In Elder Holland’s book titled, Christ and the New Covenant, I first encountered the fascinating idea that God could change his behavior based on our prayers and faith. This paragraph stretched my mind.

A final explanation-and in terms of the brother of Jared’s faith the most persuasive one-is that Christ was saying to the brother of Jared, “Never have I showed myself unto man in this manner, without my volition, driven solely by the faith of the beholder.” As a rule, prophets are invited into the presence of the Lord, are bidden to enter his presence by him and only with his sanction. The brother of Jared, on the other hand, seems to have thrust himself through the veil, not as an unwelcome guest but perhaps technically as an uninvited one. Said Jehovah, “Never has man come before me with such exceeding faith as thou hast; for were it not so ye could not have seen my finger. . . . Never has man believed in me as thou hast.” Obviously the Lord himself was linking unprecedented faith with this unprecedented vision. If the vision itself was not unique, then it had to be the faith and how the vision was obtained that was so unparalleled. The only way that faith could be so remarkable was its ability to take the prophet, uninvited, where others had been able to go only with God’s bidding.

I posted the full excerpt for context and a few other insightful comments.

I read this almost twenty years ago, and I was fascinated with the idea. However, at the time, I didn’t let the full impact of the concept work through my personal theology. The phrase “without my volition” and word “uninvited” opened up the idea that God’s future is partially open. I started to understand that my prayers could move God, but my poorly pondered concepts of omniscience limited the broad impact of this concept on how I viewed deity.

But is he surprised?

Sometimes we use the word surprise to imply that an utterly unknown event occurred. According to Merriam-Webster, there are three common definitions for ‘surprise’. The first two seem to imply an event for which a being was unprepared to handle.

1. ‘to attack unexpectedly.’
2. ‘to take unawares.’

However, the third definition is broader. It still has the word ‘unexpected’ in it like the first definition, but it is in the context of ‘wonder’ instead of ‘war.’

3. ‘to strike with wonder or amazement especially because unexpected.’

I think that some may cross-talk between these three definitions. I want to explain my understanding of the third definition and confirm that under this definition God can be surprised.

Unprepared Surprise

Can an event happen that God cannot handle? No!. He sees all possibilities and is completely prepared for any of those possibilities. He has fully redeeming contingencies for any possibility.

Unexpected Surprise

Now I need to tackle the difference between the word ‘possible’ and the word ‘probable.’ Maybe we should let Jack Sparrow provide context.

The Pursuit of Happyness has a short scene with a little more detail to help us understand as well.

Is it possible or probable that God can be surprised?

Probable is an event that is very likely to happen, or we might say the most likely to happen. Some possibilities are not probable. Jack and Chris (Will Smith) succinctly educate us all on this fact. Under this context, God could be surprised - One of the possible outcomes, that He is fully and perfectly prepared to handle, that is not the probable outcome happens. This context counts as a surprise and looks like the experience that Jeffry R. Holland explained about the Brother of Jared.

Maybe God is not surprised that often. But it seems possible that an event that was not the most probable can happen and that this would give God wonder at the unexpected (read not that probable outcome but known possible outcome) of one of his children’s paths.

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