Is It Biblical to Pray For the Past?

Like history has been written, it's been written by God, so God had a plan before the foundation of the world. That prayer is doing nothing one way or another to influence any kind of outcome at all, right?

So God is not gonna just like, in response to that prayer because you asked, he's not just going to mind wipe everyone, change the past, totally rewrite history.

The Question of Praying for the Past

All right, Tim, the question for today's episode is,.

Is it biblical to pray for the past?

It may be helpful to try to explain the rationale, the reasoning behind this question because the question on the face of it, it may not be intuitively obvious what we're even talking about when you ask a question like this, but this is a question that comes about after you accept certain theological premises and you can kind of get to a point where certain things that may not be intuitive to you on the surface then become more reasonable.

And so this is somewhat of a theoretical question that we're asking. I mean, it may be helpful just to explain a scenario of how this could work. So let's say that you have a loved one who has shown no evidence in their life that they are a Christian, but you've been praying that they would become a Christian before they die.

And then they'll say that they died, like there's some kind of trial that they're undergoing, they're about to die, they finally die. There wasn't any evidence that they actually turned to Christ. How do you pray for them going forward?

Or do you pray for them going forward? And so in the minds of like some people, based on certain theological premises, there's like a scenario where you can basically continue to pray for them, saying something to the effect of, Lord, I pray that before they died at some point, they would have put their faith and trust in you.

So you continue to pray for them post-mortem. And what you are praying is that at some point, before they died, they turned to Christ. Does that make sense?

Sure, yeah.

Now, I mean, that's not like an intuitively obvious thing to do, but then if God is timeless, so to speak, God knows from before the foundation of the world that you are going to pray for this person, then you ask yourself, like in some sort of like inception kind of sense, something along those lines is, is there a sense in which, because God is not bound by time, He's timeless, that you can pray a prayer in the future that He would answer in the past, essentially.

The inception prayer.

Yeah, so you're praying in the future, a prayer that He's going to answer by changing, like He's not changing the past, He just had a plan to answer your future prayer in the past.

I guess it's not so much an inception prayer, it's more like a back to the future prayer.

Back to the future, yeah, right.

So then, you know, asking this kind of question then is, you know, is that a reasonable thing? Like would God, are there any scenarios where God would, you know, determine to answer a saint's future prayer in the past because He can see the end from the beginning, all like that, would that be part of His plan?

And I would just say that I, regardless of whether or not that could conceptually ever happen, this is not something that the Bible actually commends to us. Does that make sense?

Accepting Reality, Worry, and God's Timelessness

Okay, what do you mean by that?

Well, I mean, we're time-bound creatures, and so, you know, as we're, you know, as creatures who are bound by time, you're not really meant to think along these lines and operate along these lines.

Okay.

So a good example of this would be David, you know, when his son dies, the one that he had with Bathsheba, essentially, he's praying and he's fasting and hoping that God would be merciful. And then instantaneously, you know, when the child dies, he got up, he cleaned himself up, and he said, well, there's no point in praying for this anymore, right?

Yeah.

There's no point in praying for this. The point is I need to accept what happened, right? And so there's no way to undo it. And so as, you know, part of this is really kind of, like, there's a bunch of things that are happening.

So part of this is like a discussion on just accepting reality as it exists right now. And then, you know, part of this discussion on how worry works, like how should Christian, like what Christians should think about worry and how does worry relate to these kind of, this kind of topic in general.

And then some of it, I mean, is more abstract, like how, like what does, what are the entailments of God's timelessness to a scenario like this in general? And then, you know, there is also just, like beyond just like worry and accepting reality for what it is and God's, you know, how does he work with time and everything else?

You know, part of it is also, you know, as Christians we need to basically just think about how God, like what prayer is actually doing.

In those moments.

Like is prayer, like in a sloppy way, a lot of people would describe prayer as the power that moves the hand of God or something along those lines. And so conceptually you do have to ask yourself, like what am I actually even doing when I'm praying in general?

Does that make sense? And so, you know, those are just kind of a lot of thoughts. I mean, those are a lot of categories that are filtering into this kind of discussion in general that you really do have to think through.

So now, I mean, like if you're dealing with like just, I think probably one of the most important aspects to this kind of discussion, I would say that one of the most important aspects to this kind of discussion is just the nature of what worry is in general.

So a lot of times we're going to be praying for things and like we're saying we're praying, but what we're really doing in the language of like many preachers is we're basically worrying on our knees essentially.

And so like for many people, like, you know, prayer for us has become kind of a mechanism or an exercise in which we refuse to accept what happened.

Right?

Sure.

Prayer, Worry, and the Secret Things of God

So, I mean, the Bible says the secret things belong to the Lord, but things revealed belong to us and to our children forever that we may do the whole works of this law. And, you know, Philippians 4 tells us do not be anxious for anything, but with everything, with prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God.

And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. So like there's this idea of just like as Christians we're not to be characterized by worry. And so you can imagine a scenario like the one that we just described.

You have a loved one who showed no evidence of turning to the Lord during life. You know, how do you think about that? How do you process that? How do you relate to that? And what you can do is, you know, because you want them to be saved so much, you can basically be hoping against hope, like against all evidence to the contrary that they're a Christian.

And then you can just keep on praying for them, not like in a Roman Catholic sense or something like that. You can just keep on praying for them, keep on asking God to change reality. But then a big part of like the way we fight worry as Christians is we learn to think on what is true.

And that's what, you know, Philippians tells us, you know, whatever is true, whatever is noble, if there's anything excellence, if there's anything worthy of praise, you think on these things. And thinking on what's true means like you look at this scenario and you say, hey, God had a plan before the foundation of the world involved either the salvation or the damnation of this person, my loved one, right?

God had a plan before the foundation of the world. It's fixed. You know, it is what it is. And thinking about what's true in that moment means that I can't alter it, right? Like it is what it is. Like it is, like it's either His will or it isn't His will.

And right now I don't have any information. Like I don't, like all the information my eyes are telling me is to say that they're not saved. But, you know, could it be possible that there are information I'm unaware of that I don't have access to?

Maybe, but it does no good. Like it does no good to keep on praying about it. Does that make sense? Because the only, whatever I'm trying to do at a prayer, like there's, you know, you're not, one, you're not going to change whatever that secret decree was before the foundation of the world at this point anyways.

Your window of opportunity to influence this person has passed. There's nothing you can do, right? There's literally nothing you can do for them. So they either turned to Christ in a moment that you didn't realize or they didn't.

But what's very clear is you don't have any evidence of it at this moment, right?

Yeah.

Like you don't have any evidence of it. So the secret things belong to the Lord and things revealed belong to you and your children forever. Like this is a secret thing that God has not revealed to you and all the stuff he has revealed to you, it would be better to operate on that information than it is to hope against hope that there's more information that you're unaware of.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So operate on what's true. If you're operating on what's true, then like one, like there could be more information I'm not aware of, but if there is, he hasn't revealed it to me. And whatever I'm doing in praying in this moment, I'm not gonna change that fundamental plan before the foundation of the world anyways.

And the only what like, so in that moment that you're not asking God, give you confidence, like in some kind of mystical way, like give me like some kind of mystical revelation beyond the scripture to tell me what happened.

What you should be doing is resting and trusting in God's sovereignty that whatever he did, whatever his decree is, is right in this moment. And his plans are good. His purposes will stand and he is just and he knows what's best.

And like, so part of like keeping yourself from worry is not found in asking God to give you information that's secret. Does that make sense?

Yeah.

Why Prayer Aligns Us With God's Will

Yeah, I think listening through that response, one thing that people might tend to be tempted to do is look at all of that and then say to themselves, well, hey, it doesn't matter like what I pray for or if I even pray at all, because God has determined it before the foundation of the world.

So why even pray at all at that point? You know, if it's already been determined, I can't influence it. So I shouldn't pray for it, basically. I could see people taking it there. So what's the response to that sort of reaction?

Well, that would be basically what you described as like a fatalism, fatalistic outlook on life. So basically whatever it's gonna be, it's gonna be and I'm not gonna change it one way or another. So therefore don't worry about it.

I think part of what distinguishes biblical prayer from some sort of, like you can have on the one end, it doesn't matter, so don't pray. And then on the other hand, you have a very extreme kind of prayer is the power that moves the hand of God kind of thing on the other end, right?

And so both of those are two extremes that are not right. So yes, I mean, there's a sense in which whatever it's gonna be, it's gonna be. And when you think about what am I actually doing in praying, part, like the big thing that most people don't get in their mind as it relates to this is the idea of how God's will actually relates to prayer.

Does that make sense? Right, so like meaning, like over and over again, when you read, like how do we pray as Christians? Like we pray according to the will of God. We pray according to the will of God.

So what you're not trying to do is you're not trying to change God's will. What you're trying to do is you're trying to read the Bible and discover what God's will is. And then prayer for you, like in large part is about like aligning your will with his, right?

Yeah.

So learning to align your will with him. So like the Lord's prayer is like your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. So give us this day, our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

Now, when I'm praying, give us this day, our daily bread, I'm doing that on the basis of the knowledge of what God's will actually is. So I have a good heavenly father who feeds the birds of the air. He clothes the grass of the field.

So in me praying, give us this day, our daily bread, what I'm not asking him to do is like discover a new priority that he never had. Does that make sense? So he's not discovering some sort of new priority.

Like what's happening is I'm reminding myself of his priorities. And then when I watch him carry out his priorities over the course of prayer, right? So I'm asking, I'm not reminding him a new priority.

He already has that priority. He's revealed that priority. I'm like bringing it before him. And then when he answers it as he already has promised to do, then that's going to help build my faith and trust in him because I'm learning in that moment, like prayer is conforming me to his image, right?

I'm learning that he's trustworthy and that's what he says he's going to do. And so for a lot of Christians, like what they're doing is they're treating prayer as if it's just this mechanism where they just like randomly in self-centered ways, twist God's arm to accomplish their will in general, instead of looking at it like, well, let me figure out what God's will is and how can I align myself to that will?

And how can I pray intelligently things that align with what he's said in that moment? Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah. I know a lot of people who pray that way. I used to pray that way a lot, you know, like almost like a Bruce Almighty, you know, like dear Lord, help me to lose 50 pounds on my dessert only diet, or like help me to win the lottery so that I can have a lot of money for myself.

So James basically, you know, basically talks about that kind of prayer, which is basically presumptuous prayer. And he says, you know, you do not have because you, where do wars and fights come from among you?

Do they not come from your desires or pleasure that are waging war on your members? And then, you know, he says, you do not have because you do not ask, right? And then you ask and you don't receive because you ask and miss to spend it on your passions.

And so a lot of people are praying these self-centered, like my kingdom come, my will be done kind of prayers. And big surprise, God's not going to answer it. But then you just take a step back.

He is answering them. He's just saying no.

He's not going to answer them the way they want, right? Yeah, but definitely. But so, I mean, conceptually, you think about just the topic in general, like praying for the past or something like that.

A person on Twitter gave this example and I thought it was a pretty good example of this kind of thing, but they were basically saying like, all right, conceptually, let's say that you were completely ignorant of the Civil War, you're reading books on the Civil War, and all you were able to do was read books that describe like the early battles or something like that.

And like, if let's say in that moment, you were to pray, like you don't have access to the ending, you don't know how it all turned out, but you were to pray, dear Lord, can you help the union win or something like that, right?

Uh-huh, yeah.

Like that prayer, like just because you don't know the outcome of something that's already happened in the past, like that prayer has no bearing whatsoever on history. Do you get what I'm saying? Like history has been written, it's been written by God, so God had a plan before the foundation of the world, that prayer is doing nothing one way or another to influence any kind of outcome at all, right?

So God is not going to just like, in response to that prayer because you asked, He's not just going to mind wipe everyone, change the past, totally rewrite history to where like, you say you're praying that south would win or something like that.

Now, like the entire shape of history is altered because one prayer, because the prayer of one saint in that moment, and then everyone's brains are instantaneously, you know, converted to the alternative history that you just prayed for.

So basically like the point is just to say that, you know, we're told to, we're told, you know, don't worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will take care of itself, sufficient today are the troubles thereof.

There is a very real sense in which Christians ought to be oriented in the present with the things that we can control, right? So we're not like looking to like fundamentally like fix all the problems a hundred years from now, right now, deal with the problems you have right now.

And then you have to accept like the past is what the past is and God's plan is what it is. And you're not just gonna twist his arm, like through some sort of like future prayers, twisting his arm in the past or something like that.

Now, the issue is deal with what's happening right now, deal with what you know is true, find out what his will is right now and learn to conform your will to his will. And the way you do that is to pray and ask and watch him do the very things he promises to do.

So one of the most important things you can do is figure out, well, what has he promised to do? And I'm gonna ask him to do the things he's promised to do because then that, when I watch him follow through with the things he's promised to do, like that's gonna build my faith.

Closing and Listener Support

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