Prayer is a central part of the Christian experience. Usually, there are four steps in prayer, and the acronym ACTS is used to help people remember the four steps:
A: Adoration: Offering praise to God.
C: Confession: Bow down and confess our sins.
T: Thanksgiving: Thank God for everything He had done for us.
S: Supplication: Making requests to God.
I believe prayer is a mental process, and science has little to offer in the first three parts of the ACTS. In this session, we will discuss the fourth part of ACTS: supplication.
Supplication comes from the Latin verb supplicare, which means “to plead humbly.” in other words asking God for help. In a world where God is outside time, the past, the present, and the future are all presented to Him simultaneously. The future is predetermined; prayers will not be needed since the outcome is already written in stone, and prayers will not change anything. So why did Jesus encourage us to make petitions in prayer and say, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”? (Matthew 7:7). As discussed before, process theology asserts that God is experiencing time with us. God is metaphysically constrained, so He doesn’t fully know the future. Therefore, a prayer that tells God what you want is appropriate. The God of process theology is far too limited and not the God I know.
Our previous discussions on how God interacts with the physical world asserted that while the outcome might be known to God, how we reach the destination is still open. Unlike the God of process theology, our God is omnipotent and self-limiting Himself so we can exercise our free will. God rather have us make the right decision and achieve His plan for us than force us to accept the outcome. Prayer is not meant to be a one-way communication where we present our requests to God. Instead, it is intended to be a two-way conversation, where God speaks to us, and we align our will with His. Through prayer, we can gain insight and guidance from God, helping us make decisions that align with His plan for our lives. Ultimately, prayer is about developing a deeper relationship with God and seeking His guidance as we navigate the challenges and opportunities of life.
Another problem with prayer is that an all-knowing God should already know your actual need. Why do we still need to inform him about anything new or suggest a solution He is unaware of?
I don’t believe God is a director in movies where the characters’ lives are all predetermined, and human beings are merely actors in a cosmic play. As discussed earlier, our feedback control system model allows human beings to make petitionary prayers, recognizing that the future is not static and that God constantly interacts with us.
God is omniscient, knows our needs, and may have already decided, but the path to reaching our destination can still change. Prayer can bring about new possibilities and change the course of events. In our model, God will adopt our prayer and change the feedback control loop characteristic to arrive at the desired destination via a different path. In other words, prayer can influence God’s special providence to meet our needs.
Overall, prayer is a powerful tool that allows us to communicate with God and participate in the unfolding of our own lives rather than being passive spectators in a predetermined cosmic play.
As discussed in the previous chapter, there are three regimes in a stable feedback control system: under-damped, over-damped, and critically damped.
In this model, prayer is the fine-tuning of the feedback mechanism. Our will is aligned with God’s plan through adoration, confession, and thanksgiving. When this happens, this is like the critically damped system, and things will happen smoothly and quickly. On the other hand, when our will and God’s do not align, they behave like an under-damped or over-damped system, it will reach the destination, but it will take a long time and go through rough patches. When the Israelites rebelled against God during the exodus, they still reached the promised land, but it took them 40 years to reach it. The work of the Holy Spirit aligns our will with God’s will. I don’t think bottom-up causation is the proper mechanism. The work of the Holy Spirit is the top-down causation through our mental state, and we don’t have a good physical model to describe it. Perhaps the radio analogy can give us some insights.
Sometimes, God says “no” to your prayers, and He will speak to you during prayers and align your will to accept the “rejection.” There are many testimonies about people praying earnestly for the healing of their loved ones, but the healing didn’t come. Instead, God healed their pain from losing loved ones and helped them accept the result.
God can also tell you to wait in your prayers. In this case, He will align your mind to accept the delay. God’s timing is always the best.
In Mark 9, a father begs Jesus to heal his demon-possessed son. Jesus replied, “All things are possible to him who believes.” The Father answered, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!”. As Christians, we all believe in prayer, but deep down in our hearts, we all have our own disbelieves. The unbelief causes the misalignment between our wills and God’s will. This misalignment creates a resistance path for God to answer our prayer.
In Matthew 17:20, Jesus said, “Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Let us borrow the laser analogy again. When we have faith, our wills and God’s wills are aligned, and the effect will be much greater. We should ask God to overcome our unbelief and have great faith that can move the mountain.