14th August 2026 Question box

OK, tonight’s question is an interesting one:

Is it OK to pray for things to occur in the past? Not for the past to change but that something would occur that you don’t know has happened yet?

I think I get what this is asking. Like we might walk out of an exam, and have this impulse to pray: “please let it be a pass!” Or you’ve heard someone had an operation yesterday, but you haven’t heard the result yet, you don’t know if the operation was a success… so you pray “please let the operation succeed.”

I understand the impulse, but if we want to think clearly about prayer, we need to remember that everything that happens is in some sense according to God’s will. And so we need to accept that whatever has happened, has happened and will not change. The past can be healed, but it can’t un-happen. And so when we look to the past we might thank God for the past, we might confess our past sins. But as the questioner realises, we can’t ask for the past to change.

We can ask God about the future. We can ask that he will give us the grace to accept whatever is coming up. And we can ask him to change the direction that things seems to be heading in. We do this recognising that God already has a plan for the future, but that often the way he has planned things is to give good gifts to his children in answer to our prayers. And so we might pray: “please Lord give the exam marker a generous attitude.” We might pray: “Wherever my friend is up to post-operation, please protect her.” Accepting the past, but trusting God for the future.

There’s one amusing incident in the book of Acts. In Acts chapter 12, Peter is in prison, and it says: “the church was earnestly praying for him…” God answers that prayer, and an angel releases Peter from prison; So he goes back to the church, knocks on the door; and they don’t believe it’s him, and they leave him outside so they can get on with their prayer meeting! Until Peter keeps knocking “and when they opened the door, they were astonished.”

And so sometimes we just don’t know where things are up to; we just ask God as best we know how, and we trust Him to be merciful to us in our weakness, and we trust Him to answer in the best way.

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This question was originally answered by Andrew Vines in our evening service on 17May 2026. I’ll aim to post another question and answer next week. You can read about how our question box works here.