The teaching that prayer changes the person (inward growth and not material miracle) is a Buddhist and Eastern teaching.

What does change?

I prayed for healing and then my “body changed.”

This happens, because “God is unchangeable” in being faithful to preform His promise. When I pray for financial help, then my finances change to the better, because God is unchangeable to His promise. When I pray for deliverance from my enemies, then my enemies change for the worse, because God is unchangeable in keeping His promise.

If there is a focus on inward change it happens before you pray. Before you pray, you hear the word of God and your inward man changes from unbelief to faith about promise x or y. After this inward change, then when you pray you experience material change, because God’s faithfulness is unchangeable.

Lastly, if we were to focus on God changing, it would be how God, despite His Will to only bless this person or group, changes His Will to change the material world of an outsider, because of their faith (Matt. 15:21-28). Thus, “faith can change” the Will of God, from a No to a “Yes.” There is no record in Scripture of God’s Yes changing to a No or Maybe, on the demand of faith. With faith, the change in the Bible that God makes to His Plan, is a change to a “yes.”

Thus, the teaching that prayer changes us inwardly, is a triple falsehood. We change inwardly before we pray, by hearing the word of God. When we pray in faith, our material world changes. When we pray in faith, because God is unchanging to keep His promise, our material world changes. And lastly, the only time God does change His Plan, is to change our material world for good when there is faith.

For the Christian the idea of change is a good and heartwarming term.