Prayer is communicating with God, and prayer changes things. It changes both us and God. It changes us because it centers our attention around Him and it changes God because God is an emotional Being who feels our suffering and pain. The Bible does, in fact, show that God can be moved by our heartfelt prayers. A prime example is when God heard king Hezekiah’s prayer and extended his life: “Then the word of the Lord came to Isaiah, saying, ‘Go and say to Hezekiah, “Thus says the Lord, the God of your father David, ‘I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; behold, I will add fifteen years to your life.’”’” (Isaiah 38:4-5) Of course, this doesn’t mean that God’s character changes. God’s character never changes, but His plans for us may be contingent on our actions. That’s how real life works. In other words, prayer may be seen as a condition that God sets before taking certain actions. As an analogy, I may have decided to take my son to the ballpark today, but I don’t take him until he first asks. His asking didn’t change my mind, but rather I chose not to act until that condition was present—when it was demonstrated that he valued something that I valued, too.430 Prayer can also express love and gratitude. It engages God in our daily life, which is exactly what God desires as part of our relationship with Him.
James 4:2-3: “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, so that you may spend it on your pleasures.”
James 5:16: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much.”
This is God’s way of encouraging us to change our circumstances by getting Him involved in the struggles of our life. We can go on without Him but it would miss out on experiencing what He can do.
Luke 10:2: “And He was saying to them, ‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few; therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’”
In other words, Jesus instructed us to pray to God asking Him to send out evangelists for a harvest of souls, if only they can be reached with the gospel, given the limited amount of evangelists available.
What do Calvinists believe?
Prayer does not change God; prayer changes man.
Our reply:
From the Calvinist perspective, everything is already fixed and predetermined by an eternal decree, and so, prayer cannot change what God already decreed from eternity past, and even if we did conceptualize our prayers as changing God’s plans, it would still be changing it to what was decreed all along. By contrast, from the non-Calvinist perspective, while prayer does not change God’s character, it may certainly change His plans, given that there is no presumption to an eternally fixed decree. Certainly God may know the future, and know what will ultimately come to pass, but that knowledge of the end result still would reflect the interaction between God and man within time.
Philip Yancey: “Calvinism, with its emphasis on God’s absolute sovereignty, shifted the focus of prayer from its effect on God to its effect on the person praying.”431
This is true. God wants to be affected by our prayers. He desires real interaction with real people, with real prayers and in real life. When God created a creature in His own image, He did not want to create another animal that couldn’t meaningfully engage with Him. The Fall did not take away the core essence of man—their willfulness.
Our choice to either accept or reject Christ is a real choice, and it determines a very real, final destination, and God’s knowledge of our eventual choice does not cause our choice. So, if you believed that prayer could change how things would otherwise unfold, you’d be more likely to pray about it, and get involved with God to bring God’s will to this world. Jesus even told us to pray that God’s will would be done on earth as it is in Heaven (Matthew 6:10) and He said to pray for more evangelism (Matthew 9:38) so that more people who could get saved, would get saved. Prayer changes things. Life is not already set in stone, despite what deterministic Calvinists would claim.
Philip Yancey: “In a sort of negative proof of the power of prayer, three times God commanded Jeremiah to stop praying; God wanted no alteration in his plans to punish a rebellious nation. Prayer had, after all, softened God’s resolve before.”432
Jeremiah 7:16-18: “‘As for you, do not pray for this people, and do not lift up cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with Me; for I do not hear you. Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods in order to spite Me.’”
Jeremiah 11:14: “‘Therefore do not pray for this people, nor lift up a cry or prayer for them; for I will not listen when they call to Me because of their disaster.’”
Calvinist objection:
How would prayer be effectual if God refused to violate a person’s will?
Our reply:
Whereas non-Calvinists believe that Calvinism’s doctrine of an “Irresistible Grace” would indeed violate a person’s will (such as robotically forcing regeneration on to unwilling and unreceptive avowed Christ-hating atheists like Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins into becoming Christians, simply because they are an elect vessel to be toyed with), non-Calvinists do not believe that is how God generally operates (particularly based on Isaiah 5:1-7), and so non-Calvinists believe in a type of prayer that would instead be consistent with how they do believe, from the Bible, the way in which God does interact with people. For instance, Jesus personally confronted Saul of Tarsus along the road to Damascus, but that external confrontation is not the same as Calvinism’s doctrine of internal regeneration, though Calvinists certainly do try to conflate the two.433 So, if non-Calvinists were to pray for God to do some act of external revelation to their lost loved ones to help them turn to Christ, it would not be the same type of prayer of Calvinists who instead pray for an internal, irresistible regeneration applied against a person’s will.
Calvinist objection:
How would prayer be effectual if God has already done everything that He possibly could do to save someone?
Our reply:
God can do more. But of course, He would have to morally justify within His own principles a good reason for doing more. Our prayers of intercession can do that. Indeed, God can do more. For instance, He could do to everyone what He did to Saul of Tarsus, but non-Calvinists do not believe that is generally how God operates (especially since Jesus stated that it is more blessed for those who believe but “who did not see”, as per John 20:29), meaning that what He did for Saul of Tarsus was unique and special, for the greater blessing of the world, in terms of getting the gospel out—and not necessarily being something that forced him to do something against his will, any more than when God sent a storm and a whale somehow forced Jonah into repentance against his will. Both people still had a choice to pray and confess or not to pray and remain bitter. Of course, it was a more obvious choice, but it was still their choice, and some people under similar circumstances of outward miracles did not choose to repent in similar fashion, such as when (a) the false prophet Balaam remained evil, even after being confronted by an angel’s sword, or (b) when King Ahab only temporarily repented after personally witnessing fire coming down out of Heaven and consuming Elijah’s offering, or (c) when the religious leaders in ancient Israel personally witnessed Jesus’ miracles but refused to submit to Him.
Calvinist objection:
Isn’t praying to God asking that He would save our lost friends and family members a tacit admission of Irresistible Grace? Simply put, isn’t it inconsistent for non-Calvinists to pray that God would “save” one of their lost loved-ones if they don’t believe that God would, in fact, effectually overcome the will of the hearer and save them?
Our reply:
Ask Calvinists: Before you became a Calvinist, did you ever pray that God would save one of your loved ones? Many have, and obviously it would not have been with the expectation of an Irresistible Grace.
Here is one example of how a non-Calvinist prays that God would save a lost person:
Leighton Flowers: “I’m praying to see his conversion and I’m praying to see that God will continue to work in his life and on his heart. By the way, it’s perfectly plausible for us to pray that because—just because we don’t believe in God’s ‘effectually causing’ certain pre-selected individuals before the foundation of the world to be saved—we can still pray for God to influence and God to call and woo and help us to know how to pray for and to stand alongside and call him to repentance and faith.”434
Daniel Whedon: “When an Arminian prays that God would awaken the public mind to repentance, or convert an individual, or spread his Gospel through the world, and turn all men’s hearts to righteousness, he thereby expresses his earnest desire that such things may be accomplished in accordance with fundamental laws. Just as when he prays that a temporal blessing may be bestowed, as health restored, or life preserved, he usually expects no unequivocal miracle, but trusts that it may be done in such way as Infinite Wisdom may devise in accordance with the constitution of things; and that on condition of his prayer it may be ordered otherwise than if such prayer were not offered.”435
Furthermore, Jesus prayed for the very people who crucified Him, and He did so simply to forgive them, though without any indication that it meant they would be irresistibly saved. Luke 23:34 states: “But Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.’ And they cast lots, dividing up His garments among themselves.” Later, we learn that salvation was offered to these very same people who participated in His crucifixion, and being convicted, they asked Peter what to do. Peter’s answer encouraged them on what they needed to do to become saved. (Acts 2:36-41)
Calvinist objection:
God knows with absolute certainty whether our loved ones are someday going to become Christians, and yet we still pray for them anyway, and hence, to live with a sense of deterministic certainty, in the assurance of God’s decree, doesn’t dissuade our prayers or Christian life.
Our reply:
Our actions are part of what makes the future. If we choose to pray, or not to pray, that’s part of what defines the future. So, this sense of being able to affect the future gives us a reason to pray—we can make a difference! But, if Calvinists feel that living under a sense of Christianized fatalism makes things better for them, then great, but for non-Calvinists, it’s the very opposite, in so much that if there is no sense of inevitability of “what will be will be,” then we are motivated all the more to engage with God and pray.
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430 Helpful illustration provided by “The Society of Evangelical Arminians.”
431 Prayer: Does it Make Any Difference? (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2006), 131.
432 Ibid., 134.
433 See the discussion on Acts 26:14, regarding John MacArthur’s quote.
434 “Jordan Peterson & John MacArthur on Victimhood & Responsibility,” 12:05 – 12:33, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2S_pBLHO34&t=753s
435 Freedom of the Will: A Wesleyan Response to Jonathan Edwards (Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2009), 119.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
