Did you pray before you prayed?

Here's a quote from Lewis out of Letters to Malcolm that has profound implications concerning our prayer relationship with God:

We have long since agreed that if our prayers are granted at all they are granted from the foundation of the world. God and His acts are not in time. Intercourse between God and man occurs at particular moments for the man, but not for God. If there is -- as the very concept of prayer presupposes -- an adaptation between the free actions of men in prayer and the course of events, this adaptation is from the beginning inherent in the great single creative act. Our prayers are heard -- don't say "have been heard" or you are putting God into time -- not only before we make them but before we are made ourselves.

Humans have a sequential view of time. It's hard for us to understand time in any other way. It's what gives us the thought that prayer is a part of some human-divine cause and effect, i.e. "I prayed, and God delivered." I've heard many say, "Prayer works." But is it prayer that works or God that works? God, of course. And the point that Lewis suggests is that if we believe that for God all time -- past, present, future -- is one moment then the events we see in sequence, God sees them happen all at the same time.

I liken it to the Big Bang. In the moments prior to the Big Bang all of what creation was, is and will be was held together. It was in one moment -- and then the Bang put it into linear motion. Maybe that's a way to think of the difference between our experience of prayer and God's experience of prayer.

What do you think?