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PERSISTENCE
Can We Change God's Mind?
Right away a woman came to him whose little girl was possessed by an evil spirit. She had heard about Jesus, and now she came and fell at his feet.
Mark 7:25
We can sometimes underestimate our responsibility before God—the things he wants us to do for ourselves.
Theologian P. T. Forsyth called God an "infinite opportunist." In prayer God invites us to enter into partnership with him in the working out of his immutable will in our lives and in the lives of others, giving us what Pascal called the "dignity of causality." In the mystery of the interaction between divine sovereignty and human freedom, there are some things God won't do until we ask.
The mystery goes deeper. Forsyth says that not only may persistent prayer change what God will do, but it may, in a sense, take the form of actually resisting what his will is in a particular instance. To resist his will can actually be to do his will. What that means is that in prayer we may sometimes resist what God desires to be only temporary and intermediary—and therefore to be transcended.
For example, I was born into a poor and relatively uneducated family. No one on either side of my family had gone to college. There were no books in my home when I was a child. That, I believe, was God's will for me. But was it also his will that I passively accept that as my fate, my foreordained situation in life? Or was it his will that I resist that circumstance and find a way to go to college, to find books and delight in them? I think it was. In other words, I was to resist his lower initial will in favor of his higher, more ultimate will.
At any given moment in our lives it may be God's will that we face great pain and disappointment and loss. But God may also desire that we resist his will in that moment in favor of his higher and gerater will. Sometimes we may beg and beg and hear him refuse, as he did with Paul, and say, "My grace is enough. It's all you need" (2 Cor. 12:9, paraphrase). But other times we may come away, as did the blind man Bartimaeus, who would not take no for an answer and finally got a yes from Jesus (see Mark 10:46-52). It may be for us as it was with a Gentile woman from Syrophoenicia.
She came to seek her daughter's deliverance from a demon. What she initially got from Jesus was a stiff retort. Using a figure that Jews commonly used of Gentiles, and insult, he called both her and her people dogs: "First let the children eat all they want … for it is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to their dogs."
That may have turned me away, but not her. She jumped right into the fray and jabbed back, saying, "Yes, Lord, … but even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs." Jesus loved it. He answered, "For such a reply, you may go; the demon has left your daughter" (Mark 7:24-30, NIV).
We may obey God as much when we push our case and plead our cause as we do when we accept his decision and say, "Yet not what I will, but what you will."
— Ben Patterson
REFLECTION
How often do I really engage with God in prayer? Is prayer for me and ongoing and absolutely necessary conversation?
PRAYER
Lord, keep me speaking to you; keep me listening to you; and most important, keep me open to doing your will.
"I used to ask God to help me. Then I asked if I might help him. I ended up asking him to do his work through me."
— Hudson Taylor
nineteenth-century missionary to China
Leadership Devotions, pages 173-176.
Copyright © Tyndale House Publishers.
Used by permission.
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