A Dynamic Relationship

I grew up being taught a philosophical version of God that illustrates Him as all-powerful and all-knowing. He knows everything that's going to happen and as a result has preplanned every use of his infinite power. He's immutable, unwavering, insusceptible to outside influence. The Earth is in His complete control and His plan will not be altered. He is too massive and too staunch.

It's just not true. It's philosophically true, if you're Plato. But I think it's pretty plain that philosophy can get us to so many different places. Logic goes almost anywhere. What's important is the presupposition of truth that logic necessitates. To get anywhere logically we must first assume certain things to be true. If the truth presupposed is false, then it's highly unlikely an array of sensible thinking and cogent conclusions is going to get anywhere true. Positing the Bible as true, it does not work out that God is unshifting and unmoving.

Some things are that way in God. Some things are the way they are and that's the way they're going to be. God's character does not change. His ultimate plan for salvation was ordained before Creation and will not change in the future. His design for the finality of life on earth, the second coming, is not going to suddenly be modified. His love isn't ending. His strength isn't weaning. His holiness isn't tainting. His glory isn't dimming. His faithfulness isn't dwindling. YHWH is I am. He is. He was. He always will be. But relationships don't work that way. His relationship with us is dynamic.

That's what Scripture tells us. God was going to kill the entirety of the Israelite population, but Moses prayed desperately to YHWH and made a number of appeals that changed how God dealt with the Israelites, He spared them. Hezekiah was doomed to die of a disease in a very brief period of time, but he prayed and the compassionate God modified Hezekiah's fate and gave him many more years to live. YHWH was going to destroy Ninevah, but they repented in their hearts and with their actions, and the merciful LORD spared them. Scripture tells us that we get what we pray for with faith, we are able to, like a woman with a judge looking for justice or a poor person begging at a door, obtain from God what we ask when we ask with great perseverance and constancy. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective.

God listens to us. God's actions are changed by our desires expressed to Him through devoted prayer. So often I find people who believe that their prayer is without efficacy, that it has no impact upon what God does. But it does. It does. We have to get that through our head. Scriptures explains to us that it does, tells us stories about it, and essentially assumes it to be true. If we believe this, it will change the way we pray. Prayer will no longer be a powerless act of tradition and rote spiritual behavior; it will be more than a way to inner peace and development of a personal relationship with God. It will be the way God created it to be, the way it truly is for those who believe - full of power.