Prayer that doesn’t seem to Work

Prayer can prove to be a disappointment, especially when we are told that it shouldn’t be so:

·        If we know that he hears us--whatever we ask [in prayer]--we know that we have what we asked of him. (1 John 5:15)

However, this hasn’t been our experience. Many of our prayers seem to go unanswered, and this can lead to a faith-avalanche – “Well, if God didn’t answer this prayer, maybe I can’t trust in the other things that the Bible promises? Maybe I can’t trust in God at all?”

The false teachings then come rushing into our wobbling house, claiming that we haven’t received because we have failed to implement the necessary techniques – their techniques. For instance, the mystic, Richard Foster, provides this analysis of the problem:

·        Often we assume we are in contact [with God] when we are not…Often people will pray and pray with all the faith in the world, but nothing happens. Naturally, they are not contacting the channel. We begin praying for others by first centering down and listening to the quiet thunder of the Lord of hosts. Attuning ourselves to divine breathings is spiritual work, but without it our praying is vain repetition. Listening to the Lord is the first thing…(Celebration of Disciplines, 34)

According to Foster, “contacting [God’s] channel” is a matter of approaching God with Foster’s techniques, as if God is telling us:

·        Unless you learn to attune yourself to my “divine breathings,” forget-about-it. I care about techniques, not faith, righteousness, confession and repentance.

But why doesn’t God respond to us in a timely fashion? James offers one reason:

·        You want something but don't get it. You kill and covet, but you cannot have what you want. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask God. When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures. (James 4:2-3)

Wrong objectives and objects might be the reason that we are not receiving. However, just one verse before John’s troubling promise of receiving “whatever we ask,” he adds an all-important condition:

·        This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. (1 John 5:14)

This means that whatever God gives us has to be according to His will, and we can learn a lot about His will from Scripture. He will not grant us anything that does not accord with His love for us.

There are many things that I want that I have not received. Perhaps I am not ready for them, and perhaps they might hurt me and others. I had prayed for years that God would open the door for me to teach, but for many years this door did not open. Now, in retrospect, I can understand why! Had He opened the door for me prematurely, I would have been preaching destructive heresies.

There are other things that I desire that He has not given me. Perhaps, had I received these things, I might have grown arrogant or self-content.

However, we have the hubris to claim that we know what is best for us. Many had been self-assured that if they hit the Lotto, they would then be happy. However, surveys reveal that it has destroyed many lives.

Consequently, I am glad to allow the Spirit to intercede for me:

·        In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. (Romans 8:26)

Therefore, prayer is not a blank check, but a beckoning check awaiting our God’s signature.

The Sin Unto Death

When life turns viciously against us, we are tempted to think that perhaps we have committed the “unpardonable sin” or, as John puts it, the “sin unto death:

• If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death. (1 John 5:16-17)

Is there a sin that cannot be confessed/repented? Will God turn His back on a repentant sinner because he has sinned a sin that is just beyond forgiveness? This doesn’t seem to be John’s message or even the message of Scripture. Instead, John guarantees:

• If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives. (1 John 1:9-10) 

John gives the church what seems to be a promise without exception – that if we truly confess whatever sins we might have, God will truly forgive and purify! How then do we understand the “sin that leads to death” – the one that can’t be prayed away?

What is this sin? It seems that 1 John is not concerned about particular sins but instead a deliberate practice of unconfessed/unrepented sin (1 John 3:6-10). In the following verse, John writes:

• We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin. (1 John 5:18)

This seems to be John’s concern – that someone might confess Christ insincerely and think that he is saved merely because of his empty confession, despite his refusal to repent. John protests that this isn’t possible. Anyone born of God will not live like this! This seems to be John’s concern - the unrepentant practice of “sin that leads to death.” No wonder that we should not pray that God forgive without any change of heart!

Without repentance and sincere confession, God will not hear the prayers of such a deluded person. If we are going to pray for a person that we perceive is practicing sin, we must pray, not for forgiveness, but for repentance.

This unrepentant individual does not really want God; He just wants insurance against punishment! After a while, God will give him over to the desires of his heart (Rom. 1:24, 26, 28), and he will receive the very thing he longs for – a guilt-free, shame-free, repentance-free existence. In the process, the things of God become foolishness to him (1 Cor. 2:14), and he will not sincerely confess his sins and find forgiveness.

However, if you are seeking the forgiveness of God, it means that the things of God are not “foolishness” to you. Consequently, the promise of John 1:9 applies to you. You can grasp it with all the assurance in the world.

I will now attempt to restate the difficult verses of 1 John 5:16-17 in accordance with this position:

• If anyone sees his brother commit sin that does not lead to death [not the willful practice of sin, we should encourage him to] pray and God will give him life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is [the willful practice of] sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray [without also repenting] about that. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death. (1 John 5:16-17)

Miracles: We Don’t Know what we Need

Life is tough! Why doesn’t our God nourish us with a steady stream of miracles to encourage us through the doubts and doldrums? On top of our perplexity about this, we must also suffer the taunts of the atheist:

• “Well, if you’re God really cares about saving us, He’d provide us with enough miraculous evidences so that we could believe in him and not have to suffer hell.

However, even though Scripture assures us that we already have enough evidence (Rom 1:18-20; 2:14-15; Acts 14:17; Psalm 19), it never seems to be enough. However, Jesus instructs us that we are blessed with this miracle-lean diet.

The Apostles, with the exception of Thomas, had been blessed with a miraculous and unexpected visit by the risen Christ. He suddenly appeared to them as they shivered with fear behind locked doors. To prove to them that it was He, He showed them His pierced hands and side, and they rejoiced (John 20:20).

However, when they reported this visitation to Thomas, he stubbornly refused to receive their testimony. Instead, he insisted that he should be granted the same visitation. Otherwise, he refused to believe.

Amazingly, Jesus condescended to grant the defiant Thomas his request. Thomas then believed. However, Jesus reprimanded him:

• Then Jesus told him, "Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed." (John 20:29) 

Who was it who believed without seeing? Everyone had seen! It seems that, after the humiliation of the Cross, seeing was necessary for believing. All had abandoned Jesus and even the faith. The Apostles were running scared! They needed the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection appearances to restore their faith, and that’s exactly what they had been granted:

• After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. (Acts 1:3)

Besides, those who subsequently came to faith did so through the miracles performed by the Apostles’ (Acts 2:43). Who then believes without seeing? Us!

Right afterwards, John refers to those who would believe, not on the basis of seeing, but on the basis of apostolic testimony:

• Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:30-31)

There would be a change. John wrote his Gospel so that we would believe. He didn’t anticipate a plethora of future post-resurrection appearances. Instead, faith would thereafter rest primarily on Scriptural – testimonial - evidences rather than on seeing miraculous evidences.

This sounds like discouraging news – a step in the wrong direction.  However, Jesus assures us that “blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed" (John 20:29)! How can this be?

This certainly doesn’t mean that we will never have miraculous evidence. Before I was brought to faith in the Messiah, I had a miraculous Divine encounter as I was bleeding to death from a horrible chainsaw injury. I was so overwhelmed by the presence of God that nothing mattered to me but Him and that He was there to protect and love me.

I was miraculously rescued and spent the next four days in the hospital. Meanwhile, I knew that this unknown Savior was with me. Therefore, on the following day, when my surgeon instructed me to exercise my half-cut-off wrist or loose its mobility, I blew-off his instructions. I knew correctly that God – whoever He was – was all-powerful. Therefore, I wouldn’t listen to the surgeon.

Miracles can prove costly. I was foolish. I made a wrong assumption - even though I was given a strong dose of God’s truth during this encounter - and lost the mobility in my hand. Although I needed this miraculous encounter, I lacked the knowledge to handle it. I didn’t understand that although God is omnipotent, this doesn’t negate our responsibility to act prudently, as I had wrongly assumed.

Subsequently, I came to a faith in Christ. However, I never had another encounter. I certainly wanted one and prayed for many, but it was not to be. Consequently, as I experienced great trials through my faith-walk, I began to believe that I had made a wrong turn somewhere, or perhaps God didn’t love me I had initially believed. I needed miraculous reassurance, but it wasn’t to be found.

I therefore had to settle for what I had regarded as “second best” – the Words of God. However, these seemed to be a poor flimsy substitute for the “real thing” – an encounter with God Himself. Often, reading the Bible seemed hollow and sometimes confusing, but there was no other place to turn.

In retrospect, 36 years of it, I now see that this – depression and a miracle-lean diet – is exactly what I needed to enable me to absorb that growth-food that we all require but fail to esteem.

If I had been able to live out my Christian life by the seeing of the miraculous, I would have gladly done so. However, what gladdens us is not necessarily good for us. The Apostle Paul warned us that “we walk by faith not by sight” (2 Cor. 5:7). Why? When we grope our way through the painful “Valley of the Shadow of Death,” we learn valuable lessons. David thanked God for these:

• It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees. (Psalm 119:71)

Why do affliction and a miracle-lean diet grow the most fragrant roses? Because they teach us to turn from self-trust to God-trust:

• We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead. (2 Cor. 1:8-9)

A miracle-rich diet breeds complacency, and complacency does not breed a self-examination that humbles and ultimately edifies. We are made to eat humble-pie until we learn a necessary lesson – that it’s all about our Savior:

• But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. (2 Cor. 4:7-10)

We do not know what is good for us. We think that winning the Lotto will make us happy, but it usually destroys those it touches. We are convinced that miracles will grow us spiritually. However, a miracle-rich diet is like living in a palace where we never learn and are never challenged to grow and dig deeper. It’s like feeding an Olympic athlete on a diet of ice cream and cake. It’s to be surrounded by gold and not growth-promoting clay.

Peter was chosen by His Lord to feed His sheep. However, Peter had to first know what it was like to live in a jar of clay. He needed to have his self-confident wings clipped by denying his Lord three times. This taught him humility. However, that would not be his last lesson. Jesus promised that he would grow old and loose his self-sufficiency along with his confidence, and then face martyrdom (John 21:18).

Our reaction is “Why me?” Peter asked about John - whether he too would have to suffer martyrdom? We want the answers. We want to walk by sight and not by faith. We want to be in control, but jars of clay are not supposed to be in control.

A miracle-rich diet makes us fat and self-satisfied. It answers all of our questions and doesn’t force us to dig deeply into the word for answers. We cannot handle all of the blessings that our Lord wants to ultimately give us. Money can make us proud and self-satisfied. Success leads to self-trust. A steady diet of miracles can numb the mind and growth. No wonder that we are more blessed without them.