Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

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 promise and not fulfill?

• Numbers 23:19

God, who is enthroned from of old, who does not change— he will hear them and humble them, because they have no fear of God.

• Psalm 55:19

“I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed.

• Malachi 3:6

“First of all, we need to establish that it is the sovereign God who not only invites us but commands us to pray. Prayer is a duty, and as we perform that duty, one thing for sure is going to be changed, and that is us. To live a life of prayer is to live a life of obedience to God. …
“But can our requests change God’s sovereign plan? Of course not. When God sovereignly declares that he is going to do something, all of the prayers in the world aren’t going to change God’s mind. But God not only ordains ends, he also ordains means to those ends, and part of the process he uses to bring his sovereign will to pass are the prayers of his people. And so we are to pray.”

• R.C. Sproul, Now, That’s a Good Question

God does not change, but He asks us to pray.  That seems to be a contradiction, but God wants a relationship with us.  That means that prayer simply does not only relate to us asking for things, even asking in intercession for others.  Rev. Sproul mentions that also.  But to have a relationship, you need to talk.  If you sit across the dinner table from a friend and you stare at each other, wanting the other one to be the first to speak, you need to evaluate how good of a friend you are.

But Rev. Sproul’s last paragraph is important.  God’s will is going to be done, but there can be a variety of means to the end.  And maybe, just maybe, God heals a person because God hears the voices of His people asking for that healing.  It was in His plan for the healing.  But He wanted to hear the prayers also, the means to the end.  Our relationship is improved by freely talking with God, and our faith is improved knowing that God listens.  As Rev. Sproul started, our prayer may not change God, or His plan since God in His nature does not change, but prayer changes us.

Soli Deo Gloria.  Only to God be the Glory.