfortable. One of the reasons I'm uncomfortable with this language of God changing his mind is we when we say that we're opting to use very human language to describe God. So when we say changing our mind as human beings, we change our mind all the time. This morning I changed my mind very quickly when my wife looked at what I was going to wear to school, to work, and she said, you're not wearing that. And I said, well, oh, OK, yeah, let me change. I've changed my mind because I want to, you know, represent her well in the world. We change our mind all the time. And and that's good. It's good that humans are malleable and changing. But but when we when we refer to God as changing his mind, I think it's it's the language lets us down just a little bit because we are projecting upon God, our human experience, assuming that God. So the Bible is full of anthropocentric language, language that anthropomorphisms, ways of describing God that are human. So for example, the Old Testament refers to God having a hand, God's hand, right? God's hand. Does that literally mean that God has a physical hand in heaven and is using that hand to do a variety of things? And of course, the answer is, is, is, is no. God is a spirit. The Father in in heaven doesn't have the hand the way you and I would have a hand. But it's the Bible wants to use that language to get us to imagine God in a particular way. I do think that the language of God changing his mind betrays us a little bit. It's not. Speaker 1 It just the framing of it that way. Speaker 2 Exactly it It makes us think that God thinks the way that we think. God doesn't have a brain, you know God. God is a spiritual being that is a is a whole that doesn't have a different part of his body that thinks versus the rest of him. Speaker 1 Yeah, Well, Numbers 2319 is used a lot in this conversation. I think it's very good and it fits exactly what you're saying. Numbers 2319, God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being that he should change his mind. Does he speak and then not act? Does he? Does he promise and not fulfill? And this gets into that anthropomorphism. But there's a, there's a kind of a debate that happened in the early church about what's called the impassability of God. And it, it was really a question of does God act on the basis of kind of emotion or on the basis of sort of whim? And the church's answer is no, in the sense that the Grec Roman gods were no, who were dominant at the time, right, were known to be fickle, right? They were known to be like, oh, you, you offended me. Well, now I'm going to strike you with lightning. And God's not like that. However, the Bible does portray God as thinking and feeling as as remembering, as responsive. So, so I think, you know, when you said he doesn't have a brain, it took me a while to be like, do I think that's true? He doesn't have a human brain for sure. Speaker 2 That's right, he does not have a human brain the way that we have a. Speaker 1 Human brain, but the way I like you know when I had this is one of my points I wrote down. This works perfectly. God is not a vending machine or a robot or an algorithm. God is not a human. But God is a person and, and people do think and people do have wills. That's actually probably the most important things to affirm is that God has a will because what does Jesus pray in the garden? Not my will, but your will be done. So we talk about the impassability God. I don't like how some of these debates go, 'cause it makes God seem less, less personal. What we're trying to say is God's not a sinful, fickle human, but God is, is a person. And people have will, thoughts, feelings. God has feelings. We know that from the Bible. God has feelings. Speaker 2 I I, I wonder if actually, so there Nietzsche. I have had times in my life. So I'm a charismatic, I'm a Pentecostal. So, so us charismatic Pentecostals, we really do believe in the prayer like makes stuff happen. Well, you know, when I pray for healing for somebody, I believe that God is listening and we're commanded to pray for the these for, for healing to happen. So when I pray for somebody and it's only happened 3, three or three times or so, but when I pray for somebody to experience a healing and they do experience healing, from my perspective as a human being, it appears as though God has changed his mind on something like that. It it feels as though God has changed his mind. But I wonder if just because we experience God that way, if we should be cautious to assume that that is what actually happened. Let me let me explain what I mean. OK, OK, so my turn, Elliot, my son turned 15 and I knew, I knew the ask was coming. I knew that he wanted Instagram and I knew I knew in his entire 14th year that it was coming. OK. And he had sort of been under the presumption that he probably wouldn't have it till he was 50. I mean, that I wouldn't let him have it forever, but but I knew it was coming. And so when he, you know, middle of 14, he's like, dad, can I have Instagram? Can I have Instagram? And he started asking over and over and over again. I was like, Nah, I don't think so. I don't think so. I don't think so. And then a couple weeks before his 15th birthday, I said, I think I've decided that it's OK for you to have a version of Instagram that will allow you to look at him 15 minutes a day from his. I knew the question was coming and I knew what I was going to do. But from his experience, it appeared as though I. Speaker 1 Changed my mind, correct? Speaker 2 It looked as though I changed my mind, but I was well aware of of the ask that was coming. I think I'm, I think I'm comfortable saying this, just because God appears from our vantage point to do something doesn't mean that is necessarily what God is actually doing. There's a mystery involved to, to the way God process the way process the way God makes decisions and does what he does. I don't doesn't. What do you think about that? Speaker 1 Yeah, and, and, and the way I would, you know, express that is the misnomer that we need to correct or the misunderstanding we need to correct is this idea that like God doesn't want to heal somebody. And then when it gets to like 100 people praying or when it gets to like AJ has more faith, then we've bent his finger, we've bent his will. And you know, as if he's just sort of stubbornly saying, hey, I only, you know, I'm looking at the ticker. I only see 77 people pray. We gotta get to 100. Speaker 2 Like like he's waiting for a bunch of people to tag him on Instagram before he responds. Like finally enough people. Speaker 1 Finally, but I do think that's how a lot of people think in terms of like, well, because some Brad preachers have have given that impression, for example, by telling people they don't have enough faith when they pray as if there's a faith O meter. But, you know, I love the old kind of saying, you know, it's not, it's not how much faith you have. It's who you have your faith in. There is a truth in the Gospels that repeatedly Jesus says your faith has made you well. And every theologian says, no, it's Jesus that made you well. But there is some truth that we got to put our eggs in that basket. We got to put our life on the line. These people are desperate. They're seeking Jesus, but it's not, you know, I, I, I, I, I sympathize with the person who really wrestles with God. Is it is it that I don't have enough faith? There could be multiple factors. Craig Keener does a really great job in his books talking about this because he says, I've said this before in the podcast, but I love it whenever he goes up to speak to a large group of people, sometimes 10s of thousands of people about healing, the first thing he does is he'll bend over and show his bald head and say God doesn't always answer our prayers for healing. I love, I love that he does that because he believes in healing prayer. He's seen it. He's witnessed it probably hundreds of times, maybe thousands of times, but sometimes God's answer is no. And I love, I don't remember who first told me this, but I love that. Just reminding people, Number one, I tell people, and this is a little tongue in cheek, did you know Jesus had a best friend and his best friend was Lazarus? Because this is the only person he actually refers to as the one he loves. And, and so he finds out Lazarus is sick and his family members are grieving and really sad. And what does he do? He doesn't, he waits, He doesn't go there to heal him, but he he, he ends up going there and telling, you know, Martha, I am the resurrection of life. And then he raises him. But then guess what? Every single person that Jesus healed died again. Yeah. Yeah. So the purpose of healing is not primarily to alleviate pain, even though that's a a good part of it to end our suffering. It it's it's for the glory of God and it's a testimony to the Kingdom of God and to a greater reality we'll experience. But I I want to go to a verse that that's kind of just stuck with me. This is from James. I think chapter 5, the prayers of a righteous person in the old English availeth much, you know, has great effect or great power. This is about healing and I've always wrestled with this because I'm like, this could send the wrong message. This could send the wrong message that you're just not Christian enough or else you be healed from cancer, you be healed from whatever illness. I'm really stuck on this word righteous. I'm really stuck on this word righteous, the prayer of a righteous person. And the way I take this, and I'd want to get your hot take on this. The the way I take this is our prayers will be better. I'm going to come back to that word better because that's going to bother people. If our life and will is aligned more with God's, we'll be better at praying. I remember something that kind of blew me off my seat was reading from Eugene Peterson that the psalmist of the prayer masters. I think we've talked about this before in a podcast, this idea that prayers for everybody, but some people are better at it than others. And, and there's everything inside me that wants to say, AJ, that's, that's judgmental. That's, but I think it's true. Some people it's, it's a skill. Everyone can pray. Every child can pray. You know, every every young believer can pray, but but scripture presents it as a skill that we can develop and and we can grow in and get better AT and get and, and if we learn to pray better, that will involve our life and will be more aligned with Gods. You know, Josh McDowell. You remember Josh McDowell. Oh, do I remember from the old days. Speaker 2 Evidence demands A verdict, Yeah. Speaker 1 Yeah, he had this great. He had this great saying, he said. I'm glad I'm not going to get exactly right, he said. I'm glad God doesn't answer all of our prayers or else God would have made me a cowboy when I was 6. And I think what he was getting at is sometimes our prayers are not actually good for us. Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. Speaker 1 What we think is good for us is not actually good for us, and so we leave it to God. So prayers of a righteous person availeth much. Tell me how you process that. Speaker 2 It's an, it's an invitation to speak to God with boldness and confidence. I mean, the prayer, the parable, the persistent, you know, the, the prayer of the persistent widow who comes to, to seek favor of the person. I think the whole invitation to prayer in Scripture is to actually talk to God like it matters. And, and that's the, whether God is changing his mind or not, how God is processing our prayers, that I don't think is up to us. I, I don't think we have permission to know other than what scriptures revealed what's going on. There's a balance. Some one of my, I love this. One of my congregants shared this. One of the congregants in our church shared this from, from Spurgeon, Charles Spurgeon, this, this image. Spurgeon was a bastion of, you know, Calvinist theology. But one of my, one of my, one of my congregants shared this image and actually really loved it. They said, you know when a believer, when somebody who follows Jesus goes to glory and and enters heaven, they will walk up and there will be a sign above heaven and as they walk in, they will see above the sign the phrase whosoever shall come right, which is Jesus's words like whoever comes will can enter. But as they walk past the sign and look back on the other side of the sign is, is the phrase before the foundations of the earth. And, and the image here is that our experiences, we made the choice to follow Jesus, but in reality, God has had his hand in the whole process from the very beginning of creation. And I think in a way, I think the New Testament's teaching and, and the biblical teaching on prayer is a little bit like that. It's not the exact same, but it's, and it's kind of an analogy here. But from our perspective, we are to live as though our prayers actually matter. And then God listens to them and responds to them and does stuff because of them. When we enter the glory of God, we may end up looking back and and realizing God knew way more than you know we thought he did. And his sovereignty was far more a dynamic and complex than we could have ever imagined. But that's up for us to find out after the fact. We don't get to know that right now. Right now we're supposed to live like our prayers matters. Our prayers matter. Speaker 1 I love that I want to share. You know the aji know you're skeptical AI I know, I know you're you know you're skeptical of of the chats and the clods. Speaker 2 But which is interesting, by the way, I just, I didn't epiphany the other day. It's interesting that AI is here. And guess who invented the Internet? Al Gore. So there's an interesting connection here between the AI and the OWL, I think. Speaker 1 The I think al. Speaker 2 Gore invented AI too. I think Al Gore invented AI too. AI Gore, we should call him. Speaker 1 But it's helpful for aggregation. Aggregation is just getting data really fast. So what are the top 6 things that the people of God pray for in Scripture? You know, just by quantity, you know, the number of times this thing is pray for. So here we go. We'll start number six and we'll go to number one. Number six, wisdom or guidance. So this is saying like if all your prayers are laundry list, grocery list, God, give me this, God give me that. Just hear how the people of God pray right in Scripture. So number six, wisdom or guidance #5A deeper relationship with God, you know, seeing God, knowing God #4 acts of justice in, in the Psalms, you know, God, you know, taking vengeance on enemies and doing right by his people. That sort of thing #3 is healing. Healing is a very biblical prayer #2 forgiveness and mercy. So just to give balance to our prayer life, right? Are we praying for forgiveness and mercy more than we're praying for healing and #1 deliverance from enemies? Deliverance from enemies or danger is interesting. And I think that just shows the brokenness of the world. But, but let's get, you know, just just in the sort of in the final countdown here of this discussion, Pastor, Reverend, Pastor, Doctor AJ, if someone comes into your office, a student, let's say, and says, you know, hey, I've, I've, I've had this illness for five years, six years, 10 years, whatever it is, I've prayed so hard, I've prayed with faith, you know, I've cried my eyes out. I've cried out to the Lord and it hasn't gone away. Does that mean that God doesn't exist? Does it mean that my prayers are not effective enough? Am I not saying the right things? Am I not praying often enough? Why is God not responding to this prayer like he seems to do in the Bible? Speaker 2 Yeah, I would probably listen and be very slow to respond. I would acknowledge places in my own life where the the same tension is at place, is in place where I've sought healing and it has not come. And then I probably would want to have a really good conversation about the difference between healing and curing and how the Bible does not really focus on curing, it focuses on healing. And it turns out that part of healing is not the physical change that happens when our bodies are made right. Part of healing is the work God does in us as we seek God. And I would tell a story about my friend David, who passed away of cancer two years ago, who prayed fervently. We prayed with him for healing. And two, 2 1/2 three years ago, and he died. And he said in the last month of his life, his greatest fear in life was death. He was always afraid of death, always afraid that he was going to die. And in the last year, and it cripped, like literally crippled his life. I mean, he was constantly afraid of, of, of death. And he said in the last month of his life before he passed away, he said, I'm finally healed. And we would hear him say that and it wouldn't make any sense because we knew he was dying. And he would say I'm finally healed because I'm no longer controlled by my fear of death. And there is a sense of healing that takes place without the cure. The cure doesn't always come, but the healing we are promised. And the healing may not be exactly what we're asking for, but it is God's redemptive process and making us holistic on the inside and bring preparing us for glory. That's probably what I'd say. Speaker 1 Beautiful, yeah. Beautiful. Yeah. Speaker 2 I think Nyja in conclusion, I just, I I want to say to the person listening, don't get hung up on trying to figure out what God is or is not thinking and just treat him like a father and speak to him. Speaker 1 I like that. Speaker 2 Speak to him as though what? Speak to him as though he's listening and be ready to pour your heart, your soul out and let him speak to you and be present to you. Don't. You don't need to figure out sovereignty. It just and and don't and don't. Speaker 1 Don't. Speaker 2 Don't overcomplicate it. Talk to him like he's your father. Speaker 1 Yeah, and, and let me say specifically your good, good father, because not everybody can talk to their father. But I'll tell you a story. Just just to have this stick in people's heads as we, as we close my dad, wonderful, lovely man. You know, he calls me every now and again and he'll say, Nije, how much do you love your kids? I have 3 kids. I say, oh, dad, I love them so much. He says how much I said, oh man, they're like, they're, they're more important to me than anything. And he says, Nije, I love you more than that. And that, you know, my dad will say this about once a year specifically in that way. And gosh, to think that the Father in heaven's love is infinitely greater than that. Like he'll say. And EJ, AJ, how much do you love your kids? How much you love your wife, your family, Oh, so much. You know, infinitely He loves us more than that. So grace and peace, everybody. Bonhoeffer is one of my favorite theologians. And one of the reasons I love him so much is he says, you know, we all go through hard times where we pray to God. And one of the greatest gifts is God coming to us, God with us, coming to the very center of our suffering, living, suffering, dying, being buried with us. So if you find yourself alone, isolated, turn to Christ because the number, the first thing you'll say is I've been there and he'll be with you in your suffering. Pray with faith, pray, pray with hope, pray with love. And thanks for listening. God be with you.