Audio Transcript

Can we pray that God would teach someone a lesson? Can we pray for God to disrupt and make their life hard, all to get their attention? It’s an interesting question from Tiffany today.

“Pastor John, hello and thank you for the podcast. I know the Bible says to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. I want to pray for God to change their heart and ways. But sometimes I want to pray that they are affected by their actions so they will wake up and change their ways. For example, at my job there is rampant negligence that has been brought to my boss’s attention multiple times. This negligence could seriously harm or kill someone. My boss doesn’t like the confrontation and doesn’t address the issue.

“Is it wrong to want them to be shaken up by some event to change their ways, or is praying that someone gets taught a lesson the same as saying, ‘I told you so’? Or is all of this unchristian to begin with? Psalm 73 comes to my mind and seems to check this kind of thinking. Immediate justice isn’t something that often happens, and we shouldn’t necessarily look for it to happen before Christ returns. But what do you think? Can we pray for someone to be taught a lesson?”

I start with the conviction from Jesus in Luke 6:28 that Christians are to “bless those who curse you [and] pray for those who abuse you.” So, I think it is right that we should seek the good of our enemies when we pray, especially the ultimate good: their salvation. So, if we pray that they be taught a lesson, we would be praying that the lesson would bless them, save them. That’s the principle. That’s the basic thing I would say. If you’re going to do it, do it savingly. It’s not an “I told you so” — it’s not a “Gotcha!” — but rather, “I want your ultimate blessing.” That’s what I’m seeking in my prayer.

But let me back up and put this question in a particular framework of what the Bible teaches about prayer. It was really helpful for me to think about this. Maybe it’ll be helpful for others. This question really is part of a larger question of how detailed our prayers should be when it comes to pleading with God to accomplish something in a particular way. In other words, if we have an ultimate outcome in mind that we want God to bring about, like saving a particular lost person, how detailed should we get in praying for God to do it in certain ways? Or to say it another way, how many secondary causes of a desired effect should we ask for?

Praying for Causes

Let me illustrate with a couple of pictures. When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he began with the most general, all-inclusive prayer — namely, “Hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). So, this is a prayer that God would see to it that his name is honored, reverenced, treasured, glorified. “Do it Lord; cause that to happen.” And at that point in the prayer, he could have just stopped, right? He could have just stopped. “That covers everything, folks. If everything happens to the hallowing of my name, the glorifying of my name, the treasuring of my name, it’s over. That’s the end of the universe. That’s the point of everything.” He could have just stopped right there. The hallowing and the glorifying of God’s name is the ultimate goal of all things.

But he didn’t stop there. He tells us to pray some specifics underneath the hallowing of his name — namely, “Your kingdom come” and “your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). So here are two specific secondary causes to the ultimate purpose of the hallowing of God’s name — that he would reign in people’s lives and over the earth, and that those lives would be obedient to his revealed will. And that would result in the hallowing of his name, the glorifying and honoring of his name.

“We may pray for others to be taught a lesson for their good, but we should be careful not to presume to be God.”

Then Paul gets even more specific in Romans 10:1, and he shows that we don’t merely just pray for the hallowing of his name or his reign in people’s lives or the doing of his will. We also pray that people be saved, be redeemed, be rescued from their sin. “Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved” (Romans 10:1). So now we have several secondary causes prayed for: that God would reign in people’s lives, that they might be saved, that they might do his will on earth, that the hallowing of his name, the glorifying of his name, would come to pass.

But Paul and the Psalms take us into more specifics, more secondary causes. They pray — for example, in Ephesians 1:18 and Psalm 119:18 — that God would open people’s eyes to see wonderful things in the Bible. So, the New Testament saints did not just pray for people to be saved, but also prayed for what needed to be done for people to be saved — they have got to have their eyes open so that they can see the glories of Christ.

But Paul gets even more granular in his prayers and asks in 2 Thessalonians 3:1 that the word of God would run and be glorified. In other words, he’s not content to pray that people’s eyes would be opened, but that the word of God would in fact be effective in opening their eyes. So, he’s moving back down the causal chain here and asking God to act in producing certain secondary causes that bring about the ultimate thing he’s concerned about.

And Jesus takes this even a level below that in the causes that bring about such things. He says in Matthew 9:38, “Pray earnestly to the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into his harvest.” Now, these are the people who speak the word of the Lord, which will open people’s eyes, which will lead them to salvation, which will lead them to obedience, which will lead them to the hallowing of God’s name.

‘Teach Them a Lesson’?

So, you can see where this is going. I’m pointing out that the Bible does not simply teach us to pray for the ultimate end of things — like the glorifying of God’s name — and then stop. It teaches us to pray for layers of causes that the Bible itself reveals do in fact lead to the glorifying of God’s name. Which means that the question I’m being asked is, in effect, Is it biblical to pray that one of those causes, leading to the ultimate effect, would be, “Lord, teach this person a lesson in order to bring them to repentance and faith and obedience and the glorifying of your name”? Is that biblically warranted?

For example, say a person is making a practice of cheating on his income taxes, and he’s just not telling the whole truth to the IRS, and he won’t pay any attention to your rebukes. “You’ve seen it; you understand it; you’re telling me that’s not wrong. A Christian doesn’t act that way. It’s deceptive. Change your behavior.” And he doesn’t do it. He won’t repent. Should we not only pray that he come to repentance and leave the method by which he’s sinning, but should we pray that something happen to him in order to wake him up from his sinful way?

My answer is this: We may pray for particular ways for him to be taught a lesson for his good, but we should be humble and careful not to presume to be God and to know more than we do. The reason I say this is first because of Psalm 83:16. Here’s what it says — this is a prayer now — “Fill their faces with shame, that they may seek your name, O Lord.” So, the psalmist doesn’t just pray that they would seek God’s face, but that they would be shamed for what they’re doing, and that that shame would bring them to seek God’s face. So, that’s a biblical example of praying that somebody be taught a lesson.

So, the basic answer is yes. But the reason I say we should be humble and careful not to presume to be God is that we don’t know what the best way is for God to bring a person to his senses and save him. We don’t know. We can guess. We can look at the Bible for pointers. But we’re not God. We should be careful not to tell God how he should do what’s best to do. If there are biblical pointers, then we can follow those pointers in praying for secondary causes, but I would not make a practice of going beyond Scripture and prescribing to God how he should accomplish his biblically revealed purposes.