Sermon delivered on Sunday, October 24, 2010 at St. Andrew’s Anglican Church, Lewis Center, OH. If you would like to hear the audio version of this sermon, usually somewhat different than the text below, click here.
Lectionary texts: Joel 2:23-32; Psalm 65; 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18; Luke 18:9-14.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What is the Human Condition?
Good morning, St. Andrew’s! Last week I preached a sermon on persevering in prayer. I presented several reasons why we should do so, not the least of which is the fact that our Lord himself commands us to persevere in prayer. This week I want to look at a related subject—unanswered prayer. This can be a tricky subject and impossible to cover comprehensively in one sermon or even a series of sermons. And so today I will only focus on three aspects of unanswered prayer that I think are common to many. Before I begin, however, let us humbly acknowledge that we will never fully penetrate the mystery of unanswered prayer this side of the grave. We can only look in the mirror, dimly, and then be satisfied to walk in faith as we grapple with this issue.
How many of you here have ever prayed for something only to have it go apparently unanswered? It happens to almost everyone who has prayed long enough, hasn’t it? To make matters worse, we often cannot make heads or tails of why God answers some prayers and not others. For example, it is safe to say that God answered the prayers of all those who prayed for the safe release of the 33 Chilean miners who were trapped underground for 69 days. We are thankful for their escape from an awful death and rejoice with those who love them. But then we think of our own prayers for our loved ones that have apparently gone unanswered, prayers for the recovery of health that didn’t happen or for relationships that did not survive or to avoid the financial catastrophe that eventually came. We wonder what is wrong with us. Did we pray incorrectly? Does God not hear us? Or worse, does he not care about us and our needs? Why do some of our prayers apparently go unanswered and what is our response to be?
One reason why we cannot always make sense of the way God answers prayers is because his ways are not our ways nor are his thoughts like our thoughts (Isaiah 55:8). God is God and we are not. He is all knowing and eternal. He has a complete picture of his creation, past, present, and future, and he knows what is best for us.
We, on the other hand, are finite and limited to our own space and time. We do not have the comprehensive picture of the universe the way God does, much as we might like to think we do. We are fallible and fallen, always prone to making mistakes, and so it is very difficult for us to make sense of God’s workings let alone be able to ask for the right and best things all the time.
We see this illustrated powerfully in the book of Job. Job wonders why God has made him suffer so much, even though Job considers himself to be righteous in God’s sight. He challenges God to explain himself and God responds by asking Job a series of rhetorical questions that Job cannot possibly answer. God’s point, of course, is to remind Job that God is God and he is not. Consequently Job is not in a position to understand completely the mind of God or to fully comprehend all his ways. Instead, in answering Job the way he does, God is essentially telling Job to respond in faith, especially in the areas that he cannot possibly understand—like human suffering. Likewise with us in prayer. When we are sometimes puzzled or angered by God’s response or non-response, God asks us to respond not in anger but rather in faith and humility.
Where is God’s Grace?
But the Bible is not completely devoid of answers regarding why God does not answer some of our prayers. Scripture frequently offers us answers in the form of powerful examples and non-examples of effective praying and we can benefit by looking at some of these. We start first with Jesus’ parable in today’s Gospel lesson. In it we have a contrast of how to pray and how not to pray. Our Lord, of course, is reminding us that we must pray with humility, which is what the tax collector did and the Pharisee failed to do. The latter made his prayer all about himself and Jesus tells us that that was the extent of his reward. As both James and Peter remind us in their respective epistles, “God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble” (James 4:6; 1 Peter 5:5). So the first thing we ought to do when our prayers go unanswered or God answers them in ways other than we desire is to ask ourselves if our petitions and requests are offered humbly or do they issue forth from a sense of pride? If our prayers stem from the latter or if they really are not in our own best interests—and God is the only one who really can determine that—we can expect our prayers more often than not to go unanswered.
We see this need for humility in prayer echoed in today’s Epistle lesson. While Paul is not ostensibly praying, it is not hard to infer what was the nature of his prayers. 2 Timothy was Paul’s last letter. He tells Timothy that he knows the end is near. He knows he is a goner. But we don’t hear Paul lamenting this or giving any indication that he is begging God to be spared. Instead, Paul almost rejoices over the fact that he is going to be killed for Christ’s sake. Despite the fact that he is in prison and awaiting execution, Paul tells us that he is confident of the Lord’s power to protect him and deliver him from evil. The Greek words Paul uses for “rescue” and “evil” are the exact words used in the Lord’s Prayer. Paul surely cannot mean by this that Jesus will rescue him from prison and death because he has just told us that his time of death has come. No, imprisonment and death were just more things that the Apostle joyfully endured for the sake of the One who loved him and claimed him on the road to Damascus. In fact, Paul breaks out into doxology at the end of this passage because he is so confident that the Lord will deliver him when it matters most. Do any of us really think that Jesus would fail to answer a prayer like this, a humble prayer offered in total trust and thanksgiving for allowing the Apostle to be the man Christ called him to be? If we think otherwise, then perhaps we need to examine the state of our own faith and beliefs.
We also see this notion of humility in prayer in two notable examples of unanswered prayer that we must look at before we look at some other reasons why God sometimes does not answer our prayers in the way we desire. The first example comes from Paul again. In 2 Corinthians 12:7-9 Paul tells us about asking Jesus three times to remove a thorn in his flesh, whatever that was. Paul tells us that he was given this thorn to prevent him from being too puffed up over the heavenly visions to which he had been privy and Jesus here tells Paul that he will not remove his suffering. Why? Because when Paul is weakest, Jesus’ power in him is strongest. Paul responded to this with rejoicing and thanksgiving because he wanted Christ’s Presence in him to be as strong as it could be. If Paul did not have great faith and trust in Christ, these are surely the words of a lunatic. But Paul did have great faith and trust in Christ. That is why he tells us he gladly suffered for the sake of the Name. Do you have the faith and humility to trust Christ in any and every circumstance the way Paul did, especially when your prayers appear to go unanswered? Are you willing to be weak so that Jesus can be strong in you? How you respond will affect the nature of your prayers as well as whether they are likely to be answered.
The other notable example of unanswered prayer is in Gethsemane. Confronted with the God-awful prospect of having to bear the sins of the entire world himself, our Lord pleads with the Father to remove the cup that he is about to drink. We can only begin to appreciate the agony our Lord must have felt because none of us has ever been called to do what he did. And yet Jesus ended his plea by telling his Father that he desires the Father’s will over his own.
This is what humility in prayer looks like. It is often terribly costly and issues forth from deep faith and an abiding trust. But it is pleasing to God who gives grace to the humble. Therefore, a good question to ask ourselves is this: Who is getting the glory if this prayer request is answered, God or ourselves? If what we ask will give glory to God in his answering it, we will surely have our prayers answered because God is concerned that everyone recognize him for Who he is and so come to worship and obey him (see, e.g., Ezekiel 36:22-23), and this requires humility on our part. Humility in prayer is an essential ingredient for having our prayers answered, but it is never a guarantee.
A second reason some prayer goes unanswered is because we pray for things that are out of their season. The old Preacher tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 that there is a time for every season and for everything under heaven. Sometimes we pray for outcomes and others out of season, so to speak. None of us likes to be confronted with our mortality and growing infirmity, but that is a result of the curse resulting from original sin and often we pray for people whose season has passed or has not yet come. For example, when my mom had a stroke after her second round of back surgery, I sadly acknowledged her season was almost finished. Would I have liked God to heal her? Of course. But I did not ask God for that because she was 86 and struggling with cascading health and infirmity issues that was making her life miserable. Instead, I asked God to release her quickly from her mortal body that were failing her so badly. I believed and and trusted that in doing so, God would heal her in a far better way than anything I could ask for regarding physical healing. Again, we must be careful here because it is God who is sovereign and who determines our seasons, not us. Do you trust God and his purposes enough to acknowledge that some seasons are over even before we would wish them to be or have perhaps not yet started? If you do, it will affect what you pray for and when.
Last and related to this issue of trust, I think many of us do not get our prayers answered because we really do not know God well enough to trust him. James tells us that when we ask for something in prayer we must believe and not doubt (1:6), but that we often do not get what we desire because we do not ask God (4:2-3). Why don’t we ask God for things we want or need? In part, because we are not really sure what to make of God. Unfortunately some of us still have old hangovers of misconceptions about God from childhood. For example, some of us see him as a kind of resident policeman, ready to slap us down hard at the slightest hint that we might just be having some fun. Others of us simply haven’t taken the time to read the Bible thoroughly so that we know the characteristics of God, and all this affects our praying.
So who is this God to whom we pray? I don’t have time to give you a complete rehearsal of what Scripture says, but I can point us to Psalm 103 because there is a pretty good summary there. The God to whom we pray is the God who relentlessly pursued his creatures in Paradise after they had sinned and rebelled against him (Genesis 3). Consequences for sin there are—separation, alienation, and exile—but God relentlessly pursues his wayward creatures because he loves us and created us to have a life-giving relationship with him. We pray to a God who forgives all our sins and heals all our diseases. We pray to a God who satisfies our desires with good things. We pray to a God who works righteousness and justice for all who are oppressed. He is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in love. He will not always accuse nor be angry with us forever. He does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. His love for us is as high as the heavens and so far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. He has compassion on those who fear him and he remembers how we were made. He remembers that we are dust. Does this sound like a God you should be afraid of or to whom you should be hesitant in praying? Is this the kind of God who will delight in denying us any good thing for which we ask? How you answer these questions will have a definite impact on how you pray and the kinds of things for which you ask.
Where is the Application?
So what should we take from this? How are we to respond to unanswered prayer? First, if you have not already done so, I hope I have given you a compelling reason to get to know the God of the Bible by rehearsing for you some of his essential characteristics. Until we have faith in God and trust him completely, we will continue to be vexed by unanswered prayer. But as we grow in our faith and trust in him, aided by the Presence of his indwelling Spirit in us, we will learn to accept unanswered prayer the way that Jesus and Paul did, the way that all the great saints have done.
Second, since we should always be reflecting on the content of our prayers and the nature of our requests, having a prayer buddy becomes quite important for us. This buddy, or call it whatever you’d like, has to be someone whom we trust and who loves us enough to be honest with us. He or she has to be able to keep our confidence and to tell us in a non-judgmental way when we are going astray in what we are asking for in our prayers. Ideally for married couples this prayer buddy would be our spouse but he or she could also be a trusted friend. When we have a prayer buddy, we also have confidence that Jesus will be right there with us because he has promised that when two or three of us are gathered together in his name, there he will be.
Summary
Unanswered prayer can be a faith-destroying thing for us. But with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us, we can learn to overcome its effects and truly become humble children of God. We do so by acknowledging that God is God and we are not, and we can only do this with a healthy dose of humility. If we have not yet done so, we also need to come to know the God of the Bible so that like Jesus, we can come to the Father anytime and in any situation without fear and in total trust. When we learn to do this—and it will take great time and effort on our part—and when we offer our prayers in great humility, desiring the will of the Father over our own will, we can have confidence that our prayers will be heard and usually answered. And in those times that God does not answer our prayers in the way we would like, we love and trust him enough to accept his good will and knowledge of us and our needs. When that happens, folks, we will discover that we really do have Good News, now and for all eternity.
In the name of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, Amen.