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And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like pagans, for they think they will be heard because of their many words. Do not be like them, for your Father knows what you need before you ask him. This, then, is how you should pray.
For Jesus, God's sovereignty is no deterrent but a positive encouragement to pray. We do not have to work to gain God's attention through long words and ostentatious displays of religiosity. We don't have to convince God of our sincerity or our needs. We already have the Father's ear, as it were. God knows everything about us, and still God listens. We can get right to the point.
"Prayer holds together the shattered fragments of the creation. It makes history possible," wrote Jacques Ellul, a modern French philosopher who could not avoid the Bible's clear statements that God acts in history in response to prayer. Indeed, the great hopes of the Old Testament—Abraham's family, Joseph's ascendancy in Egypt, the Exodus, the wilderness wanderings, the victories of Joshua and King David, deliverance from Assyria and Babylon, the rebuilding of the Temple, the yearning for Messiah—all found fulfillment after God's people had cried out in prayer.
Throughout, the Bible depicts God as being deeply affected by his people. God "delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love." Yet, as the prophets tell, at times God feels loaded down with the nation's sins, wearied by disobedience. God's patience reaches an end point: "For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant."
The Bible does not hesitate to suggest that our prayers make a difference to God and to the world:
"Ask and it will be given to you."
"If you believe, you will receive whatever you ask for in prayer."
And the prayer offered in faith will make the sick person well. … The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their prayer.
You do not have, because you do not ask God.
Underscoring these lavish promises, the Bible tells of Elijah and Elisha and the apostle Peter praying for the resurrection of dead bodies; Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth praying against their infertility; Daniel praying in a den of lions even as his three friends had prayed in the midst of fire. When God sent the prophet Isaiah, arguably the most God-connected person of his day, to announce to King Hezekiah his impending death, Hezekiah prayed for more time. Before Isaiah left the palace grounds, God changed his mind, granting Hezekiah fifteen more years of life.
As if in ironic proof of the power of prayer, three times God commanded Jeremiah to stop praying; God wanted no alteration in his plans for judgment of a rebellious nation. "Forty more days and Nineveh will be overturned," the prophet Jonah proclaimed to a heathen city; but "when God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he had compassion and did not bring upon them the destruction he had threatened." Four times, in fact, the Old Testament reports that God "relented" or "changed his mind" in response to a request, and each time forestalled a promised punishment. God was merely following through on a principle spelled out to Jeremiah: "If at any time I announce that a nation or kingdom is to be uprooted, torn down and destroyed, and if that nation I warned repents of its evil, then I will relent and not inflict on it the disaster I had planned."
Since no human being can comprehend the point of view of an infinite, timeless God interacting with a material, timebound planet, any attempt to reconcile the changeless God of the philosophers with the responsive God of the Bible falls short. Like a sudden flash of light in a dark room, such an attempt may yield insight, but not resolution.
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