This can be a troubling problem for some Christians: We pray to God for something to happen, and then that thing really does happen; but rather than think our prayer was answered, we are inclined to think that the thing we asked for was just going to happen anyway. In other words, it was just a coincidence and not an answered prayer. We might think that “real” answered prayer only counts when the answer is miraculous or otherwise impossible/unlikely to happen. Similarly, since God is all-knowing, we might feel like prayer is generally pointless because God knows everything we need before we ask it. These are some reasons that Christians get discouraged from daily prayer and are reluctant to thank God for answered prayer when the answer doesn’t seem to be divine. (In later posts, I’ll discuss the separate problem of unanswered prayer.)

This type of reasoning above is flawed. Let me first give a philosophical explanation and then some Biblical references.

Philosophy of prayer

In order for God to genuinely answer prayer, there must a causal link from your prayer to an act (or acts) of God.¹I am explicitly rejecting an epiphenomenal view of prayer, which is entailed by an exhaustive divine determinist conception of Calvinism. Thus, I think strong Calvinism renders prayer absurd. In other words, if you pray for a particular event to happen and that event does happen, then the event can rightly be called an “answer to prayer” only if God acted in response to your prayer. If God did not do anything, but the event happened anyway, then the event is not really an “answer” to prayer.

Now, when God is going to answer a prayer, he will surely begin to act when he first acquires knowledge of your prayer. However, it is not after you pray that God first hears you, but before. He knows your prayer from the foundation of the world. Thus, the answer you asked for which “probably would’ve happened anyway” may be the consequence of a larger system of prior events of which you are unaware. You cannot naively assume that the world is entirely naturalistic, since if God is the first temporal cause and knows all things from eternity past, then the entire world may have been different if you had not prayed. In other words, when you pray, you are affecting the past in addition to the future. If you do not pray, then God in eternity knew that you would not pray and he may not have created a world in which your unasked prayer gets answered.

Suppose you pray on Tuesday for rain without knowing that the necessary weather conditions to cause rain on Tuesday already existed on Monday. Then, when you see the rain falling, someone may claim that it was determined by nature before you prayed, so God is unnecessary. However, such a response is ignorant of the full wisdom and power of God. If you had not prayed on Tuesday, then God would know before the foundation of the world that you would not pray for rain on that day. Then, he may create a world such that no relevant weather conditions would exist on Monday and no rain would fall on Tuesday. In such a case, the unbeliever will claim on Tuesday that the scientific factors on Monday determined that there would be no rain. Do you see my point? The so-called coincidental answer to prayer on Tuesday may appear mundane only because God has answered your prayer eons ago when he set in motion the necessary chain of events.

I’m not claiming that your prayer can change the past, I’m just saying that God has the ability to hear and answer prayer before you pray, assuming that you do in fact pray. Even though your prayer exists temporally subsequent to the creation of the world, God’s foreknowledge provides a causal connection from your prayer to earlier points in time.

A skeptic might object at this point that my understanding of answered prayer counts as unfalsifiable evidence for God’s existence, and thus is somehow a bad understanding. My response to that is simply to reject mundane answers to prayer as evidence for God.²I still consider miraculous answers to prayer to be evidence for God, just not mundane answers. This entire essay is intended to help Christians understand prayer, not show that God exists. Actually, I’m taking God’s existence as a given, so the skeptic’s objection is irrelevant.

Prayer in the Bible

• And [Jesus] told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart … (Luke 18:1)
• And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. (Acts 2:42)
• But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word. (Acts 6:4)
• And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)
• … do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 4:6–7)
• Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen. (Ephesians 3:20–21)
• And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14–15)

So what?

Don’t be afraid to ask God for small things, and don’t forget to thank God when he answers. God has a hand in the mundane as well as the miraculous.

End-notes

• 1
  I am explicitly rejecting an epiphenomenal view of prayer, which is entailed by an exhaustive divine determinist conception of Calvinism. Thus, I think strong Calvinism renders prayer absurd.
• 2
  I still consider miraculous answers to prayer to be evidence for God, just not mundane answers.