I can understand prayers for guidance, prayers for strength to endure adversity and prayers of thankgiving. But when religious figures begin praying for God to change his will, isn’t it the height of arrogance that presupposes God doesn’t know what he is doing?:
Pope Urges Prayers for Rain in Europe
What ever happened to “Thy will be done?” How is this different from Pat Robertson praying to steer hurricanes away from his Virginia Beach, VA headquarters?
deep breath
Ok, this is how I understand things to work. YMMV.
Just because something happens doesn’t automatically mean it’s God’s will, first off. Things happen all the time that aren’t God’s will for us. For example, the Bible says that it is not God’s will that anyone perish, but that all would be saved. However, we also see from scripture that hell had to be enlarged because so many people were ending up there. It’s not God’s will that anyone go to hell, but it’s happening anyway.
The Bible also says the enemy (the devil) comes to kill, steal and destroy. A drought would certainly cover all three if you think about it. The devil isn’t some guy in red PJ’s with a pitchfork, and he doesn’t just go after Christians. He goes after everyone.
Does God Himself send droughts sometimes? I think so. The prophet Elijah was given the power to shut up the sky for what? Three and a half years?
In this case, praying for rain can’t hurt. If God has sent the drought, the answer will be “no” and it won’t rain till Europe gets whatever message God is trying to send to them. If the drought is of the devil, the prayers will help.
I believe it was John Wesley that said that God never intervenes on earth on His own. He works solely through prayer. Jesus said “you have not because you ask not” which suggests that God is more than willing to give, but you must ask. (It’s also written that if earthly fathers know how to give good gifts to their kids, how much more can God give good gifts to those who ask? Rain for Europe would definitely fall into the “good gift” category.)
Daniel asked for help and received the answer from heaven on the first day (in this case, the archangel Michael showed up). However, he didn’t see the answer until the 21st day because Michael ended up having to fight a demon in the spirit realm first. This suggest that the devil absolutely interferes with answers to prayer. Was it God’s will that Daniel get the help he needed? Yes. Was the devil fighting it? Yes. Some biblical scholars believe that had Daniel stopped praying, he wouldn’t have got his answer. Something about prayer “fuels” the fighting in the spirit realm.
So thereya go.
I think there is a difference between God’s will regarding men’s souls, and the way He runs the universe. If things like the weather are subject to prayer, then wouldn’t we see a lot more “miraculous” contraventions of the laws of physics as the religious community rallies the faithful to change the outcome of fires, floods, pestilence and all sorts of afflictions in the real world?
So the devil has the same power as God to affect the physical world? I thought his power was limited to deceiving the minds of men, and thereby gaining control of their souls. Where in the Bible does it say that the devil can send drought, fire or flood? If the devil has powers equal to God with regards to the physical world, your cosmology is reduced to two wizards wielding magical powers, one sending calamity and the other delivering the world from it.
So, are no prayers arrogant or presumptuous? How do you distinguish between a prayer of deliverance, and a prayer to win the lottery?
So how does the concept of “a blessing in disguise” fit in to this view? Many things have happened that, in hindsight, are attributed to divine intervention; yet, at the time, the peril was unknown, and prayers for deliverance were not made.
This illustrates one of the less savory aspects of God in the Bible, a god who may not answer prayers propitiously unless the prayers are sustained and vigorous enough to meet an unknown standard. How is man to know how much is enough, or even if the standard is within the capability of man? This behavior is expected from the schoolyard bully twisting your arm until you cry uncle loud enough, but it doesn’t paint a very attractive picture of loving and merciful God.
I liken it to a child wishing fervently for a bike for his birthday.He can hope and hope and try to ask his parents every day to give him the bike, and in some cases they will. This is not arrogance, this is just hopefulness.
If the same child demanded a bike for his birthday and told his parents that he better get a bike because he asked for one, that would be arrogant, and snotty to boot.
One would hope that God runs the universe with a little more resolve and knowledge of what is best for the world than parents who cave in to their child’s whining. The arrogance comes in when men recognize that God is all-knowing and all-powerful, yet believe He is also subject to changing his mind in response to prayer, if it is ernest enough.
I don’t know how well to express this, but here goes:
If God has an all-encompassing plan and omniscience etc, it would not be such a stretch to imagine that He would change some things and not others because it was in the best interest of humanity at large. Or maybe just one person. Who knows? What I’m trying to say is that if God’s already got everything figured out, He’s not changing His mind. We just think it looks that way.
Yeah… I think that’s what I mean.
We have a precedent in dealing with weather, which I take as a precedent to deal with the physical world that we inhabit. In Mark 4:39 Yeshua speaks to the storm and it is immediately calmed. Why I think that we have been given a precedent to deal with the physical world, as opposed to just the spiritual world, is Matthew 18:18-20. Which is telling us to pray about things on earth.
The reason that, I think, things like droughts and storms happen is that we live in a world that is governed by physical laws. One of those laws is the law of convection. (If that is the wrong word forgive me, its been more than 15 years since I last had a meteorology class.) Water will evaporate from the oceans, seas, lakes, rivers ect. The clouds will be acted upon by the various air currents and the geography that they are traveling over. It will then rain or snow (or not rain or snow) without the direct intervention of any supernatural being, because that is how the physical laws of this world have been set up.
From Ambrose Pierces “Devils Dictionary”:
PRAY, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
I was going to say that I would strongly advise you not to do that. But there is nothing wrong praying to God for rain.
But if bringing rain is fundamentally in the best nature of humanity, and God is basically merciful, then doesn’t it stand to reason that he would make it rain weather we prayed for it or not? Would he withhold it just to see if he could get us to pray?
An omniscient God can’t “change his mind” or he couldn’t be omniscient.
Also, it’s not logical to say that anything couldn’t be God’s will if we’re talking about a being who is both omniscient amnd omnipotent. H ewould have known everything that was going to happen before he ever created the universe. How could he be surprised by anything at this point.
Contrary to SnoopyFan’s assertion, there is nothing in the Bible about enlarging Hell, (The Bible doesn’t mention Hell at all, for that matter) but even it God did make Hell bigger, wouldn’t that imply that he wasn’t omniscient? If he’s God he already knows how many people he’s going to fry for being gay or being Hindu or for whatever other trivial “sins” he deems worthy of eternal, sadistic torture so why wouldn’t he just make Hell big enough to begin with?
Not true. He might decide something now knowing He would change His mind later. Of course, from the mortal perpective, this is exactly the same as if God had known all along and simply waited for some proper time.
Regardless, I think God has more or less pointed out to huanity that we should be very careful to have enough food, since He has made enough available to us in any condition.
The prayer is to ask God that HIS will be to stop the storm. Its not to ask God to change his mind but that his plan was to stop and save the rest.
Let HIS will be done but please let it be that the victims suffer no more.
Being omniscient, that couldve been the plan all along.