Why do we pray if God knows everything? If God is sovereign, why pray? Let's be honest: sometimes, we pray, and things happen. Sometimes, we pray, and they don't. Sometimes, we forget to pray, and the thing we should have prayed for happen anyway. Is there really a connection between praying and things happening? How effective is it? Does persistent, repetitive prayer really change things?
3 Points That Prove the Effectiveness of Prayer
1. The Bible clarifies that God's purposes are sovereign and unchanging.
Numbers 23 is a great example. Verse 19 says,
"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?"
God's not a man. He never learns anything new. There's nothing we can say that He has forgotten about. What we say doesn't change his heart or make him wise up in experience and change his mind. The phrase, 'God is not a man who would change his mind,' illustrates His sovereignty. At one point, we have this principle that God's purposes are unchanging, but Biblical wisdom is found in holding together two tensions that may seem to you like they contradict.
2. God's plans are unfolding to us, which means we don't know what's happening.
Exodus 32 shows us that God changes his course of action, using the English word 'repent.' God repented - not because he felt bad about what he would do. He repented, as in he changed his mind, based on Moses's prayer.
God was heading down to destroy Israel, and Moses prayed. God said, 'Because you did this, I'm going to change my mind about what I was going to do.' The irony of the story, of course, is that God was the one who told Moses to go down and check the situation out. Moses didn't even know that the people had corrupted themselves. God showed it to him.
"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, "These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt."'" - Exodus 32: 7-8
Furthermore, when Moses prayed, the very thing he used to change God's mind, according to Exodus 32, was God's own promise. God already knew about it. Moses asked God to remember His promise and then petitioned God to change his course of action. Moses's prayer resulted from God's plan, and God wanted Moses to ask in prayer. He sovereignly put him in a situation where he would ask in prayer.
3. Our prayers are genuinely instrumental.
The text is clear: without Moses' prayer, God would have destroyed Israel.
"But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. 'Lord,” he said, 'why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, "It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth?" Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: "I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever."'14 Then the Lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened." Exodus 32:11-14
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