Prayer Changes Things
Prayer changes things. Making requests of God changes how things are and will be.
This is the consistent claim of scripture and a concept that we see Jesus attempting to get across to his followers on nearly every page of the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – the parts of the Bible that tell the stories of the life of Jesus).
The scriptures from beginning to end depict a God who wants to live in relationship with us, that created us to have our own will and desires, and to live our lives in relationship, in partnership with God. This is a God that clearly wants to hear from us and wants to engage the world with us.
Unfortunately, despite God’s best efforts, we can all too easily develop a concept of God as being distant and removed from us and our present situation. We can also develop the idea that because God is God and knows all things and is all powerful that what we say and think doesn’t matter – that everything will happen the way that it will regardless of whether we pray or not.
The idea that God is distant, removed, and unmoved by our requests might make a lot of sense in light of who we are – so finite and limited – and who God is – the infinite creator and sustainer of all things – except for one thing – God clearly and repeatedly expressing that this is not who God is, how God wants to operate, or the kind of relationship God wants to have with us.
In the origin stories of Genesis one through three, we see God creating a good and beautiful world, creating us in God’s own image, giving us the world to enjoy and take care of. Then we see God not checking out and skipping town, but walking with us through the garden in the cool of the day. This reflects God’s original intent for us to have a life of purposeful work lived out in an ongoing relationship, partnership, and conversation with God.
In Genesis 18 we read the story of where Abraham famously negotiates with God for the lives of any innocents in the towns of Sodom and Gomorrah – two towns that God is set to destroy because of their overflowing wickedness. Apparently things were so bad that two travelers couldn’t even pass through town without a mob attempting to gang rape them to death. Abraham appealed to God to be merciful to any inhabitants of these towns who were doing what is right with their lives and because his engagement of God, God changed the plan and Abraham’s nephew Lot and his family were spared.
In Exodus 32 we see another amazing story of God’s responsiveness to a human’s request. Moses is up on Mount Sinai with God when the people that God has rescued from slavery in Egypt and provided for throughout the wilderness betrayed God and started worshiping lifeless statues that they made with their own hands. This enraged God and God told Moses what was going on and that he was going to destroy the Israelites and start His plan over for a saving-community through Moses. But Moses advocated for the people and reminded God of His promises. This pivotal scene ends with these amazing words, “So the Lord changed his mind.”
In 2 Kings 20, Hezekiah King of Judah gets a visit from the prophet Isaiah who tells him that he won’t recover from his current sickness and he needs to get his affairs in order. On hearing the news, King Hezekiah turned in his bed and wept bitterly and prayed to God. Responding to Hezekiah’s request, God changed how things were going to be and he told the prophet Isaiah to tell the King that God has heard your prayer and will heal you and add fifteen years to your life.
The Old Testament is full of stories of kings, prophets, poor widows, and oppressed people crying out to God and God changing how thing are or were going to be because they asked God to. Amazing!
Then when we get to the New Testament, especially when we look at the life and teachings of Jesus, it is like Jesus is trying to grab us by the shoulders and shake us and say “God loves you and wants you to ask God for the things you want!” See Matthew 7:7-11.
Jesus’ commonly refers to God as “Father” and uses the imagery of children with their parents to illustrate the prayer-relationship, the requesting-relationship, God wants us to have with Him. Children ask things of their parents all the time. Their whole lives essentially depend on asking their parents for things. Parents don’t give their kids everything they ask for and often the kids don’t know why, but it doesn’t keep the kids from asking, and it doesn’t stop the parents from wanting to be the ones that the children come to with their wants and desires. For children and children of God, prayer isn’t a formula or a “how to make things work” mechanism for getting what you want, but a relationship of responsive love.
One of my favorite examples of this is found in John chapter two. Jesus is at a wedding with his mother when the wine runs out – an embarrassing predicament for the host and an unpleasant situation for the guests. Jesus’ mama pointed this situation out to Him in a “I want you to do something about this” sort of way. Jesus just wanted to let the situation go thinking the timing wasn’t right, but his mama disregards his reservations and turns to the servants and says “Just do whatever he tells you” and seemingly walks away. Needless to say, that wedding feast didn’t run out of wine.
I love this story so much partly because of the endearing dynamic it reveals between Jesus and his mother, but partly because it is a request, an answered prayer over a seemingly trivial thing. Running out of wine at the wedding feast would have been socially embarrassing and inconvenient to some, but no one’s life or health or soul was at stake and the world certainly wasn’t going to be saved or lost because of this. In light of Jesus’ life mission, it was a seemingly trivial thing, but his mama had asked him to do something about it – and he did . . . because he loved her . . . and she wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
As the Apostle Paul said, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done.”
Ask things of God like you believe prayer changes things. God is looking forward to hearing from you.
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