Photo Credit: bradleygee
Have been thinking about prayer and what it is; what it does.
When you read accounts like that of Abraham when he was talking with God about how many righteous people he would need to find in Sodom in order for God to hold back His wrath, I wondered whether Abraham was actually changing God’s mind, whether he was altering God’s final decision. Or when Moses prayed for the people of Israel when God seemed determined to destroy them and start again with Moses himself. Did Moses convince God to change?
What sealed it for me was when I recalled a Tim Keller sermon I heard a while back on the Abraham passage. He said that the point at which Abraham stopped asking was when he came to the realisation that God would genuinely hold back His punishment if there was just one righteous person found there… but of course, Abraham realised that there were none: no one is truly righteous before God.
The conclusion I’ve come to is that I don’t change God’s mind when I pray. It’s me who changes as I learn who God is in a deeper way; as our relationship builds; as we communicate and as my will aligns with His as we do so.