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[Throw God Away]

I'm confused on why we pray over situations when God's will always prevails. I'm asking as a Christian who's trying to strengthen my faith and understanding-
Other than to thank God and ask for forgiveness of our sins, of course, prayer is meant to draw us closer to God and present him with our needs/wants, and to pray over things we want to have happen. I go to a church that's big on teaching us how to pray over what we want and to ask God for big things, because he is able...

But I get a little turned around in my thinking because God obviously doesn't answer every prayer in that respect, he has a plan that will always prevail. What is the point in praying over situations at all if the outcome is set to God's will already? And along with that, how does multiplying prayer (having more people pray over a situation) make a difference?

Hopefully this is making sense, please let me know where to clarify my thought process. Thanks for your time and consideration.

[jimwalton]

God's will doesn't always prevail. He genuinely allows us to participate in how life will play itself out. We have free will, and God sometimes directs our lives, and sometimes flows with our decisions. Let me share a few examples.

Genesis 18.16-33. God is responding to Abraham's requests.

Genesis 19.16-22. The angel of the Lord directed Lot and his daughters to the mountains. They instead requested to settle in Zoar, which the Lord allowed. This turned out to be to their detriment, but God honored their request.

Exodus 32.11-14. Moses interceded for the Israelites, and the Lord responded to Moses' pleas.

God didn't want Israel to have a king (1 Samuel 8), but gave in to their requests. This was to their detriment, caused decades of problems, and led the nation into spiritual demise.

Jeremiah 18.1-12. The Lord responds to people's responses, and makes changes accordingly.

There are many more examples, but these will suffice. Prayer is a powerful thing, and we shouldn't pray lightly or thoughtlessly. In other words, be careful what you wish for, you may just get it. God lets us know what is best for us. Sometimes he doesn't grant our wishes because there is something less than the best about them, but sometimes he grants them as part of our discipline and our growth as believers. Handle prayer carefully. Seek the Lord's will; never pray carelessly or selfishly.

> how does multiplying prayer (having more people pray over a situation) make a difference?

God is responsive. Acts 12 is an example. It's not like we can overpower God by numbers, but it is an expression of the desires of the hearts of God's people in unity when many engage in prayer for the same need.

[Jeff the Jedi]

> God's will doesn't always prevail.

Many Christians wouldn't agree with this. Calvinism/Reformed theology in particular comes to mind.

[jimwalton]

I don't think you're correct about this. Calvinism makes a distinction between predestination (pertaining to salvation) and determinism (God's will always prevails). The tenets of Calvinism speak strongly about predestination and irresistible grace: when God calls someone to salvation, they respond positively. That's different than the original poster's proposition (and what he or she was apparently taught), that God's will always prevails in all situations, so why bother to pray. The Bible (nor Calvinism) doesn't teach determinism. Very few Christians (if any) would say that we are fully determined and there is no such thing as free will. It's not a tenable Biblical position for anyone to hold. Even when some Christians glibly say, "God is in control," they are not talking about determinism.

[Bob Walton]

The sovereignty of God over all things and His providential oversight of the affairs of human life and human history should be broken down into three categories, all of which clarify the nature of the divine decrees upon which the providential acts of God are based.

• The first is the direct decrees of God, which are those works that are carried out by God in the very act of purposing them. Creation is an obvious example, along with miracles. But we should also note that the direct decrees of God are often carried out by means of secondary causes. If God is indeed “sustaining all things by his powerful word” (Hebrews 1:3) so that “in him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:17), the very concept of the “laws of nature” is unbiblical, stemming from a Deist mentality. What we call the laws of nature are nothing but demonstrations of God’s faithful superintendence of His creation. Apart from God’s sustaining power, the universe could not exist for a single instant (e.g., the very nature of the atomic nucleus, where particles that ought to repel one another “hold together” by a force that scientists can name, but not explain).
• The operation of secondary causes within the providential decrees of God extends also to those things He permits, but does not cause directly. This is a difficult area, and some attempts to deal with it have led to unbiblical conclusions, whether making God a helpless bystander in the face of evil or affirming God as its direct cause. Scripture, however, indicates that, while God decrees that evil may exist and occur (Genesis 45:7-8; 50:2; Job 1:9-12; Acts 2:23; Romans 9:22-23) and uses it for His purposes, God may never be said to be the author of sin (James 1:13-16; I John 1:5), though He clearly is the author of calamity (Jeremiah 49:8).
• The third category involving the decrees of God relates only tangentially to His providence; this involves His preceptive decrees. Here the will of God is expressed, not in terms of what He will do or has done, but in terms of what He desires His creatures to do. God’s precepts indicate His will for human behavior and include the commands that are found throughout the Word of God. God’s providence is involved here as human beings obey or do not obey these precepts; both responses are part of God’s providence.

One of the questions often raised about the providence of God among Christians is its relationship to human responsibility. If God, as the Westminster Shorter Catechism indicates, “hath for his own glory foreordained whatsoever comes to pass,” what are we to make of man’s responsibility for his actions? Does Calvinism, as Arminians often charge, make of man no more than a puppet? Does belief in divine providence lead inevitably to fatalism?

The answer obviously is no. While we can no more explain in logical terms how the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man can coexist than we can explain the Trinity, the humanity and deity of Christ, or the existence of evil in the world, we can and must affirm two basic biblical truths - that all things occur according to the sovereign will of God and that man is a responsible moral agent. If the first were not true, God would be subservient to the whims of autonomous man; if the second were not true, divine commandments would be without meaning. Nor can the solution be to affirm that God knows what He does not sovereignly decree. Not only does the term “foreknowledge” in Scripture refer to relationships and not merely facts (Romans 8:29), but what God knows can be no less certain than what He decrees; the only solution for the Arminian is to deny God’s omniscience along with His sovereignty in order to preserve human autonomy.