Can faith change God's plan?
The question sounds like a contradiction: if God has settled what He will do, prayer seems pointless, and if prayer moves Him, His plan seems unsettled. The writers in this collection answer by drawing a line between God's eternal purpose, which nothing can shift, and His dealings with us in time, in which He genuinely responds to faith — and by showing that prayer is not a challenge to His plan but part of it.
A purpose that circumstances did not shape
Start with what faith cannot touch. God's plan was not drafted in reaction to events; the events run inside the plan.
Frederick William GrantThe purpose is an "eternal purpose," from eternity, taking in an eternity to come. God does not shape His thoughts as circumstances arise; the circumstances are controlled by His thoughts and plans. How blessed to know that He is absolutely Master of all things. It is the only thing that can give the smallest comfort in the middle of such a scene of confusion as the one around us. Redemption was not an impulse with Him — impulse comes from outside — but the fruit of a purpose that was His before the world was.
Prayer as the channel, not the challenge
So why pray at all? Because God has chosen to bring about what He purposed through the asking of His people. Daniel read in Scripture that the years of exile were nearly over — and then prayed about it.
James BoydHe turns to God in prayer that what was written might be fulfilled. Not that he had the least doubt about it, but he was in the mind of God as to the carrying out of His ways on earth, and how His acts, whether for blessing or otherwise, follow on the prayers of His people. One might have supposed that the time for confession of sins and for prayer for deliverance was now too late, that God would carry out His purpose and fulfil His Word apart from the prayers of His people. But these are only the thoughts of a careless heart. He has set man in dependence on Himself, and that dependence is expressed in prayer.
When Scripture says God changed His mind
At Sinai, Israel made a golden calf and God announced judgment. Moses pleaded, and the record says the Lord turned from the harm He had said He would do. One writer reads that outcome as designed, not as a reversal forced on God.
The Bible TreasuryThe pleading of Moses is most beautiful and instructive, but it is so because in it he was a picture of the great Mediator. The mediation of Moses prevailed: God intended it to prevail. And is it not worth noticing that although God said to Moses, "your people," the Holy Spirit, in writing this record, says "His people"? It tells us that the counsels of grace stand firm, in spite of the sins of that people.
The words God used before Moses said anything point the same way. "Let Me alone" is not the language of a mind that cannot be reached.
An Outline of Sound WordsHow great was the mercy of God that stopped to consider the feelings of His servant in this great crisis. He knew well what the thoughts and desires of Moses would be; He already feels the pleadings of the heart of His dear devoted servant before they are spoken, for He says, "Let Me alone." Israel's sin had called down on them the righteous anger of a holy God, but intercession caused mercy to be mixed with judgment.
What faith actually reaches
The woman from the region of Tyre had no claim on Israel's Messiah, and He said so. She kept asking anyway, taking the place of a dog under the table — and got everything.
J. N. DarbyThe Syrophenician woman got through all dispensations to the heart of God; and all God's heart was at her disposal.
The answer, not the request
Faith does not get to dictate the form of the reply. Paul asked three times for his thorn in the flesh to be taken away, and it stayed.
A J PollockIn prayer we can be sure that God sends the best answer He can. Paul prayed three times for his thorn in the flesh to be removed. But better than granting the request, God gave the answer, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." So he gloried in the very thing he had begged to have removed.
Hezekiah, by contrast, was told he would die, wept, and was given fifteen more years. The extra time was not the blessing he imagined.
Leslie M. GrantGod was virtually stopping time so that Hezekiah could live fifteen years longer. Would we want time reversed in our lives? If God gave us time to live some years over again, would we do better than before? Hezekiah found by experience that things don't work that way. In his added fifteen years he spoiled the devotedness of his testimony for God, as we see soon afterwards.
Summary
- Purpose fixed. God's eternal purpose was not shaped by circumstances; circumstances are shaped by it, and faith never rewrites it.
- Purpose channelled. God set man in dependence on Himself, and He carries out what He has purposed in answer to the prayers of His people.
- Purpose invited. "Let Me alone" was said to a man God knew would plead; the intercession of Moses prevailed because God intended it to prevail.
- Purpose reached. Faith that keeps asking, like the woman of Tyre, gets past every barrier to the heart of God — and finds all of it open to her.
- Purpose kept. God sends the best answer He can; Paul's unanswered request became his glory, while Hezekiah's granted one was spoiled.