One of the common aphorisms we hear from time to time is, “Prayer changes things!” When someone is experiencing a tough time, one of the ways we’ll often encourage them to hang in there and not give up is by reminding them that “Prayer changes things!”
We often hold up the Old Testament story of King Hezekiah as an example. Stricken with a serious illness, he was instructed by the prophet to put his house in order because he was going to die. Hezekiah wept bitterly and cried out to God, and it says, “Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah: “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘This is what the Lord, the God of your father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will add fifteen years to your life” (Isaiah 38:4-5). It appears that God, in response to the fervency of Hezekiah’s prayers, changed his mind.
But … if part of what it means for God to be sovereign is that the future is exhaustively settled, then to what degree can He change his mind, or can prayer actually “change things”? If, in the omniscience of God, the future is conclusively laid out with every occurrence and happening being fully determined in advance, how can prayer “change things”? That idea appears to be at odds with the notion of a sovereign and omniscient God who knows everything, including the future, perfectly and with certainty.
In Hezekiah’s case, did God change his mind in response to his prayers? If we say, “No … that God intended all the way along to grant Hezekiah those additional fifteen years,” then how do we explain him telling Hezekiah to put his house in order because he was going to die? Did God lie or mislead Hezekiah? Or did the prophet misapprehend the word of the Lord before speaking on God’s behalf? If our belief in a sovereign God means an exhaustively settled future with every particular nailed down in advance, then we’ve got some other sticky theological questions to answer.
It was this conundrum that led me to embrace the idea of open theism—a notion that says God not only chose to create a world with us as free moral agents, but also gave us the power to make choices that have real consequences. While history is marching toward a predetermined and certain conclusion, He has given us the ability to turn possibilities into actualities by the choices we make along the way. And He has endowed the enterprise of prayer with the potential to genuinely “change things.”
Some people think this idea undercuts His sovereignty and omniscience. I disagree—in fact, if anything, I believe it augments them. God is not so limited that He has to know everything with certainty in advance. As a being of infinite intelligence, some things can exist as possibilities depending upon the choices we make. But this infinitely intelligent God is still intellectually agile and creative enough to work with whatever choice we make to where it ultimately fits into the prearranged end game He’s established for the human race.
Two very powerful truths emerge and come into the spotlight when we embrace the open view: (1) Our lives matter. Our choices matter. We have been endowed with the gift of significance and have a genuine “say so” in what comes to pass. Far from being purposeless and accidental beings, we are creatures that have been bestowed with meaning beyond our wildest imagination. (2) Our prayers matter. Think with me: If everything in the future is absolutely fixed, then why pray? God is going to do what He wants to do irrespective of any supplication or petition on our part. A belief in a fixed future is, in many ways, a disincentive to pray. But in the open view, our prayers count. They matter. Now that doesn’t mean God is obligated to answer them in the way we want. As a sovereign God, sometimes the answer is going to be “No!” He is God and we are not! But it does mean that sometimes the answer might be “Yes!” And we should never fail to pray in the belief that perhaps, as He did with Hezekiah, God can change His mind … because the future, even though it is headed toward a conclusion that has already been decided, is not so rigid and fixed to where our choices and our prayers don’t matter.