Can We Change God’s Mind By Praying for What We Want?

It’s a cloudy day in September, and my friend Alex is at our church prayer meeting. As everyone solemnly bows their heads, she prays:

“Lord, my best friend is getting married in two days. It’s an outdoor wedding. Please don’t let it rain.”

It’s a prayer I must have heard — with slight variations — a thousand times at church meetings. But when you think about it more deeply, it presents a difficult problem…

If God granted Alex’s request, He would need to adjust a massive high-pressure system 500 miles across and 8,000 meters up in the Atlantic Ocean. For the prayer to be effective, He would have needed to start making these changes eight days before she even asked.

So, if that adjustment didn’t happen in advance, it will likely rain — no matter how hard Alex prays.

But Alex’s wedding day would not be the only one affected. A change in the weather pattern could disrupt weather worldwide. While we all hope for sunny days, we forget that physics, not faith, determines the weather.

And what about those people who need it to rain — farmers, for example? They might be praying the exact opposite prayer. God might be a supremely powerful being, but even he can’t make it pour with rain and be dry and sunny at the same time in the same place…

This question is as intricate as predicting the weather, full of complexities and variables. If you’ve ever seen a meteorologist miss the mark — and we all have — you understand how difficult it is to get accurate weather forecasts. And yet, even though it’s challenging, that doesn’t mean we should stop exploring or asking hard questions about God.

Theology books spend countless pages unpacking ideas like God’s power, presence, knowledge, and control and how all of these ideas relate to human free will. When you change your view on one aspect, it affects how you see everything else. For instance, early Greek philosophers couldn’t imagine a god that could be influenced by anything, so they decided that God must be unchangeable. This idea of God’s “immutability” — that He never changes — was tied to the belief that God fully controls everything.

But here’s something to consider: Could early Christians adopt this Greek way of thinking and conclude that nothing could ever change God’s mind, and Christians bought into immutability almost by accident?

Maybe when we talk about God being unchangeable, we’re referring more to His character—His promises, faithfulness, and love for us—than to every specific action He takes.

So, can prayer change God’s mind?

Let’s consider classical theism, which states that God is all-powerful and completely sovereign. This means that nothing happens unless He causes or allows it. From this viewpoint, the answer is often, “No, prayer can’t change God’s mind.”

There is ample biblical evidence to support this. In the Bible, Malachi 3:6 states, “I am the Lord, and I do not change. Hebrews 13.8 says that Jesus is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.”

But the Bible also provides at least four examples of people who prayed for God to change His mind — and He did.

In Exodus 32:9–14, God initially tells Moses He’s ready to destroy the people of Israel for their rebellion. “They are a stiff-necked people. Leave me alone so my anger can burn against them, and I may destroy them.” But Moses pleads with God, reminding Him of His promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Israel. In response, God relents, and the disaster doesn’t happen.

On the one hand, God makes decisions and acts according to His will. On the other hand, He listens to and responds to prayer.

We see a similar story in Isaiah. God tells King Hezekiah that he’s about to die: “Put your house in order because you will not recover.” But after Hezekiah prays, Isaiah returns with a new message from God: “I have heard your prayers and seen your tears; I will heal you and add 15 years to your life” (2 Kings 20:5–6).

Paul, the Apostle, also teaches that God, in His sovereign plan, chooses who will pray and seek Him for salvation. Yet, in Romans 10:1, Paul himself prays for the Israelites’ salvation:

“My heart’s desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved.”

Even Jesus, knowing what lay ahead of Him in God’s ultimate plan, prays in the Garden of Gethsemane for a different outcome: “He fell to the ground and prayed that if possible, the hour might pass from him” (Mark 14:35).

The takeaway is clear: Jesus, the prophets, and the apostles believed that God, who is eternal and unchanging, still responds to prayer.

However, when we combine theology with practice, we encounter a paradox: God has His plans but also listens to human prayer. How do we square that circle?

Those who argue that prayer doesn’t change God’s mind often explain biblical references to God “changing” as a way of speaking — what’s known as anthropomorphism. This means we describe God in human terms because His nature is beyond our understanding.

I’ve wrestled with this question many times. If pushed into a corner, I gravitate to the Wesleyan-Arminian view (which emphasises human free will), but I cannot accept that everything is predetermined. People make real choices, and life unfolds based on those decisions—not a script written in advance. Through all of this, we turn to God in prayer. He walks with us through our challenges and mistakes.

So, do our prayers change God’s mind? Honestly, I’m not sure.

I know that God is good, so I keep praying.

These days, I spend less time asking and more time listening, and I’ve realised that through prayer, I’m the one who is changing. Instead of focusing on changing God’s mind, I’m learning to discover His will and align my prayers.

No matter how we view prayer, we all agree that God calls us to pray, which has real value. Those who see God as completely sovereign pray because it connects them to His work. C. S. Lewis, quoting Blaise Pascal, said that:

“God instituted prayer to lend His creatures the dignity of causality.”

And for those with a less deterministic view of God, prayer is believed to move God to action as He sees fit.

Whatever our theological perspective, prayer shapes us. In that process, we find that we have changed…