#63 The Problem of Prayer: How It Works — and Why It Sometimes Doesn’t + Dr. Josh Waltman

The Problem of Prayer and the Question of God’s Will

Today, we are going to talk about the problem of prayer. This is going to go one level deeper. Like, how do we know that it's us causing these things that we're praying for? And how do we know when it's Jesus?

If God is going to do what God's going to do, why do we need to pray for something if he was going to do it all along?

So if you're saying that was already planned and accounted for by God, it makes it sound like our prayer wasn't the source of power.

God's will is big enough to encapsulate our choices.

It's this Christian whiplash of like, so he opened the door because we opened the door, but he kind of knew we were going to open the door.

Prayer is power. It's a weapon in spiritual warfare.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, absolutely.

How often do we get to go this deep in prayer?

Hello, hello. Welcome to Biblically Speaking. My name is Cassian Bellino, and I'm your host. In this podcast, we talk about the Bible in simple terms with experts, PhDs, and scholarly theologians to make understanding God easier.

These conversations have transformed my relationship with Christ and understanding of religion. Now I'm sharing these recorded conversations with you. On this podcast, we talk about the facts, the history, and the translations to make the Bible make sense so we can get to know God, our creator, better.

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Prayer as a Spiritual Discipline and Model Prayer

Today, we are going to talk about the problem of prayer, and this isn't just how to pray so you can ensure that you're being heard by God or the proper way to make sure that it's getting to him or he's going to answer your prayers, kind of like a phone call.

How do we make sure it gets to the boss to actually hear the message? But this is going to go one level deeper. Like, how do we know that it's us causing these things that we're praying for? And how do we know when it's Jesus?

Did he wait on us to pray in order to act, or was he going to act all along? And in the preparation for this call, it made me think of every time I'm trying to find a parking spot. You know, I'm like, circling the parking lot.

And I'm like, oh, oh, God, you know, in Jesus name, will we find a park? And then we do. So it makes me always think, well, would I have not found a parking spot? Or had I not prayed? Or, you know, had I found it five minutes earlier?

Had I prayed right away? It's going to go into the power of prayer, how it works, what's stopping it? And give us that Protestant biblical view with my guest today, Dr. Josh Waltman. You are always a favorite guest here.

And ever since we discussed divine hiddenness, I've been itching to have this call. So I'm really grateful for you. For those that are new and have not heard any of our episodes with Dr. Waltman, go back, listen to them.

But if you're going to stay and listen, which you should, just a couple credentials that make you capable of speaking on this at this level is right now you're a professor of theology and apologetics at Liberty University.

You also have a PhD in theological studies with a concentration of apologetics from Columbia. And you've written your dissertation on Trinitarian theology, theistic responses to the problem of divine hiddenness, which is we spoke on last time.

And you're a lifelong Virginian. Welcome back, Josh. Thank you for coming back to the show.

So good to be with you. What a blessing. I love I love this show. I love your audience. Just excited for this conversation. Thank you for having me on.

Yeah. OK, so I have so many questions and this will be a great conversation. But how do you know so much about prayer? How did you like it? Was it just books and books and books or was it personal? Like, how did you get into this?

Wow.

OK, well, you know, prayer is a spiritual discipline and spiritual disciplines are designed to draw us nearer to the Lord that it's part of our sanctification process. And so it should be part and parcel of the Christian life.

If you will notice that the disciples, they notice that Jesus is uniquely in tune with his connection to the father. And they don't. So far as we know, in biblical accounts, we don't see them come to Jesus and say, Master, teach us how to preach or teach us how to perform miracles.

So far as what's recorded in Scripture, what we see is them coming to Jesus and saying, Master, teach us how to pray, because they recognize that this is so connected to his relationship with the father.

And so for me, you know, it's kind of a natural, practical question that comes out of studying the Trinity. You know, if if Jesus is praying to the father that that begs all kinds of questions related to prayer.

And, you know, to be perfectly honest, sometimes theologians have this tendency to just kind of stay in their head and, you know, really just deal with the abstract. And prayer is something that helps us to make sure that our affections and our heart and our our life is submitted to the Lord, not just in the abstract and theoretical, but in the practical everyday life.

You know, we're told to pray without ceasing. And so this is something that's part of Christian maturity in that way.

Absolutely.

And pray without ceasing, I feel like has been a heart posture that has changed for me throughout this process of like, well, what does that mean? I've had Dr. Sarah Maple on and she was like, well, that means like throughout work, like before you enter a hard conversation, before you walk into a room, before you go on a trip, that's what praying without ceasing to her was.

And I thought that was a great way to just be like in those little moments throughout the day to pray to him and hand it over to him and be reminded of. But just biblically speaking, you know, he they outright say how to pray and they say they are father.

And I think for me as a baby Christian, I was like, OK, so no other prayers are as powerful as that one or but also, you know, just on that same note, I was speaking with somebody and they're like, I take that as like a framework of like our father who art in heaven.

Start with worship.

Hallowed be thy name. Elevate his name. Thy kingdom come, they will be done. You know, I submit to your will and just kind of using the our father to break down into a template. Do you take the same approach?

Yeah.

You know, as we go through our day, I think we can have very directed and pointed focus, foci in prayer. And that's certainly true. But as far as foci, yeah, the way that the way that we go about our day, I think it's right.

You know, whatever is going on right in front of us, we can pray about that. But as far as a template or a model, yeah, the Lord gives us that because I think it is extremely well balanced. It's theologically informed.

It's practical. It gives us a launching point if we want to think of it that way. I think I forget the speaker that you mentioned, but I think she was absolutely right. I tend to take each aspect of the model prayer and use that as a launching point.

You know, thy kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven. Lord, please help me to manifest your kingdom in my life, in my household, in these sets of circumstances that are facing me right now. And just to walk through each component of that and personalize it to the situation that.

I find myself in.

I find that extremely helpful. Certainly, you know, we're not we're told not to babble on like the pagans do. So it's not about just, you know, developing incantations or some strange thing like that.

We don't have to just say words in order for God to hear. We're told to think deeply and to be thoughtful in our prayers. And so, you know, if you have five minutes, spend the five minutes. If you have 50 minutes, spend the 50 minutes.

I don't think we need to be dogmatic about that, but certainly the model prayer is a good launching point.

Oh, we'll get to how dogmatic we can be, because I definitely have some questions that, you know, some people submitted from the audience. My mother was even saying some of just like, is a nun's prayer more holy and better heard than my prayer cried out in traffic?

You know what I mean? So we'll get to that. But before we get in, let's just start with the baseline is why even pray? And I'm really excited to have you introduce this because this was your idea of the problem.

Of prayer.

So if you could summarize for someone that's like, what do you mean there's a problem with.

Prayer? How would you describe it?

Divine Concurrence: Why Prayer Matters if God Is Sovereign

Yeah, you know, there are a bunch of sort of rabbit holes we could go on on this, and we would call them problems or questions that people have. And I think some of those are going to end up coming up over the course of the conversation.

But typically the problem, as it's called, at least in theology, it's if God is going to do what God's going to do, he's sovereign, he's in control, he's going to bring about his kingdom as he sees fit.

Why do we need to pray for something if he was going to do it all along? You know, and that's sort of the classic question here. And certainly I think that that's something that befuddles a lot of people.

You know, a lot of people stumble over this, and this has become sort of a pebble in the.

Shoe.

And I think people will often even use it as a justification not to pray. Well, God, you're just going to do what you're going to do anyway. It doesn't matter what I say or what I do in prayer. And certainly that is not biblical.

We are instructed to pray. We are instructed to fast. We're instructed to be involved in the spiritual disciplines because it's part of our sanctification. And so that's the classic question. And it's a tension, you know, in our theology, I think, that we have to kind of wrestle through a little bit here.

OK, because it feels like what is the point of the prayer that everyone is saying is so powerful? You know, there's power in prayer. Whenever someone's in the hospital, start praying. But then God is sovereign and God is all-knowing and God is omnipotent.

And so as a Christian, you don't want to choose. But from our human brains, you almost need to find that balance. So how would you balance that?

OK, a couple of a couple of thoughts here to help us with the conversation. If I could, the first thing that I think I want to say with all of this, you know, the actions that we that we make in the world, the things that we do in the world matter.

You know, the world is ordered that way. There are consequences to the things that we say, think and do. And so God's world is structured with cause and effect, with consequences for choices that are made and so forth.

But on the other hand, an imbalance, God is indeed in control. And so we have to affirm that. I mean, there's no way to get around that fundamental principle that God is sovereignly orchestrating his will on the earth.

You know, the Ephesians 1 passage that God is accomplishing all the things that he seeks to accomplish according to the counsel of his will. And so God is going to carry out his purposes, right? Something that I think is helpful here and just to jump right into the deep end.

I hope that's OK, but I think something that's helpful. There's a doctrine that doesn't get talked about way too much, but it's relevant with this question in particular. It's called the doctrine of divine human concurrence or the doctrine of concurrence.

You ever heard of it? OK, so it basically says this, that we have the ability to make choices. We are responsible for our choices, but God's will is big enough to encapsulate our choices. And so if I were to say just to be very, very practical for a second, if I were to say, hey, I was an angsty teenager, I became a Christian and started going to this church and joined the praise band because I like to play music and met my wife and we fell in love and we eventually got married, had kids, and that's how I have the family that I do today.

Can I say that that set of circumstances was part of God's plan? Yes, I think so. Can I say that I made the choices along the way to start going to that church? First of all, I'd become a Christian, then to start going to that church, then to start dating, then to get married and have kids and so forth.

The answer there is yes. It's both true that it was my choice and that God was sovereignly ordaining and orchestrating along the way. So it's concurrently true, both entities, both the person and God are involved here concurrently.

And so if that's true, that has all these kinds of ramifications about God's will. You know, we have a certain amount of agency. There's cause and effect on the basis of choices that we make, but also it is within the purview of God's will.

There's no part of his created order that falls outside of his sovereign plan. And so, you know, we've got to kind of work through that a little bit. So that's the doctrine in a nutshell. Does that make sense?

It does make sense. I think it was, it might've been Tim, Tim Yance or somebody else that was like, you can't out sin God's will. Like you can't, like, you're just a human. Like, what are you going to do as far as like, I mean, I have a question that like you and I discussed of like, in what world are we going to outsmart God with some question that we have or sin that we have within a world that he created?

And I feel like with concurrence is why we have my actions and my choices, but all of it exists within the realm of God's control.

Right.

So, so God's control. If you want to think of it this way, to give another biblical example, was it God's will that Jesus be crucified?

Yes.

But was that an evil act? Well, in the, in the fact that man was going to kill the son of God, that's a supremely evil act, right? Are they responsible for their choices to do that? Yes, absolutely. But it was God's will that that happened.

So two things are true at once. God wanted it to happen. And also man decided to make it happen, even though it was a terrible thing, right? They're responsible for it. So God's world works like this, it seems to me.

You know, he is orchestrating on a, to get a little philosophical here, if that's okay. He is the primary cause, if we want to think of it like that. We would not exist if God didn't want us to exist.

We would not be here if God did not want us to be here. You know, all of these things, he caused all of this to occur. And that happens on a macro level. And in some sense, it happens on a micro level.

You know, he's calling me to himself as a Christian, as part of his family. He's doing things in my life to lead me to pray. But also we are a secondary agent or secondary cause within his created universe, the order of his world.

And so we're expected to play the role that he has in mind here. We're expected to pray, and that's going to lead to the enacting of his will. And so this is where the rubber meets the road with prayer, I think.

It's like, you know, God knows what we're going to pray before we pray it. That doesn't mean he's forcing us to do it per se. But certainly, he is sovereignly ordaining these things. And so he is the primary cause.

We are the secondary cause. And his maneuvering and his working out his will includes our choice to pray. So to kind of tie a bow on this to the initial question, why should we pray if God was going to do that anyway?

Well, because God's will already included the prayer that we were going to offer.

So he took into account the exact timing that we asked for it as well.

Correct.

So that doesn't take away our real choice to pray. We're still choosing to pray. But God knows all. He knows all variables. He knows all circumstances. He knows what we're going to do given a set of circumstances.

And so he actually takes into account the choice that we are in the future going to make when we pray, when he brings about his purposes in our lives.

So we would be kind of wrong for a Christian to be like, well, had I not prayed, then it wouldn't have worked out. But since I prayed, it worked out. That would be the wrong posture for us to take, because it's like we are the secondary side effect of God's actions that have already been accounted for.

Our timing of prayer was accounted for by God and his ultimate planning of the universe. We did not cause anything to happen.

Well, I mean, we are a secondary cause. The Lord is the one that is ensuring that it happens. If he did not, you know, if he was not sovereignly, if he wasn't sitting as the king of the universe in charge of all, then certainly none of this would come into being.

But he is. And so him being king over the future and the present and the past and knowing all things, he's able to take into account the decisions that I make. And so, yeah, you know, when we come and intercede or petition in prayer, he's already taking that into consideration in terms of what his will is ultimately going to look like and how it's going to manifest.

OK, I'm going to I'm going to pepper you with this, because this is so intrinsic, is when I traveled the world, my mom was worried sick. And she's like, you are so lucky that I've been praying for you, Castor, or else you'd be whisked away by some animal or wherever you were in the world.

And it makes me think that like my mother's prayers are powerful in protecting me and everywhere I go. So it's one of those like or when someone's getting a surgery, it's like, OK, let's start praying because prayer is powerful in that context of what you just said of like, well, God's already taken into this, taken this into account, and this is already part of that process.

Is it just God has taken into account the submission to him? He already knows that this massive group of Christians called the Bellino family, whatever it is, has now he knows they're going to call out to him and he's going to bless them.

And that's already been planned for. I guess like maybe we just need to like break my brain because in my head, it's thinking because we prayed, the surgery went well, because we prayed, we got the really good parking spot, whatever it might be.

So if you're saying that was already planned and accounted for by God, it makes it sound like our prayer wasn't the source of power. It was just an action that needed to take place. Do you understand what I'm saying?

Or am I not saying it well?

Okay.

Yeah, that's a great question. I mean, I don't think that we need to fall into the error of saying that our prayers don't matter. They do. You know, God seems to be very interested in a relationship with us, a dynamic relationship with his people and responding to our prayers.

But, you know, you got to keep in mind too, like we are limited by what's in front of us. We don't know the future, at least not in specific terms. God does. God already knows the future. God has already determined what the future will look like when his kingdom is manifest on the earth and things like that.

And so, yeah, from our perspective, you know, our prayer is triggering response if we want to think of it that way. But God, even before the foundations of the world, already knew who we were going to be and the prayers that we were going to ask.

And he's taken that into consideration and how he's orchestrating the whole thing. So I just, I think part of the issue is we're thinking of this in terms of, you know, our place in space and time, whereas God's already, you know, outsized transcendent of all of that.

And he's able to look at all of the data and information all at once in order to determine how this is going to play according to his will and purposes. And that change of perspective, I think is where a lot of the confusion is coming from, because we can't get out of our limited perspective and get into his infinite perspective in order to understand it.

But we also, in the same way, we shouldn't say that prayer doesn't matter. We should also not be willing to say, I think that something, you know, that God wanted to happen didn't happen or that God tried desperately, you know, to make something happen.

And, you know, man thwarted his will or something like that. We've got to hold those things in tension,.

It seems to me.

So it would be unhelpful for the Christians to think that their prayer can thwart the works of God.

Yeah. I mean, okay. So a couple of things there, and I don't want to jump, I don't want to jump over where you want to take us, but this might bleed over into some other questions.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I definitely think effective prayer has conditions tied to it.

Prayer, Righteousness, and Repentance

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Now back to the show.

So sometimes when people talk about prayer, they'll say, well, the Lord is going to answer your prayer one way or the other. You know, sometimes it's yes, and sometimes it's no, and you just may not like the outcome.

Right.

I don't see that in scripture, actually. It seems to me like there are instances where prayer is rendered ineffective. And so one of the criteria for an effective prayer, it seems to me, is that we're praying in accordance with the will of God.

And so we can't expect that we pray against the will of God and God to then bring it about. So if we're praying in accordance with the will of God, then God, I think, answers that prayer. At least scripture is giving us affirmation that that prayer will be answered.

But if we're specifically trying to go against what God wants, then he's under no obligation in terms of his word to give us an answer.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, what you were saying at the beginning there, it's like, well, God never says no. He says yes or there's something better. Is that what you're saying here? It's like, it's either like we're praying with the will of the Lord or we're praying against it.

And God's like, yeah, I got something way better for you because my will is better than your will.

Yeah. Let me give you a couple of examples from scripture. So I think about, for instance, James 4 basically says, or at least alludes to the fact that if we're praying with the wrong motivations, that God doesn't necessarily listen to us.

We get this reference to Psalm 66. When we're cherishing sin in our hearts, our prayers are rendered ineffective. So when we're praying in order to sin, then God isn't necessarily obligated to respond to that.

Isaiah 1, God says, I hate your prayers. Like I don't receive them at all. I'm not, I'm turning them off because you're worshiping, you're two-faced. You're worshiping these other gods. You don't care about justice.

You don't care about righteousness. I'm not going to just listen to your prayers because you, you know, give me lip service or something like that. And then 1 Peter 3, we get a reference to husbands treating their wives in a godly manner so that God will hear your prayers.

And so it's almost like the way that we're treating others also has an effect on whether or not we're being effective to be able to be heard by God. The overall principle is that the righteous person is in the best position to make prayer requests before the father.

And, you know, of course, Jesus makes us righteous. But also if we're living in such a manner, even as a Christian, that is not consistent with the righteousness of the Lord, then there's no guarantee that the Lord's going to respond to our prayers.

Does that make sense?

It totally makes sense. However, playing devil's advocate here, you know, you hear those stories like Mariah Carey, Jesus take the wheel, you know, like that, that whole song, you know, everyone has heard that of like, I was going down a bad path until I finally threw up my hands and called out to the Lord.

I was sinful. I was agnostic. I was atheist. It was horrible. I threw up my hands and then God revealed himself. And like that, that totally tracks with what you just said, of like calling out to the Lord and responding.

But in the sense of like a more Christian person versus a less righteous person, aside from the prayer of calling out for righteousness and calling out for salvation, those prayers of the atheist, those prayers of the agnostic, are you saying are less likely to be heard or less powerful?

Or, I mean, I want this to be a moment of encouragement, but also truth here of, you know, there there's advantages of being in alignment with the Lord, but I'm not a nun. I'm not the most holy person.

Does that mean I just have like a weaker quote unquote prayers?

Yeah. Okay.

I know that was so much.

Great. Okay. So, yeah, I do think that anybody that calls on the name of the Lord will be forgiven, like genuinely is contrite and is repenting and is submitting himself before the Lord in obedience and is seeking the Lord for salvation.

I think the Lord hears that prayer. And like, I think, I think I can demonstrate in scripture that the Lord will respond to that prayer, even on the part of someone who's an unbeliever.

Okay.

Um, that being said, if we're talking about someone that's sitting at home as an atheist and they're just, you know, talking out loud to a God that they say they don't necessarily believe and asking for that deity to bless their kids.

Here's what I'm saying. I'm saying that based on scripture, God is under no moral obligation to hear that prayer. That doesn't mean that he doesn't. That doesn't mean that he won't show grace. It's just, there's no promise that we can cling to in scripture that says definitively he will.

You know, um, when we, when we talk about prayer, I think at least strategies of prayer in my own life, apart from just going to the Lord's prayer, I find myself claiming the promises of scripture. You know, there's a precedent for this in the Psalms.

You know, when we say, God, you've told us this, you've told us that if I do this, you will do this. Here I am proclaiming that back to you. And I'm asking that you do that in my life. And so what we're doing in that prayer strategy is we are reminding the Lord as if he already doesn't know, but we're reminding God of what he has said and that we're going to be, we're going to keep our end of the bargain in listening to God's word.

Whereas the atheist doesn't really have a leg to stand on because they're not in the family of God yet. Um, and so they, they first need to come to know the Lord in salvation in order to have those sorts of rights and privileges and promises that are guaranteed to God's people.

Um, so that's, that's a qualification here. I think it's also true, you know, if we're all honest, um, you know, we all have periods in our life where we are not necessarily living in the most righteous way.

Um, we may be our wayward or we're, um, allowing a certain sin, um, to take, to take hold in our lives. I think what I'd want to say is, if that's you, like as a father, what I would encourage another father, as an example, if they want to pray for their kids, they should first repent of whatever that sin is so that their heart is in a good place to be able to be heard by God when they pray for their kids.

Or if, um, you know, they just had a knock down drag out fight with their wife, uh, where they were less than kind or something like that. I think they first need to work on repenting of that sin and asking for forgiveness and cleansing from God so that then they're in the right posture where they can come to God and, you know, uh, offer their, their, their daily prayer as it were for all the other things going on.

So I think maybe the lesson here is if, if that's you, um, it's not that God says he, it's not that God says that he will never hear those prayers. You know, if you're someone that's living a sort of a wayward life, but I would encourage you in order to claim the promises of God, you need to first repent of your sin so that you're in a place where you can offer effective prayers, according to what scripture has said.

Does that make sense?

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