Take My Hand. Andrew Taylor-Troutman

of the nature of God. Do our prayers have an effect upon God? Does prayer change God’s mind or will or plan? Can we pray away a thunderstorm?

      Reformed theology responds to these questions by stressing the sovereignty of God. God is in charge; the ruler of all creation has decreed a plan for humankind from the beginning of time, even from before time existed. Prayer, then, cannot be “magical” because we cannot control or compel God. John Calvin rightly warned against praying as if we had the ability to take something from God.² We believe that God is both omniscient and omnipotent.

      However, just because our prayers do not change God, we can still believe that prayer has the power to transform. Craig Barnes puts it this way: “It isn’t that our prayers are powerful enough to bring about changes. They are no more powerful than we are. It is God who is powerful. We may not know God’s will, but we can be certain that God’s power will change us, will transform us.”³ Because we are mortal and our perspective is necessarily in time, it may seem to us that God “answers” or responds to prayer, but actually, we are often the ones who have changed. We should pray because Jesus told us to do so; but even more importantly, we pray because Jesus prayed himself, and we are called to become like Christ. Calvin called this sanctification: the process of patterning our lives on Christ’s example. In the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed for God’s will to be done, not his own (Matt 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42). Prayer, therefore, can change our perspective and interpretation of events; prayer can even transform our experience of the world.