We are on a journey to answer Tonya’s question: do our prayers change the will of God? Her question was in response to my question to anyone who reads my posts: What questions do you have about church, Christianity, discipleship, God, or theology?

Our last post dealt with the question, what is prayer? We determined that prayer is a conversation with God. But before we can address Tonya’s question, the next term we need to define is: God. Who is this God we are having a conversation with?

We live in a culture that has multiple opinions of who the God of the Bible is. Some say he is an angry vengeful God. Others say that he is unconcerned with our day-to-day lives. A few say he doesn’t exist. But what does the Bible say?

In Genesis chapter one God is described as the creator of all that we can see, and he gave humans their assignment: to be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and have dominion over all he created as his stewards (Genesis 1:26-28). According to Moses, who wrote the first five books of the Bible, we don’t own anything in creation, but we are responsible to take care of all of it and make it fruitful.

By the time we get to the second book of the Bible we see that some people, like the Egyptians, worship other gods (Exodus 12:12, Exodus 20:3, Exodus 23:13, Exodus 34:14).

In Exodus 3:14-15 and Exodus 6:2-3 God reveals that his name is Yahweh. By the way, many of our English translations translate the name Yahweh as LORD. So, every time you see LORD (in all capital letters) the Hebrew word/name underlying LORD is Yahweh.

But what kind of God is Yahweh? What is his temperament? God first describes himself in Exodus 34:6-7 as, “merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin.”

The Bible reveals other characteristics of God. Psalm 90:2 says that God is eternal. Psalm 139:7-10 says that there is no place we can go to get away from God, and Psalm 34:18 encourages us, reminding us that God is near to the brokenhearted. He is ever present.

In 2 Timothy 2:13, Paul quotes a common first century hymn or confession stating that God is always faithful. Over in 1 John 4:7-21, the writer tells us that God IS love. The 147^th Psalm, in verse 5, describes God as abundant in power and beyond measure in understanding. God speaking through Isaiah in Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” He is transcendent.

And that is part of the problem. Human beings, being finite, will never fully understand an infinite, all-powerful, all-loving God who loves mercy AND justice. We can only know a small fraction of who the God of the Bible is. But that also means that every day we can discover more about his nature and character as we talk to him and experience his presence.

At this point, we have defined prayer as a conversation with God, and we know a little bit more about the nature and character of God. Now we can explore the next question – What is the will of God? We will explore that question in our next post.

What do you think? When was the last time you had a conversation with God? What questions do you have about church, Christianity, discipleship, God, or theology? Ask me and we’ll talk about it soon.