James 5:16 promises that “The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.” There are numerous other verses that declare the effectiveness of prayer. But if you have put any thought into prayer, likely you’ve wondered, as I have, how it actually works. You may even have wondered whether it works at all.
There are some indirect ways in which we could say truthfully that prayer is effective. For example, it draws us closer to God and helps us to align our will with His. However, while true, this is not generally what we mean when we wonder whether prayer is effective. Usually we are wondering whether our requests will be granted.
But the idea of God answering our prayers raises some puzzling questions. If God knows everything, then He already is aware of whatever He plans to do in the future. If prayer is a request that God perform a particular action, if the prayer works, wouldn’t it entail influencing what God will choose to do? If so, wouldn’t this mean that God would choose a different action from what He intended originally? In that case, it would be impossible for God to know His own future actions. Either His foreknowledge was correct, in which case He could not alter His intent in response to prayer, or else He didn’t know the future (because the future turned out to be different from what He “knew”).
While these may seem to be strong challenges, they are illusory, not actual, problems. Close inspection reveals an erroneous assumption. Though it’s difficult to comprehend, God does not experience time in the same way we do.
The difficulty only arises if at one moment, God is planning a particular action, but then at the next moment He decides to do something different. However, it is only within the universe that the passage of time is experienced. Without getting into too much detail, according to physics, time began at the origin of the universe in the same way that matter did. As a result, it is only within the universe that the passage of time is experienced. Further, the concept of time cannot be separated from physical matter. Outside of the universe (whatever that may mean), time has no meaning. Therefore, to God (an immaterial Being), every moment is the present. Because He does not experience the passage of time, there isn’t one moment in which He’s planning to do one thing, and another in which He decides to do something else.
But if God cannot change His intent, how can prayer (a request intended to influence God’s intent) be effective? I don’t claim to have figured this out completely, but my best guess is that God simply incorporates our prayer into His original choice. Although from our perspective each of our prayers occurs at a particular point in time, God “hears” all prayers simultaneously. It’s hard to visualize, but in that single “moment”, from God’s perspective, He performs every action He ever has or will do. Therefore, at that “moment”, it’s entirely possible for Him to do something in response to a particular prayer, regardless of when the prayer occurs. He didn’t have one intent, hear a prayer, and then have a different intent as a result of the prayer. Rather, He always is aware of the prayer and (at least in some cases) performs the requested action in response. The prayer does not change His mind from one plan to another; it is part of the reason for the original action.
This solution preserves the idea that prayer is important, because it means it’s entirely possible that if we don’t pray for a particular thing, that thing may not happen. The prayer has had a direct impact on the outcome even though God does not change His intent.
This idea also implies a possibility that I would like to mention briefly simply because of how intriguing it is. Because God is not limited by time, it seems to follow that it might be effective to pray for past events, as long as we don’t yet know the outcome. If God hears all prayers simultaneously, in a single “moment”, that would mean the timing of our prayers have no impact on their effectiveness (since the “moment” at which God hears them is not before, after, or during the prayer no matter when it takes place). Therefore, there seems to be no reason that a prayer offered after an event couldn’t impact that event. For example, suppose you know a friend who is taking a difficult test from 12:00 to 1:00, and it’s now 1:05. If you have not yet heard whether the friend passed the test, a prayer for them at this time still may be effective. However, it seems to me (though only intuitively) that once you’ve heard whether your friend passed, further prayer would not be necessary.* This is not a well-developed idea, and it has no impact on the general subject of the effectiveness of prayer, but I thought I would mention it briefly because of how interesting it is.
Ultimately, we should not expect to understand prayer completely. There have been several attempts to study prayer scientifically, with varying results, but it is difficult to study as a result of its nature. Nevertheless, there is solid anecdotal evidence of its effectiveness, as well as the unambiguous promise of God. And, fortunately, it is not necessary to understand prayer in order to do it!
*Science nerds: doesn’t this remind you of quantum mechanics?
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