Prayer and Predestination
If prayer has a purpose, if prayer is more than a useless anachronism, then your prayer must cause a specific action of God to work in and through the particular network of constraints which are bringing some outcome into being and bring some succession of events to a different outcome than would otherwise have been. Your prayer must unleash the power of the Holy Spirit in space and time. Your prayer must change the flow of history. Your prayer is a message to God sent by a first-cause agent of choice exercising free will and assisted by God’s grace. The Calvinist believes life is like a scripted full-length movie with you playing the part you were ordained to play. You are merely an actor reciting your lines and doing precisely those things specified by the film writer/director. The Arminian believes life is like an “interactive life-game” video in which the designer allows you, as actor/player, to make free will decisions that change the outcome. Furthermore, the designer of the interactive life-game video cares about the choices you make. He encourages you to make the right decisions and grieves when you do not. He became so concerned watching mankind spiral down a path toward destruction that He inserted Himself into the game, absorbing the consequences of our bad choices, nudging us to a different path and trying to help us avoid ultimate disaster.
With Regards
SandraCScott
