What If Prayers Never Seem to Have an Answer?
Psalm 42: 6-11; Isaiah 55: 6-11
by Rev. Carson Overstreet
Van Wyck Presbyterian Church
July 22, 2018
My soul is cast down within me;
therefore I remember you
from the land of Jordan and of Hermon,
from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me.
By day the Lord commands his steadfast love,
and at night his song is with me,
a prayer to the God of my life.
I say to God, my rock,
‘Why have you forgotten me?
Why must I walk about mournfully
because the enemy oppresses me?’
As with a deadly wound in my body,
my adversaries taunt me,
while they say to me continually,
‘Where is your God?’
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you disquieted within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my help and my God. - Psalm 42: 6-11
Seek the Lord while he may be found,
call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake their way,
and the unrighteous their thoughts;
let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven,
and do not return there until they have watered the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and succeed in the thing for which I sent it. - Isaiah 55: 6-11
Bruce Almighty did. Bruce, who was played by Jim Carrey, was a constant complainer of what God did not do. So, God, played by Morgan Freeman, taught Bruce a lesson. God gave Bruce almighty powers to learn firsthand that only God can be God.
First on the agenda was for Bruce to answer prayers. Voices uttered from across the world flooded Bruce's mind; they came in all at once, non-stop. Overwhelmed by the overlapping voices, Bruce decided to organize all the prayers to shut off all the voices.
And suddenly “YAHWEH Insta-Prayer” was formed. The computer screen said, “Welcome to the super-revelation highway. We bless, no mess…downloading prayers now.” Bruce took a seat, smiled, and then fell asleep because the downloading took so long. When he woke up, over 1 million prayer requests in his inbox.
At lightning speed, he made a huge dent in answering all those emails! And then – just like that - another 3 million requests popped up. Well, Bruce stood up, raised his hands in defeat, and said, “What a bunch of whiners! This is gonna suck up my whole life!”
This scene always cracks me up. And yet in a lighthearted way it begs another question from the pews today: “What if prayers never seem to have an answer?” Did God hear my prayer?
There are a number of Scriptures that assure us that God does indeed hear our prayers:
I call upon you; for you will answer me, O God (Psalm 17:6).
When you call upon me and come and pray to me, I will hear you (Jeremiah 29:12).
..They will call on My name, And I will answer them; I will say, 'They are My people,' And they will say, 'The LORD is my God (Zechariah 13:9).
Even Jesus said, If you ask anything of the Father in my name, he will give it to you (John 16:23b).
When we have prayed, and prayed, and prayed and there is no answer it is not well with our soul. The Psalmist named our human experience saying, “Why have you forgotten me, Lord?” We hear that naysayer voice rise up saying, “Where is your God?” (Psalm 42:9-10).
What if some prayers never seem to have an answer?
Sometimes prayers do not have an answer because we are asking with the wrong motivation. When Saul was King, Samuel the court prophet spoke to Saul as God’s mouthpiece. Upon Samuel’s death, Saul did not know what to do. You see, Saul was not obedient to God and Samuel had already called Saul out on it (1 Samuel 15:10-29). Saul knew he was standing on sinking sand. Now the Philistines were encroaching and Saul was very afraid.
Saul prayed to God for direction, but God did not listen. Being met with silence, Saul consulted a medium to get answers (1 Samuel 28: 3-20). Not only was consulting a medium prohibited against Jewish law. Saul was also seeking his own interest over and against the welfare of the people in which God had entrusted to Saul’s leadership.
The prophet Isaiah had the unpleasant task of holding a mirror up to Israel’s wrong motivations. The people of God would fast in prayer but never felt that God saw their piety. They asked what was the point of humbling themselves in prayer when God did not take notice? Isaiah had to bear the news that of course God noticed; God noticed that a ‘me-centered’ faith which serves one’s interest alone at the expense of others would not be heard on high (Isaiah 58:3-4).
I am not talking about praying for one's mother to be healed. I am talking about praying for one's self-interest when it oppresses others.
In these two instances, prayer was met with silence because the motivations were not godly. It is as if God is saying, “I love you too much to give you your way.” Having the wrong motivation can certainly block God’s grace. It is always right for us to question our motivations, even in prayer.
When it comes to prayer I look to the wisdom of Marjorie Thompson. She learned so much from her beloved friend Henri Nouwen. Marjorie Thompson says, “If you see no indication of God’s grace, ask God to reveal what is blocking it - a lack of humility or gratitude, lack of trust, a hidden sin, or even a need to forgive someone” so that the door may be opened when we knock.[1]
Sometimes prayers do not have an answer because they are not God’s will.
Jesus knew his hour had come. He went to Gethsemane deeply grieved and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me; yet not what I want but what you want” (Matthew 26:36-39; Mark 14: 32-36).
It was not God’s will to allow Jesus to pass the cup of suffering, to pass the shame of the cross, and to pass the complete obedience required to humble himself to the point of death - even death on a cross. Instead God’s will was to work through Jesus Christ to bring about God’s purposes of salvation and new life through the resurrection for us.
The Apostle Paul prayed three times (if not more) for God to remove the thorn – whatever that thorn was. And God would not answer Paul’s prayer the way Paul wanted; it was not God’s will. The only answer Paul received was, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12: 7-9a).
Marjorie Thompson says, “If over time there is no positive response (perhaps praying several weeks or even months, depending on the nature of the situation you are praying for), ask God to reveal to you whether another prayer is more in accord with [God’s will]. If the substance of your prayer is not transformed and there is still no sign of the grace asked for, God’s answer may be no.” [2]
I will never understand why some prayers for healing or safety seem to be granted while others are not. When prayers are met with silence Scripture says that God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and God’s ways are not our ways (Isaiah 55:8).
I can only trust that God embraces us in a love that will never let us go. I can only trust that God’s grace is sufficient when we hit rock bottom. I can only trust that God will give us the grace to accept the situations in life that are beyond our control. And I pray that God’s word shall not return empty; it shall accomplish God’s purposes even though we may never understand them (Isaiah 55:11).
Sometimes prayers do not have an answer because we have forgotten the importance of waiting.
A pastoral colleague in ministry shared with me this week, “We live in an instant culture. There is an app for practically everything we want to get in a moment’s notice. The rapid pace of technology is causing us to miss the waiting. And waiting is our lesson to learn” – and I will add this is our lesson to re-learn. My colleague added, “How does our faith grow if we always get it now?”
Our spiritual ancestors knew all about waiting. God’s people were enslaved in Egypt for 430 years. While many waited for God to deliver them, some were skeptical and even complacent. Moses told the people in all their grumbling about God’s timing to cross the Red Sea, “The Lord will fight for you, you need only to be still AND THEN listen for God to say, ‘Go forward!’ (Exodus 14:14-15).
Waiting is a gift because we listen and look for God creating the opportunity for us to join God in working out God’s will. Sometimes we expect God to solve the world’s problems with his victorious right hand, but God doesn’t roll that way.
Israel followed God another 40 years on the longest hike of their lives to the promised land (Joshua 5:6). Another lesson of waiting. God revealed that waiting with hope means to remember past stories of God’s deliverance in order to claim the hope of God’s future activity (Joshua 5: 20-24).
Still later generations waited 70 years to be delivered from the Babylonian exile. Can you imagine waiting your WHOLE life for God to answer your prayers to break the chains? And the prophet Jeremiah encouraged the people saying, “My soul [like yours] has hit rock bottom, but this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: the steadfast love the Lord NEVER ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; GREAT IS YOUR FAITHFULNESS. The Lord is my portion therefore I will hope in him” (Lamentations 3:21-24).
We all have uttered prayers in which we wait and wait and wait and there never seems to be an answer in sight. God’s silence is deafening. And we wonder is God like Bruce Almighty with his hands thrown up in the air? Is someone else’s prayer more important than yours right now? We wonder where is God?
If God is Almighty then what Scripture says is trustworthy, “The LORD is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him in truth” (Psalm 145:18).
You may not hear God’s voice, but Isaiah says, “Do not fear for God is with you”…“God goes before you and is your rear guard” (Isaiah 41:10; 52:12).
When God is silent, where are you and where am I? The Lord is no stranger to you. The Lord knows your going out and your coming in. You are loved beyond measure, so don’t be a stranger to the Lord.
The Spirit is encouraging you and me to show up every day in prayer. We show up and we wait for the Lord. God always honors our faithfulness even when it is broken and not perfect. There is a gift of grace in the waiting because the Lord cares for you and me, therefore cast your cares upon God.
The Apostle Paul once said we are to rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, and persevere in prayer (Romans 12:12).
We rejoice in hope because we trust that God will bless the broken road in God’s timing.
We are patient in suffering because we endure only by the grace of God’s power at work within us. And yes, some days the miracle is that we endured one more day with God by our side.
We persevere in prayer because our faith is set in the fixed direction of the cross of Jesus Christ.
Rev. Jane Vennard says, “If I depended on the answer I believe God should give to keep me faithful in prayer, I would have stopped praying a long time ago. But when I trust that God hears those prayers, I am able to keep praying.”[3]
Prayer is not about you and I changing God’s mind. It’s about God transforming ours.
May it be so for you and for me.
In the name of God our Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. Amen.
Sources Referenced:
[1] Marjorie Thompson, “Soul Feast” (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005), p. 43.
[2] Thompson, p. 43.
[3] Jane Vennard “A Praying Congregation” (Herndon: The Alban Institute, 2005), p. 53.
No comments:
Post a Comment