Does persistent prayer change God’s mind, or how should we view it?
That's a very serious question that troubles many people. In one way, it seems almost an impertinence of us to suppose that what we say is going to change God's mind; and what's the sense of praying if God was going to do it anyway? It seems to me that we must allow for the fact that by his own decision God himself has left a lot of things open so that we may ask. He has given us a genuine choice. He is prepared to listen to our prayers and he's not changing his mind in that basic sense, because it was part of his decision to leave it open so that we may ask.
Secondly, I commend to you the story of Moses and his intercession when Israel sinned so grievously over the matter of the golden calf (see Exodus 32). God said, 'Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you' (Exodus 32:10). Moses pleaded on their behalf, and God 'relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people' (Exodus 32:14).
On the surface at that level it looks as if God had changed his mind. Having said that, I am aware that when we talk of God we're not just talking of God on our level. When God comes down to meet us at our level, there's an infinity of levels and there is a sense in which God never changes. Sometimes, in order to explain his ways with us, he has to put it in such terms as it appears that he has changed his mind. We would be wise people therefore, to take encouragement from the way God speaks. Here was God threatening discipline upon Israel, and he would have proceeded but Moses interceded and the people were spared.
The same thing is said in 1 Corinthians 11 about us. When we have sinned and deserve God's discipline, if we confess our sin he won't have to discipline us and he's prepared to listen to our entreaties.
Our Lord encouraged us in the same sense with the parable in Matthew 18, where the man was in debt and would have been put into prison, but he implored the king to forgive him, which he did.
For our practical purposes, I think we should not worry too much about the mechanisms. We should come and pray, and who knows what apparent changes may take place in God's mind. Though of course, from another point of view we're well aware that he knows everything from beginning to end, and it was in his gracious plan that we should come and ask.
