What Does Prayer Actually Do?

God long ago determined what would occur

Jul 30, 2023

St. Francis and the Wolf of Gubbio. “For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).

Does prayer matter? If I tell you right now that you cannot change God’s mind, but that you still need to pray, does what I say make any sense?

It does in human terms. Many a child has learned to break a parent’s resolve just by praying, by asking again and again for something.

The prophet Malachi says, “For I, the Lord, do not change.” Hebrews tells us, “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”1

Still, I suspect that most of us think we can change God’s mind by praying — and that’s if we take prayer seriously.

Today, many people do not, so “prayer” is reduced to “sending good thoughts” or “vibes” or “energy.”

II.

We shouldn’t be surprised that we don’t know how to pray or even what prayer is.

Paul writes in today’s reading:

“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.”2

Paul is talking about something here that is very often misunderstood by those who reject the Christian Faith, particularly by those who reject the Reformed understanding of it.

This is the doctrine of “predestination” a word Paul actually uses in verse 29.

If there is a caricature of the Reformed faith it goes like this: If God has predestined you to heaven, you can live a wicked life and God will still save you, but if God has not chosen you, no amount of good deeds will change God’s mind. You’re doomed.

This caricature is not fair and does little justice to Paul who wrote the beautiful and comforting passage we read today, and on which the doctrine of predestination is based.

Consider these words of comfort from verse 28:

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”3

III.

The reason the doctrine of predestination is hated is because it shares something in common with that other hated doctrine: Original Sin.

Original Sin does not seem fair. Why did every generation born since Adam inherit the guilt for the sin of the first man? Even the prophet Ezekiel wondered about that.4

Likewise, God’s foreknowing and predetermining of our fate seems both to rob man of his free will and to be capricious.

In Romans 9, God tells us that, in fact, God has made some of us to be objects of His wrath, prepared ahead of time for destruction.

The most famous biblical example of this is the Egyptian Pharoah at the time of the Exodus.

Of him, Paul writes:

“For Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’”5

Immediately before this verse Paul writes:

“It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”6

And after:

“Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”7

It’s pretty clear what Paul is saying: praying for Pharoah’s soul won’t make any difference. God has already made up His mind to drown him in the Red Sea.

And yet, Paul reminds us, “We do not know what we ought to pray for” and that “in all things God works for the good of those who love him.”

IV.

So, what are we doing when we pray for a sick child, spouse, or friend? What are we doing when we pray for someone to come to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ?

If God has already made up His mind, what good does prayer do?

Maybe it’s better to ask what is happening when, as Paul puts it in verse 26, “the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”

Let’s start with what is not happening.

First, the Spirit is not sending “good vibes” or “energy” to us. Prayer is not reiki.

Second, the Spirit is not doing anything creative or new. We are not seeking novelties or a sign from God. Jesus Himself warns us that only a “wicked and adulterous generation asks for a sign!”8

Finally, we are not asking God to do anything He hasn’t already determined to do, hence the previous warning against seeking novelties.

What we are doing when we pray is asking God to take our lives and give them — in time and space — which is to say in history — the significance, meaning, and purpose He has predestined them to have.

Prayer is the working out of what God long ago determined would occur.

By prayer “God works all things for the good of those who love him.”

Since our lives are comprised of many moments, Paul says we are to pray without ceasing,9 so as to make all our moments significant and purposeful.

In other words, all things.

Can you see why sin and prayer are incompatible?

Sin robs the moments of our lives of their significance and purpose. It is the very opposite of prayer because sin is the very opposite of God’s will.

Many moments of sin will add up to a lifetime of fruitless despair and meaningless existence — an absolutely insignificant life.

Many moments of prayer will add up to a lifetime of glory.

This is why the Church can never preside over, pray at, or bless occasions of sin. To do so is a lie. It is to say something is significant when it has no significance at all.

Simply put, prayer is the Spirit bringing purpose to our lives “in accordance with the will of God.”

Prayer also informs the Christian understanding of history. Without the Church’s ceaseless prayer across time and space, history quickly goes off the rails. Remember that the next time you want to skip church.

If you ask me, the reason we’ve arrived at such a peculiar moment in history is that the Church has forgotten how to worship. We’ve spent the last 50 years indulging in novelties. It’s time to return to the old paths.

What is worship? It’s people coming together in church to pray. Can we not allow one day a week its full significance? Or is the purpose of your life to play sports, to sleep in, or worse, to work every day without a day of rest? Will that give meaning to your lives?

Now, you know as well as I do, that just because our moments and our days may have significance and purpose, that does not mean they cannot be trying and painful.

I’m thinking especially of trials like the death of a young mother or child. 9/11. Mass shootings. What word do we so often say about these tragedies? “Senseless.” We ask: “What purpose could it serve?” and “Why, God?”

Paul spends the second part of this lesson addressing this.

First, Paul tells us that God does not offer to take away the pain of these trials. He does not even promise to explain their significance. He only promises that they are significant, that they have meaning, and that they are in accordance with His will.

Perhaps you are thinking, “I need a better answer than that, God.” Paul has this to say to you in verse 32:

“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?”

This from a man who spent “a night and a day in the open sea” before he was rescued.10

Remember what Paul says in verse 28: “God works for the good of those who love him.”

If anyone understood what it’s like not to have all the answers and yet still love God, it was Jesus Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He died. There He prayed: “Not my will, but thine, be done.”11

Second, the purpose that God’s Holy Spirit brings to your life through prayer cannot be altered or changed by any other power. This is why Christians endure imprisonment, torture, persecution, being driven underground, outlawed, fined, and ridiculed.

Paul writes:

“Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.”

The taunting hatred of the world is meant to make us do one thing.

It’s meant to make us go and search for meaning and purpose in something (and someone) other than God.

This is the original sin. Adam and Eve sought to determine their own purpose, to make their own significance. Each one of us has committed the same original sin.

Finally, if we love God, then nothing can separate us from God’s love. Paul writes:

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?”12

But this love is only promised to those who love Him, the guarantee is only given to those who pray.

If you think about it, that makes perfect sense. Those who insist on self-justification, those who seek their own purpose, who define their own meaning and determine their own significance must underwrite all of it themselves and the only guarantee they have is their own indeterminate word.

But God’s word predetermines all meaning and informs the sighs that are too deep for words.

I welcome those sighs to join my own groans, because they come from the Spirit of God. Those Spiritual sighs give their meaning to the words of the Bible and will give their significance to the moments of our lives if we would only just pray to God and pray to God only. Amen.

Preached on July 30, 2023 at St. Peter’s Lithgow, Millbrook, New York.

Proper 12 - Year A
Romans 8:26-39

Questions for reflection and discussion:

1. The prophet Malachi says, “For I, the Lord, do not ____________.”

2. True or False: prayer is the same thing as “sending good thoughts” or “vibes.”

3. According to Paul, who teaches us how to pray?

4. Explain how the doctrine of predestination is misunderstood.

5. What is one objection to the doctrine of predestination?

6. Explain Pharaoh’s purpose in the Exodus story.

7. We should not pray for novelties or a ____________.

8. When we pray, we are asking God to give the moments in our lives ____________.

9. Prayer and sin are ____________.

10. Explain why prayer and sin are incompatible.

11. God does not promise to ____________ the significance of each painful moment.

12. The original and oft-repeated sin is ____________.

Parents and Grandparents, you are responsible to apply God’s Word to your children’s lives. Here is some help. Young Children – draw a picture about something you hear during the sermon. Explain your picture(s) to your parents or the minister after church. Older Children – Do one or more of the following: 1) Count how many times “significance,” “purpose,” and “meaning” are mentioned. 2) Discuss with your parents what it means to have a purpose in life.

(1) change; (2) False; (3) the Holy Spirit; (4) by making God seem capricious and unjust; (5) it seems to deny man’s free will; (6) to be destroyed by God so that the Israelites would see that God is just and will execute justice on ungodly men; (7) sign; (8) significance; (9) incompatible; (10) sin robs the moments of our lives of the significance God wants them to have; (11) explain; (12) to attempt to determine our own meaning, purpose, and significance