For the last few days we have been trying to gain a Biblical perspective to help us understand that when God does not answer prayer the way we want him to does not mean that something is wrong with either his promises or our faith or prayer itself. Prayer is the one of the greatest privileges we have as believers and when we become discouraged and give up on it, we harm ourselves and hinder God’s work on earth. God has chosen to do some things only through answers to our prayers.
Yesterday, we began to give three examples of men in the Bible, men of faith, who did not receive what they asked for, when they asked for it. We started our example with Abraham, whose promises were not fulfilled in his own life-time and in fact are still waiting to be completely fulfilled.
We then turned to Paul and discovered that this great man of faith prayed three times for deliverance from what we believe was a painful and blinding eye condition, and three times God told him “No! No physical healing! Instead I will give you my grace to get you through this.” Now that is Scripture (See 2 Corinthians 12:1-10), yet there are those today who in arrogance and in their own sinful imaginations would have us believe that such teaching is really unbelief! They want us to believe that if we only have enough faith, and claim it positively enough, God is obligated to give us our temporal wishes. Personally I find it disturbing that most of the prayer meetings in our churches seem to focus more on keeping people out of heaven than they do praying for people to enter heaven.
Let me explain that last statement. Aunt Suzie is 98 years old. She’s lived a full life, has been a faithful believer, and now wants to go home and be with her Lord. She’s sick and frail and is ready to go. Yet we focus on praying for healing, another touch of God, spare Aunt Suzie so she can go on suffering here with us rather than deliver her safely into the kingdom. Now I understand the pain of separation by death. But frankly there comes a time when the most loving thing we can do and the most faithful thing we can do, is trust God in and through the valley of the shadow of death and not keep praying for deliverance from it! Just a thought.
Now there are those who are livid with that statement, and perhaps are questioning my faith. After all, if we really had faith, no one would die (and what hell that would be, eternally separated from the glorified body, the joys of being with our Savior because our “faith” keeps us going strong in this fallen, sin-filled world).
Perhaps there are those who may be tempted to argue that Paul’s imperfections were revealed in his thrice unanswered (at least in the terms of healing) prayer. If they won’t go there, they will at least try to explain away the situation but claiming that it wasn’t really a physical problem but a spiritual one (then again, he still did not get his deliverance did he?).
So let’s look at one more example. Our Lord himself, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus prayed three times to be delivered from the cross (See Matthew 26:36-44). I do not think anyone, no matter how brazen, would ever suggest that there was any lack in our Lord’s faith. Yet here, we have an example where the Father’s plan does not coincide with the Son’s request, and Jesus goes to the cross. Lack of faith on his part? Be very careful how you answer that. Jesus doesn’t pray, “Father I thank you that you won’t make me go to the cross.” There is no positive confession here. Even our perfect Lord recognizes that in the limitations of the flesh, we have to pray, “Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
That too is a prayer of faith. Perhaps the most difficult prayer of faith. It is much harder for me to pray that God’s perfect will be accomplished in me than it is for me to ask for some coveted thing from him. But until we learn to trust him totally, our prayers will suffer.
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