THE EFFICACY OF PRAYER

“For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of His will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please Him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to His glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of His holy people in the kingdom of light.”  (Colossians 1:9-12 NIV)

Can we believe that God ever really modifies His action in response to the suggestions of [humans]?  For infinite wisdom does not need telling what is best, and infinite goodness needs no urging to do it.  But neither does God need any of those things that are done by finite agents, whether living or inanimate.  He could, if He chose, repair our bodies miraculously without food; or give us food without the aid of farmers, bakers, and butchers, or knowledge without the aid of learned [men and women]; or convert the heathen without missionaries.  Instead, He allows soils and weather and animals and the muscles, minds, and wills of [human beings] to cooperate in the execution of His will...  It is not really stranger, nor less strange, that my prayers should affect the course of events than that my other actions should do so.  They have not advised or changed God's mind -- that is, His overall purpose.  But that purpose will be realized in different ways according to the actions, including the prayers, of His [people]. 

-- C. S. Lewis (1898-1963) in “The Efficacy of Prayer”

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