Sunday, August 24, 2008

Praying a Little Late

Question
God is not bound by the constraints of time. That being said, if we pray about something after it has already happened, can God go back and change it? Or, could God act knowing that the prayers will be made in the future?

Answer
Of course, God can do whatever He wants. That's one of the perks of being God, after all. However, let's analyze this.

An incident occurs, leading to a believer praying that the incident not occur or that the incident occurs differently. God chooses to respond to the prayer, and He "goes back in time" (for a lack of better terminology) and creates a new time line, changing the initial incident to a more favorable outcome. The believer in the new time line then, taking this favorable outcome for granted, does not pray regarding the incident. Since the change to the time line was due to God responding to prayer, and that prayer has not occurred, God then chooses not to intervene regarding the incident, recreating the first time line. All things being the same as before, the believer will again pray that God intervene. This time, however, God looks at the vicious circle and says, "this is stupid" and chooses not to act.

Alternatively, God does this all the time. Before an incident even occurs, God knows how its outcome will affect us. Being a loving, gracious, and merciful God, He chooses to intervene on our behalf without anyone praying a single word about it--He just does it because it is who He is. Of course, being reactionary creatures as we are, when God spares us pain in our lives that we didn't even know was coming, we fail to recognize and appreciate this fact, depriving God of the praise He is due.

Recommendation
"Pray continually" - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

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