HOW DO WE DEAL WITH GOD WHEN HE DOESN’T ANSWER OUR PRAYERS?

Here’s the problem – God claims that He will answer our prayers!

• Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it. (John 14:13-14; ESV)

Despite our Lord’s assurance that He will answer our prayers, many of them seem to go unanswered. This can be very discouraging, even to the writers of Scripture. The Psalmist Ethan the Ezrahite, after reminding God of His promise that He would fulfill the covenant He had made with David to establish an everlasting Kingdom, charges God:

• But now you [God] have cast off and rejected; you are full of wrath against your anointed.  You have renounced the covenant with your servant [David]; you have defiled his crown in the dust. You have breached all his walls; you have laid his strongholds in ruins. All who pass by plunder him; he has become the scorn of his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his foes; you have made all his enemies rejoice. (Psalm 89:38-42)

It seemed as if God had failed to keep His promise and to answer the prayers of Israel for deliverance. How do we understand this “failure” in light of God’s promises? We need to understand that Jesus’ promises to answer prayer carried along with them several conditions. One of them was “that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” His answered prayers were intended to glorify the Father. It also had to be in “His [Jesus’] Name. This is not simply a matter of uttering the name “Jesus.” This requires that our prayer requests have to be according to His will.

We see this proviso echoed in many places in the Bible. The three Jewish young men had refused to worship the king, who even gave them another chance to worship him before they would be thrown into the fiery furnace. However, they bravely answered:

• “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If this be so, our God whom we serve is ABLE to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:16-18.)

Notice that they hedged in saying, “Our God will save us.” Instead, they answered more humbly, “Our God… is able” to save us. Evidently, they understood that, ultimately, their rescue depended upon His will, saying, “But if not.” They understood that sometimes His will is for our martyrdom.

Jesus also understood that it depended upon the Father’s will and plan for His life. He therefore prayed:

• And going a little farther he fell on his face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup [the Cross] pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” (Matthew 26:39)

If Jesus was willing to submit to the will of the Father, so too must we. Although, it might seem that we have been given a prayer blank-check for whatever we want, Scripture is emphatic that this is not the case:

• You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions. (James 4:3)

Our Lord will answer our prayers, but they must be according to His will and plan for our lives. Well, what is His plan for us? I think that Jesus exhibited this plan in His model prayer:

• Pray then like this: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. (Matthew 6:9-11)

Notice that God’s will must precede our own will and desires. The Lord’s Prayer also adds another condition for our prayers to be answered:

• And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. (Matthew 6:12)

This means that we have to be living for the Lord - confessing our sins and turning from them. Our Lord does guarantee to meet our needs, but this requires Him to be first in our lives:

• But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. (Matthew 6:33)

God does guarantee to provide for us according to His will:

• And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. (1 John 5:14-15)

Consequently, when I pray according to His will, I know that I “have the requests that [I] have asked of him.” When I pray for wisdom to better serve Him, I know that He will give me wisdom. It might not be provided in the time slot I have designated, but I know that I have received.

The Psalmist Ethan couldn’t see a way of escape out of what he saw as a massive failure of God – that God had promised to provide, but it seemed as if He had reneged. Yet he concluded his Psalm on higher ground:

• Blessed be the LORD forever! Amen and Amen. (Psalm 89:52)

Ethan failed to grasp how he could still trust in the Lord after this profound disappointment. Nevertheless, he trusted that his God would yet show Himself faithful. Often, this same step of faith is required of us.

Discouragement in the Lord

Israel had just been defeated by the Canaanites at Ai, and Joshua was deeply discouraged. Although only 36 Israelites had lost their lives in this battle, it signaled the fact that Israel was not invincible. This sent Joshua into a tail-spin:

• Then Joshua tore his clothes and fell facedown to the ground before the ark of the Lord, remaining there till evening. The elders of Israel did the same, and sprinkled dust on their heads. And Joshua said, “Alas, Sovereign Lord, why did you ever bring this people across the Jordan to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us? If only we had been content to stay on the other side of the Jordan! Pardon your servant, Lord. What can I say, now that Israel has been routed by its enemies? The Canaanites and the other people of the country will hear about this and they will surround us and wipe out our name from the earth. What then will you do for your own great name?” (Joshua 7:6-9)

Even worse than the fact that this defeat would have catastrophic effects on Israel’s Canaan campaign, it was discouraging for another reason. God had promised Joshua that no one would be able to resist him:

• No one will be able to stand against you all the days of your life. As I was with Moses, so I will be with you; I will never leave you nor forsake you. (Josh. 1:5)

However, Ai seemed to make a mockery out of this promise. They had just stood very successfully against Joshua and his Israelites. How could Joshua ever trust in the Lord and His promises again? If God had let him down once, why not again and again? No wonder Joshua was devastated and even imagined that he had done something wrong by having the hubris to cross the Jordan, believing that he would conquer the Promised Land.

However, Joshua’s problem was that he lacked an important piece of the puzzle, and this lack prevented him from understanding the defeat. God explained to Joshua that Israel had been defeated because they had sinned by violating the command of God:

• The Lord said to Joshua, “Stand up! What are you doing down on your face?  Israel has sinned; they have violated my covenant, which I commanded them to keep. They have taken some of the devoted things; they have stolen, they have lied, they have put them with their own possessions. That is why the Israelites cannot stand against their enemies; they turn their backs and run because they have been made liable to destruction. I will not be with you anymore unless you destroy whatever among you is devoted to destruction. (Josh. 7:10-12)

Sin will interfere with receiving any of God’s promises. We cannot expect the blessings of God if we reject the Word of God. Actually, it was only one person – Achan - who had sinned, but his sin involved the entire nation of Israel. We are our brother’s keeper, and whenever we allow unrepented sin in our midst, we all suffer.

With this knowledge, Joshua was able to address the problem, and Israel was once again enabled to stand. However, sometimes it seems as if the Word of God has failed. Paul had warned the church that although the Word might seem to have failed, it really hadn’t. It only seemed to have failed because we have interpreted it wrongly:

• It is not as though God’s word had failed. For not all who are descended from Israel are Israel. Nor because they are his descendants are they all Abraham’s children. (Rom. 9:6-7)

In fact, God’s people have often despaired because it appeared as if God’s promises had failed. The Psalmist despaired as he viewed what had seemed to be the failure of the Davidic Covenant (Psalm 89). However, the Psalmist had regarding God’s promises too narrowly. We do the same thing and wrongly conclude that God has failed us.

Abraham had wrongly concluded that God had failed him. He had intervened with Yahweh for the salvation of Sodom where his beloved nephew Lot and his daughters resided. The next morning, he went out the mountain overlook to survey the fate of Sodom and the cities of the plain. They had been utterly consumed. In despair, Abraham packed his bags and never returned to that area, convinced that Lot and his daughters had also been consumed. As far as we can tell, Abraham never found out his God had rescued them.

Our Lord is more faithful than our discouraged eyes are able to perceive.