Don’t let God’s foreknowledge weird you out about prayer!

Matthew 6.8.

Jesus instructs his followers to not pad our prayers, to not stretch ’em out like pagans who think God won’t take ’em seriously unless they pray for a really long time. And then, in his Sermon on the Mount, he drops this comment about why it’s unnecessary: God’s foreknowledge.

Matthew 6.8 KWL

“So you ought not be like them!

For your Father knew what need you have

before your asking of him.”

In the New Testament, foreknow is our usual translation of the verb προγινώσκω/pro-yinósko, “pre-know.” Ro 8.29, 11.2 Paul used it to describe how God knows something before it happens. It doesn’t say how he knows it’ll happen, which is why Christians have largely come up with two theories about it:

• Determinists claim it’s because God decreed this stuff will happen. The universe is all irresistibly going according to his plan, and that’s the future he planned.
• The rest of us figure God is omnipresent—he exists at every point in space and time; there’s no place nor time where he’s not—so he knows the future because he’s at the future, observing it right now.

I figure the scriptures are the most consistent with omnipresence, so that’s how I describe God.

Various Christians incorrectly describe God as outside time, looking down upon it all at once. They got the idea from St. Augustine of Hippo, who most likely borrowed it from how Plato of Athens described his pagan gods. But that’d make God not omnipresent: He wouldn’t be everywhere within space and time, but somewhere else. So that’d be wrong. Space and time are the same thing anyway: God’s inside time and fills time, same as he does space. He’s here, aware of what’s going on. And 20 years ago, still here, still aware. And 20 years from now, still here, still aware. Simultaneously.

That’s a mind-bending idea to us Christians. Even us Christians who love to watch science fiction TV and movies where they monkey with time travel for fun and adventure. We’re time-based creatures, so we only experience now, the moving present instant. And even when we’re consciously aware, paying attention to now… we actually aren’t. ’Cause in the split second of time our senses require to take in the world around us, and our brains require to process it, and attach emotions and ideas and values to it… that instant is over. It’s past. We’re reacting to a memory. We move through time just that quick.

Whereas God doesn’t move. He’s still in that moment. And in every moment we also consider “now,” whenever we perceive it: The moment I write this, or the moment you read it. And all the moments before, and all the moments to come. Forever, in both directions.

That’s how God foreknows the future. From our human viewpoint the future doesn’t yet exist; from God’s, he’s looking right at it, and it’s a certainty to him. Because of this, we Christians can be confident everything God says about the future is guaranteed. He’s not making the universe’s greatest-educated guess; he’s not describing stuff that doesn’t exist to him either, but he has the almighty power to unstoppably make it happen, like the determinists and Open Theists insist. God’s speaking from experience—or to coin a word, foresperience. He foresees it, so he foreknows it. It’s real. Well, fore-real.

So we can confidently put our hope in God. Jesus is returning. We are getting raised from the dead. All things are gonna be made new. We are gonna inherit his kingdom. None of this is hypothetical. God’s already there.

And this is why Jesus can say his Father knows our needs before we ask. It’s not just because he’s always been able to read our hearts, so he knows our needs and desires before we request ’em. It’s also because he foresaw us praying for them. And in many cases, he’s answered them before we requested ’em.

Preemptive answers to our prayers.

Paul uses another word in his writings, προορίζω/prohorídzo, “fore-decide.” The King James translates it “predestinate,” and it’s where Christians get the idea of predestination—that God’s not just foreseen things, but fore-decided things.

Like whether we’re getting into his kingdom or not. God’s not waiting for the future to happen first. Nor for you to make up your mind about following Jesus before he acts on our decision. Why should an unlimited God, who already knows what we’re gonna do, have to wait for us to do anything? He’s acting now. Or he might’ve acted already.

Fr’instance: You’re not sure you’re gonna have enough money to make your car payment. Your clients are slow in paying you; you gotta prioritize your mortgage; you don’t have any assets to liquidate; you’re in a bind. You pray really hard. And later that day, you get an unexpected check in the mail, which means you can make your car payment. Hallelujah!

But when did God start answering your prayer? When you prayed? Well he can’t have. That check had to get printed and mailed, so these events started in motion days ago. Which means… God answered today’s prayer days ago. He answered it before you prayed it. He foresaw your prayer, fore-decided what to do about it, and fore-acted upon it.

He does this all the time. You may not have noticed, but start paying attention: When you pray for things, the events which ultimately answer them, often have to start in motion before you prayed. Sometimes long before you prayed; days, weeks, months, years before. I remind you, God touches every point in time. It’s not fantastical or impossible to him to do stuff like this.

Many Christians only talk about predestination when we’re describing how God saves us, and decided our eternal destinations long before we chose to follow Jesus. I’m not talking about that today. I foresee another time for that. (No, not like God foresees: I’m predicting. He’s seeing.) But God doesn’t just pre-decide that. There are billions more choices he pre-made, hundreds or billions of years ago, and we’ve no idea how many of them were based on our present-day input. Likely way more than we think.

Mind bent yet? Well it’s precisely because this is a mind-bending idea, that Christians feel a certain amount of angst—that feeling of dread or anxiety we can’t quite put a finger on—about prayer. See, when humans pre-decide things before we get the chance to give our input, it feels like we’re not involved in the decision. And that’s how a lot of determinists tend to describe God’s pre-decisions: He’s God, we’re not, and he doesn’t need our input. What do we know, anyway? Who are we to advise God?

Hence the angst: We worry since God foresees, foreknows, and foreacts… exactly why do we need to pray? God already knows what we need before we ask it, Mt 6.8 so do we even need to pray? Hasn’t God already made up his mind? What’s the point? And so our budding little existentialists sit down and despair, and stop praying.

If that’s what you’re doing, cut it out! Pray.

Predestination isn’t predeterminism!

First I gotta remind you worry doesn’t come from God. Jesus ordered us not to worry, Mt 6.25-354 remember? Worry’s based on embracing doubt instead of dealing with it; from listening to naysayers, skeptics, and Satan instead of the Holy Spirit. You got worries?—seek answers. Don’t stop till you find ’em.

Predestination angst is based on a warped view of predestination. Yes, God predecides stuff. Based on what? Based on what he foreknows. Ro 8.29 How does he foreknow things?—by foreseeing them. Where’d he foresee them?—he’s been searching people’s hearts. Ro 8.27 People share their hearts with him. By praying.

God’s foreplanning might feel like our actions have nothing to do with it. Again, this is because we’re time-based creatures. Inside of time, cause comes before effect: I send a text message at 9:21; you respond at 9:23. Foreknowledge, as I demonstrated earlier with that check-in-the-mail story, means God can respond before we send the initial prayer. It’s as if you responded to my 9:21 text, but somehow the signal went through a wormhole and I get it at 7:45, before I even thought to send my text. Um… do I still need to send the text? Well—counterintuitively—yes, I still do. Otherwise your effect won’t have my cause!

This is why determinists get it wrong: They think it’s okay if God’s effects don’t have a cause. That they’re actually not effects; God’s not responding to and interacting with us; God’s working out his entire plan alone. By himself, no input from his kids, doesn’t need us, doesn’t care. Determinists don’t like the idea of a God who responds to events instead of creating them; it doesn’t sound all that sovereign to them. So while God can foresee all, he doesn’t use his talent for anything constructive. He simply makes up his own mind on his own initiative, for his own secret reasons.

True, God is so almighty he can do everything on his own. But more importantly, more essential to his character, God is love 1Jn 4.16 —which means he doesn’t wanna do everything on his own. He wants to interact with us. He wants to be our God, and us his people. 2Co 6.16, He 8.10, Rv 21.3 He always has. Ex 6.7, Lv 26.12, Jr 24.7, Ek 37.23, Zc 8.8

God wants a relationship with his kids. That means he walks with us and he talks with us, and tells us we are his own. Of course he listens to our prayers, and of course he acts upon them. On every single one of them. Our little requests actually get God—from our point of view—to travel back in time and make history on our behalf. It’s the farthest thing in the universe from determinism. If you pray, “God, I need help,” sometimes he sends a person to help you. And sometimes God steps over to another point in time, arranges for two people to meet and have a child, and creates that person to help you.

What, you never imagined your prayers had that kind of effect? Of course they do. Ever notice there are certain people who realize, “I think I was created to do this job”? Well, sometimes they totally were.

God has a plan. But never get the idea he intends to implement it monolithically. He doesn’t wanna implement it in any other way but in love, and love means he’s doing it for and with us. God’s continually inserting new things into his plan as a result of our prayer requests—yours and mine and every other Christian’s. Some of ’em he adds when you pray them; some he adds later; some he adds yesterday, or last year, or back at the Big Bang. Just because they look like they’ve always been there, doesn’t necessarily mean you stumbled into praying for something God already thought up. Sometimes the reason he thought of it was because you did.

I know: That last statement, for people who obsess about God’s sovereignty, often sounds to them like blasphemy. But since they’re the ones who too often act like God isn’t love, pardon me if I don’t entirely trust their definitions.

Pray!

When we suffer predestination angst, throw up our hands in despair, and stop praying, we’re not giving God anything to work with. Certainly he can, and does, anticipate our needs anyway. But he’d rather interact with us. He wants a relationship with his kids. He wants us to pray. And not stop.

Will we always get what we want? Of course not. Can we still ask God for anything? Pretty much. And he’ll always answer. Certainly not always in our timing; another side effect of God’s perspective of time, is his timing is always gonna be perfect. We gotta trust he’ll show up at the right time with the right answer. That’s the faith part of prayer. Keep that up.

But if we quit praying ’cause we doubt we have any effect on God’s sovereign plan: We are in fact doubting God answers prayer. We’re doubting God. That ain’t faith. No matter how you juggle the definitions—and don’t think determinists don’t try.

You wanna get your mind really blown sometime: Ask God to show you the instances where he used his foreknowledge to foreanswer some of your prayers. It’ll amaze you to see how his foreknowledge really works.