Nothing could be more absurd than to think that your prayers would change God's mind.

The real question is does prayer matter? Does prayer change things?

Does prayer change God's mind?

The simple answer to that question is, of course not.

Nothing could be more absurd than to think for one second that your prayers would change God's mind.

If you think about it for a minute, what could you possibly contribute to God's thinking that would incline him to change his mind?

I mean, the idea is here he has a plan that he's going to set in motion until suddenly he gains new information about the situation from you.

And he says, whoops, I better change my plans here because I've just learned something and I didn't know before.

Now there are theologians who really believe that God is constantly learning things and is at the mercy of the information you give him.

I don't think that's Christian theology, but it is one of those views out there.

And the other thing would be that God has a plan and he's about to execute it.

And it's not that he needs more information to change his mind, but that the plan that he has designed is a poor one.

It's either an evil one or a foolish one until he gets the benefit of your counsel.

And you persuade him to cease and desist from his plan of wickedness or of stupidity and as a result of your great insight, the deity changes his mind.

Now I'm speaking as a fool here, right? Which is not hard. This is character acting.

And yet there are times when the Bible speaks as if God's mind is changed, where it says Moses, intercedes, or so on, and God relents.

And then in the didactic portions of Scripture, however, we are warned that God is not a man that he should repent or that he should relent.

And that this is simply an answer from Morphic expression that is describing God in human terms when it speaks of his changing his mind.

But the thing is that having said that we obviously don't change God's mind in that craft sense of adding information or intelligence that he lacks.

The real question is does prayer matter? Does prayer change things?

And there the answer is, of course it does. God uses means to accomplish his ends and some of those means include prayer.

And again, we are invited to participate and to be used of God as means to his ends whereby he works through the prayers of his people.

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