HOW TO CHANGE GOD’S MIND
One thing that is hard to do when talking about God is to do it without using human terminology. We are human and that is how we know to communicate, but to state the obvious again, God is not human and our human terminology does not fit Him exactly. For example, when we say “He” it doesn’t really mean that He is masculine, because God has no male or female, but that is the closest thing we have to convey the meaning we understand.
The same thing is true when we say God changes His mind. He knows the past, present, and future, and the thoughts, motives, and intents of the heart. His plan is perfect, so He doesn’t literally change His mind, although it may seem that way to us.
Two of the most prominent examples used to show that we can get God to change His mind are Hezekiah (II Kings 20:1-11,21, 21:1-9)and Abraham (Genesis 18:20-33, 19:30-38).
HEZEKIAH
Hezekiah became ill and God sent the prophet to tell him it was his appointed time to die. Hezekiah reacted how we all would probably react, and cried desperately. God relented (another projection of a human attribute on God) and gave him 15 more years of life. Seems like Hezekiah won. But keep reading.
When Hezekiah did die, his son Manasseh became king. The bible says Manasseh was a terribly wicked king and led the nation into more sin than all other kings before him. Now, he was 12 when he became king, which means he was born during that bonus 15 years that God never planned Hezekiah to have. This leads me to ponder was it worth it?
ABRAHAM
When God was about to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah for the wickedness that was rampant in those cities, Abraham was concerned for his nephew, Lot, who had moved to live in the city. He asked God several times if He would still destroy the cities if 50, 40, 30, down to 10 righteous people lived there. God continued to agree but in the end, there were not even 10 to save so the cities were destroyed as planned.
But God did send an angel to personally escort Lot and his family out before calamity fell. Of course, you surely remember that Lot’s wife disobeyed and looked back so she didn’t survive either.
Now it seems to be that it was a good thing and Abraham was right in “changing God’s mind” but the story isn’t over although we rarely read further.
Lot settled in the foothills with his two daughters and they were safe which is what Abraham’s goal was in the beginning. However, the girls wanted husbands and families. They apparently were so saturated with the ungodly attitude of the city that the best idea they could come up with to achieve this was to seduce their own father. This they each actually did and they each became pregnant by their own father!!
if Abraham would have trusted that God’s plan –to destroy the cities-was best regardless of how it looked–Lot & his family would die– from his point of view, that horrible act of incest would never have happened. But it doesn’t end even there.
The two sons born of those pregnancies founded two nations known as the Ammonites and Moabites. These nations followed wicked practices and performed horrible atrocities and were a thorn in the flesh for the Israelites for many many years (Judges 10:6-9, Leviticus 20:1-5, I Samuel 14:47, I Kings 11:4-7, I Kings 11:33, II Chronicles 20:1, Nehemiah 4:7, 8, Zephaniah 2:8, 9).
It seems plausible that God planned to use the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah as a means of eliminating their evil as well as preventing those (and who knows what other) future evils from happening.
CONCLUDING IDEAS
In a recent Bible study discussion on this topic, it was brought up that most times the reason we resist our circumstances is because of selfishness: we don’t want pain or discomfort or lack. Perhaps Abraham felt affection for Lot, perhaps Lot owed him money, perhaps he didn’t want to forego their monthly family barbecue, perhaps he didn’t want it known that someone he was associated with was a victim of God’s wrath..
I struggle with this self centered philosophy myself. I want healing so I feel better, a raise so I can afford a better vacation, or a whatever so I, I, I can have whatever for me, me, me.
But maybe during treatment for the thing I’m not healed of I’m able to witness to someone I’d never meet another way, maybe on that vacation I’d (or family member) face a temptation that could lead me away from God.
I don’t find it easy to trust that God has my ultimate best interests in hand when he allows things into my life, but I’m beginning to grasp that it’s true.
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