If God already knows everything and has a plan, what exactly is prayer changing — and why does Jesus tell us to ask at all?

• H

  Hana3w ago

  You know what, I prayed for twenty years for God to take away my same-sex attraction. Every night. Every single night. So either Matthew 7:7 has conditions nobody told me about or we need to be a lot more careful about how we quote those verses to people.

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  Nina2w ago

  My daughter was in a coma for eleven days. Our church, our extended family, people we'd never met — hundreds praying around the clock. She woke up. Neurologists were stunned. I'm not going to tell you prayer doesn't do anything. I'm just not.

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• N

  Nina3w ago

  I'm a pastor and I'll say what a lot of my colleagues won't: the theology of intercessory prayer is genuinely unresolved. We preach it with confidence because the alternative feels like pulling a thread that unravels everything. But if I sit with a family whose child just died of cancer and they prayed every single night for healing, telling them 'prayer works' feels dishonest. Telling them 'prayer didn't change the outcome but changed you' feels like a cop-out they didn't ask for. We don't have clean answers here and pretending we do is pastoral malpractice.

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• CS

  Casey S.2w ago

  I've been a Christian for 31 years. I don't know if prayer changes outcomes and I've stopped pretending I do. What I know is that when I stop praying something in me goes dark and dry. When I pray something stays alive. Whether that's God or just brain chemistry I can't fully prove. But I keep showing up. That's all I got.

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• J

  Jamie2w ago

  If you disagree with everything said here and you're confident prayer literally changes outcomes — I genuinely respect that. But explain to me what you tell a parent whose child died despite years of faithful prayer without using the words 'God's plan,' 'mystery,' or 'greater good.' Because those words are doing a lot of heavy lifting for people who are bleeding.

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• H

  Hana3w ago

  Prayer changes ME. Not God. I spent years begging God to fix my marriage and He didn't. But somehow in those years of crying out I became someone who could survive what happened. Was that the point? I think so. Took me a long time to make peace with it but yeah. Prayer isn't a vending machine.

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• K_

  Kofi _x2w ago

  We don't. We just sit with them. That's it.

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  Sam3w ago

  Here's what I genuinely don't understand. Jesus prays in Gethsemane — 'Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me.' That's a request. God doesn't grant it. Jesus dies. So God said no to the prayer of His own Son. What framework makes that make sense? I'm not being snarky. I actually want to know.

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  Feli2w ago

  You hold their hand and you don't explain anything. That's the answer. Job's friends were fine until they started talking.

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• Z2

  Zara 212w ago

  Here's my hot take that nobody wants to hear: most Christians don't actually believe prayer changes things either. They pray because it's what you do. Social glue. Comfort ritual. Totally fine and human. But if they really believed their words were bending the course of reality they'd pray very differently than they do. The way we actually pray reveals what we actually believe.

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• N

  Noah3w ago

  This question gets asked every few years and every time it exposes how shallow most Christians' theology actually is. Calvinists have a coherent answer — prayer is ordained as the means by which God brings about His decreed ends. Arminians have a different coherent answer — God genuinely responds to human petition. The incoherent position is thinking God is both exhaustively sovereign AND that your prayer can surprise or redirect Him. Pick a lane.

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• R

  Riley3w ago

  lol every theological debate ends with someone saying a beautiful noncommittal thing and everyone hitting like

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• R

  Riley3w ago

  Exodus 32. Moses prays. God says He's going to destroy Israel. Moses argues with Him. God RELENTS. That's not a metaphor. That's not God doing what He was gonna do anyway. The text says God changed His mind. If you can explain that away while keeping a straight face I want to see it.

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• AM

  Avery M.2w ago

  This convicted me and I don't like it.

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• P

  Priya3w ago

  I think the whole debate breaks down because we're imagining prayer as a mechanism when Jesus describes it as a relationship. You don't talk to your father to activate him. You talk to him because you love him and because things matter and because you're not alone. Does it change outcomes? Sometimes. Does it have to, to be worth doing? I don't think so.

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• N

  Noah2w ago

  If you say prayer can't be tested because God operates outside testable parameters, you've also just conceded that you can't verify it works. You can't have 'untestable' and 'definitely effective' at the same time. That's not faith. That's a logical fallacy.

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• IB

  Iris B.2w ago

  I'm genuinely glad she's okay. And I mean this gently — people also die in comas despite hundreds praying. How do we account for those families without implying their faith was insufficient?

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  Taylor3w ago

  ok but effective HOW. effective at what. my grandma prayed for sixty years for my uncle to come to faith and he died an atheist. was her prayer not powerful enough? was she not righteous enough? that verse does more damage than comfort if you don't explain it.

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• J

  Jordan3w ago

  ^ This is the most honest comment in this thread. Thank you for saying it.

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• O9

  Omar 923w ago

  So God orchestrated the most agonizing night of His Son's life to give us a tutorial on prayer posture. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying that's a wild thing to believe.

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• H

  Hana2w ago

  ^ That might be the most theological thing anyone has said in this entire thread.

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• NB

  Nina B.3w ago

  Open theism enters the chat.

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  Leo3w ago

  I grew up Pentecostal. We prayed HARD. Loud, long, intense. People fell out, people 'received' miracles. Now I'm 45 and I've watched enough of those prayer circles and I can't find a statistical difference between things prayed over and things not prayed over. That's not cynicism. That's just honesty. I still pray but I hold it very differently now.

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• R_

  Reese _x2w ago

  same

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• Y_

  Yuki _x3w ago

  James 5:16 literally says 'the prayer of a righteous person is POWERFUL and EFFECTIVE.' Not symbolic. Not just therapeutic. Powerful and effective. I don't know why we keep trying to philosophize our way out of a plain statement.

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• R

  Riley3w ago

  The person who said James 5:16 — I love you but you have to apply that logic consistently. If prayer is powerful and effective then every unanswered prayer is either a failure of the prayer or a failure of the pray-er. You've essentially made God reliable and humans the variable. That's a brutal burden to put on grieving people.

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  Diego3w ago

  WHERE does the context say that though. Show me the verse. Jesus doesn't add that qualifier. We add it after the fact because the alternative is too hard to sit with.

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  Marco _x2w ago

  The Calvinist in me wants to say: prayer doesn't change what God has decreed but it IS part of what God has decreed. He ordained both the ends and the means. Your prayer is part of the chain of causation He ordained. It's not meaningless. It's just not you bending God's arm. And honestly, I prefer a God whose arm can't be bent.

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• J

  Jamie3w ago

  That's beautiful and I mean that. But it's also not an answer to the actual question and you know it.

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  Yuki3w ago

  calling open theism heresy while having no idea what it actually teaches is very on-brand for this forum

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  Zara2w ago

  I want to push back on the frame of the original question. It assumes God's omniscience and sovereignty must function like a closed logical system — if He knows the end, the middle is fixed. But what if divine foreknowledge doesn't work like we assume? What if God's knowledge of future events is more like knowing all possibilities than knowing one fixed timeline? That's not heresy. It's a live debate in serious academic theology and it actually makes prayer make sense.

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• Z

  Zara3w ago

  Science tried to test intercessory prayer. The Templeton Foundation funded a massive study. Patients who knew they were being prayed for actually did WORSE. Not better. Look it up. I'm not saying God doesn't exist. I'm saying the data doesn't show prayer doing what we claim.

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• YM

  Yuki M.3w ago

  It makes sense if Jesus prayed that prayer to model for us what faithful prayer looks like — bring your honest desire, then surrender it. Not to get what He wanted but to demonstrate how to suffer with trust. That's the most consistent reading I've found.

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• AS

  Alex S.2w ago

  If that's true then what you're calling 'prayer' is indistinguishable from just talking to yourself in a way that God set up. The functional output is identical whether or not God is listening. That's a strange thing to call 'relationship.'

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• ZM

  Zara M.3w ago

  Matthew 7:7 — ASK and it will be given. SEEK and you will find. KNOCK and it will be opened. Jesus said those words. Not Paul. Not some council. JESUS. I take that at face value. If we start explaining away the promises of Jesus because they're philosophically uncomfortable then we've got a bigger problem than prayer.

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• K

  Kofi3w ago

  The real answer is no one actually knows and anyone who tells you they do is either lying or hasn't thought about it hard enough.

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• A

  Alex2w ago

  the 'prayer only changes the one praying' position is just rebranded stoicism. marcus aurelius could've told you the same thing. if that's all prayer is then Christianity hasn't contributed anything new to coping with suffering.

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• R

  Reese3w ago

  Christianity is full of wild things to believe. That's not an argument against it.

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• M

  Maya3w ago

  Respectfully, 'ask and it will be given' is clearly in the context of asking for spiritual growth, wisdom, the Spirit — not every particular request. Context matters.

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• Y

  Yuki2w ago

  You cannot scientifically test prayer because you cannot control for God. That study is bad methodology dressed up as rigor.

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• M

  Maya3w ago

  Pastoral malpractice. Listen to yourself. It's called faith. Read Hebrews 11 and tell me those people all got what they prayed for. They didn't. Some of them were sawn in two. The point was never 'pray and get the outcome you want.'

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  Riley2w ago

  No it's not. Talking to someone you love who is fully sovereign and fully good is categorically different from talking to yourself. You're missing the relational dimension entirely.

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• MS

  Marco S.2w ago

  Faith IS outside testable parameters. Always has been. Welcome to religion.

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• L

  Leo3w ago

  Open theism is heresy and I will die on that hill.

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  Sam2w ago

  That's open theism wrapped in nicer words. Still heresy.

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