Free Will and Choosing Prayer

28 November 2022

The following thoughts stemmed from two question I often pondered even as a non-believer: if everything is pre-destined as part of God's plan, how much say do we have in our own destinies? Does God actually influence our choices and free will and, if so, to what extent?

Determinism vs Fatalism:
"God has determined every single event. At each moment there is only one possible future: the future God has determined." vs "If God has determined every future event, then my choices don't affect the future.

Prayer Changes The Future

God not only ordains ends, He also ordains means. He plans the final destination as well as the "small" events (journey) to get there. PRAYERS are one of the many means which God determines to reach it. They release His power.

Eg: If a woman is to be healed of cancer, where it is today or three months from now, God has already determined the prayers that will be made on her behalf, and even the birth of the oncologists who would operate on her and the opening of a medical school that they would attend to gain the skills and knowledge necessary to save the woman.

Praying Is A Choice (Also a reminder on free will)

God wants us to choose, because we love Him and want to obey Him, to make our decisions within the overall blueprint of His will. To choose faith and be filled with the Holy Spirit who can guide our choices even as we have freedom to make them.

There are events that will not happen, souls that will not be saved, and relationships that will not be restored unless we pray for them. In ordaining His interventions to be in response to faith-fueled petitions, put simply, God gives us the privilege of including us in His work.

1 John 5:14-15 NIV 

"This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him."