A Prayer-Full Life “Unanswered Prayers” Various Passages ...newcitychurchla.com/wp-content/uploads/sermons/... · “Unanswered Prayers” Various Passages Kevin Haah March 20,

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A Prayer-Full Life “Unanswered Prayers” Various Passages Kevin Haah

March 20, 2016

Turn on Timer!

Good morning! And happy Palm Sunday!

[Slide 1] Today, we are going to conclude the series, A Prayer-FULL Life. We

have been talking a lot about the vision of becoming a praying church, how prayer

actually changes things, various ways to pray—praying every moment of our lives

through practice the presence of God, formative prayers, contemplative prayers,

Emmanuel prayers, prayers in dark nights, prayers to see God’s glory, learning to pray

from the Psalmist—praying raw and praying our guilt and shame. Last week, TC talked

about spiritual warfare and prayer, and today, we are going to end the series by talking

about [Slide 2] “Unanswered Prayers”. You can text or write in your questions.

Question/Answer session afterwards if we have time.

I don’t think it would be right to do a series on prayer and not talk about the

experience of unanswered prayers. You know, sometimes, just saying the word

unanswered prayer seems disrespectful to God. But, I want to get real here. Can I do

that today? Do you feel like your prayers are unanswered? You might be struggling with

an illness for a long time and you have repeatedly asked God to heal you. Maybe, it was

someone in our family. It has not happened. You might be praying for a relationship,

and it has not happened. Maybe you prayed for your relationship to work out, and it has

not. The reality is that some prayers are answered while others are not. Why did God

heal Joe but didn’t heal Jane? I heard about this little boy who had three siblings whose

names are Afton, Gavin and Jensen. [Slide 3] He left a note on his parents’ door saying

something like: “Why did you give Afton something and me and Gavin and Jensen not?

Put your answer right here à”. I think a lot of us are asking the same thing. Why him

but not her? Why don’t you answer my prayers? Didn’t you say that if I knock, it shall

be opened? Ask and you shall receive? What’s going on God? I know some people who

got so angry at God for not answering their prayers that they walked away from God.

They don’t want anything to do with a God who is supposed to be all loving and all

powerful, but refuses to answer their prayers.

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Now, I want to start out by saying that there is no easy answer to this question.

There is no formula to determine why some prayers are answered and some are not

answered. It’s very complicated, and we will never know everything. Much of it will

remain a mystery. But, the Scriptures do give us some variables, some principles, that

help us understand this. And we are going to go through them. However, we have

remember that they cannot be reduced to pat answers and formulas. They all work

together, and often times, we don’t know how much weigh each factor has.

The Book of Job is very instructive on this. In the story, Job’s kids are killed and

he ends up with brutal illness and financial ruin. In the beginning, he says “God gives and

takes away, blessed be the Lord.” But, later on he goes on complaining and complaining

to God and his friends. His three friends come and essentially say that this is happening

because he has sinned and he is being punished. There are chapters and chapters of his

friends accusing Job for sinning, and Job defending himself from his friends’ accusations,

and Job accusing God of being unfair. At the end, we find out that everyone was wrong.

God chastised the three friends for not speaking truth about God. He is saying, you can’t

reduce why suffering happened to just one thing—that God is punishing you for

something you did wrong. Near the end of the book, [Slide 4] in Job 38, God responded

to Job and said:

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said: 2 “Who is this that obscures my plans

with words without knowledge? 3 Brace yourself like a man;

I will question you,

and you shall answer me. 4 “Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?

Tell me, if you understand.

[Slide 5] 5 Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!

Who stretched a measuring line across it? 6 On what were its footings set,

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or who laid its cornerstone— 7 while the morning stars sang together

and all the angels j shouted for joy?

He goes on and on and says for several chapters: God asks Job one question after another

to which Job has no answer.

[Slide 6] 16 “Have you journeyed to the springs of the sea

or walked in the recesses of the deep? 17 Have the gates of death been shown to you?

Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? 18 Have you comprehended the vast expanses of the earth?

Tell me, if you know all this.

The point that God is making to Job is that you don’t know jack! The point is that reality

is complicated. If I try to explain it all to you, you will not be able to handle it. So, as we

go through the variables to why our prayers are not answered, let’s make sure we do not

create formulas out of these like the friends of Job did.

I want to recommend a book to you by Greg Boyd entitled, Is God to Blame? It is

very good, and you can go deeper if you want to in that book.

So, what are the variables that are in the Bible that affect outcome of prayer?

[Slide 7] I. God’s Will.

God’s will is the most fundamental variable that affects the outcome of prayer. 1

[Slide 8] John 5:14 says:

This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything

according to his will, he hears us.

James 4:3 says:

When you ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you

may spend what you get on your pleasures.

So, let me stop here and get real with you. Some of us have this Santa Claus view of God

and prayer as our wish list. Remember Janice Japlin’s song: “O LORD, won’t you buy

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me a Mercedes Benz?” Lord, I want a bigger house, a bigger car, faster car. Lord, I want

a Jet! Why not? I am the King’s kid. When our prayers are self-absorbed and we treat

God like a Genie who owes us wishes, that’s going to affect the outcome of our prayers.

Now, that doesn’t mean you can’t pray for housing, pray for transportation, pray for

things that you need. God cares for you. But, there comes a time when it is more about

your pleasures than about bringing the will of God.

That’s obvious, right?

Now, as I said earlier, this is not the only variable that determines the outcome of

our prayer. It is the most important variable, but it is not the only one. The Bible teaches

us other variables. Sometimes, you think that if God doesn’t answer your prayers, you

conclude that it must be God’s will that it doesn’t happen. You asked for healing of your

little baby, and it doesn’t happen, and you conclude that it must be God’s will that the

baby die. Sometimes, that’s what we tell people. It was God’s will that the baby die. I

don’t think we can say that. I believe God does not will a baby to die. We often say that

God is the one who takes people, that if so and so died, we say, it was God’s timing. It

was God’s will. And we apply this logic to all kinds of bad things: natural disasters,

accidents, violence, war. We make God responsible for all kind of evil in this world. Is

God really to blame? There are other reasons bad things happen other than God’s will.

So, we can’t reduce the will of God into a formula. No, if this was the only variable, that

might be true, but there are other variables.

So, what are some other variables?

[Slide 9] II. Human faith.

The Bible says that the faith of people praying has effect on the outcome of

prayer. For example, when a group of people took the trouble to dismantle a roof and

lower a paralyzed friend into a crowded house so that Jesus could heal him, Luke 5:20

says, “When Jesus saw their (the three friend’s) faith,” Jesus healed him.

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When a centurion asked Jesus to heal his servant, Jesus saw his faith, and healed

the servant. One time, the disciples could not cast out a demon from a boy because Jesus

said they lacked faith.

So, it is true that our faith affects the outcome of our prayers. Yet, we have to be

careful to not reduce this principle into a formula. If baby Jane dies, we can end up

blaming ourselves for lack of faith. We can’t say that faith is not a variable in whether

healing happens or not, but it is not the only variable. Sometimes, we either blame God

by saying that somehow letting the baby die was God’s will, or we blame the victim by

saying that you didn’t have enough faith. There are other variable affecting the outcome

of our prayers.

[Slide 10] III. Persistence of prayer.

In Luke 11, Jesus taught his disciples the Lord’s Prayer, and then immediately

afterwards, he told to pray persistently like a person who persistently knocks on his

neighbor’s door to get some food for a guest. This is where Jesus said (in verse 9), [Slide

11] “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be

opened to you.” Jesus taught us to pray like a woman trying to get her case heard by an

unjust and reluctant judge. Jesus is not saying that God is like the unjust judge; he is

teaching us to pray persistently. That’s why he started the parable with this statement

(Luke 18:1): “Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should

always pray and not give up.”

So, Jesus taught us to labor in prayer. The spiritual work of prayer is as if not

more intensive than physical labor. Jesus is teaching us that intercessory prayer is not

magic. It is spiritual labor.

BUT, this principle of persistence in prayer does not mean that whenever a prayer

is not answered, it’s because we didn’t pray long enough or hard enough. There are a lot

of different factors that affect the outcome of prayer.

[Slide 12] IV. People praying together

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We see the church praying together when the Holy Spirit came upon them on

Pentecost. We see the church praying together in many occasions throughout the

Scriptures when God did something amazing. Historically, every movement of God

started with groups of people praying together. I think that is why Jesus said [Slide 13]

(Matthew 18:19-20), “If two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done

for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am

there among them.”

This teaching assumes that there is an additional dimension of power when people

gather to pray. There is power when we gather to pray!

Of course, this doesn’t mean that if we come together as community, God always

answers our prayers. And it doesn’t mean that if we don’t come together and pray, God

is not going to answer our prayer. There are other factors that come into the picture. We

already talked about a few. Let’s continue to see others. This next one is critical.

[Slide 14] V. Human free will

From the beginning, God created us with free will. He didn’t create robots. He

gave us say-so. The reason he did this is because he created us to have a relationship

with him, to be loved by him and to love him. In order to have a loving relationship, he

had to give up power, and allow us to actually determine at least partly what happens in

the world. This is not just illusory. It’s not just pretend free will. It is not like a leach

that he put on us and if we go too far, he jerks us in. We actually have the power to walk

away from God. We have the power to hurt people. We have to power to destroy God’s

creation. We have the power even to kill people.

So, this means that in order for this free will to exist, God can’t just intervene in

nature all the time. He has to allow consequences of human action to happen. If we can

escape the consequences of human action, do we really have free will? Does a dog really

have freedom if he is on a leach? God gives us so much freedom, that he even gives us

the freedom to separate ourselves from him for eternality. Hell demonstrates how

seriously God takes human free will. God does not deal with human being by controlling

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us. He is always demonstrating his love for us and influencing us. The power of God is

not coercive; it is more persuasive; it is influence; it is this non-coercive power of love.

That means people can still make choices.

I know a lot of you have a hard time thinking of God’s power as not controlling

everything. Some people do think that God directs every move of everyone. I believe

that the Bible tells us that God calls us to come to him, but never force us to come to him.

It is always our choice, because that’s how love relationship works.

So, this means that we can pray for our friend to become a believer, and I believe

that the prayer triggers a loving spiritual influence on him so that he will open his heart

towards God, but if he does not want to be a believer, he will not. God is not going to

coerce him to be a believer. If no one tells him about the gospel, he is not going to be a

believer. Human activity has an impact on whether those prayers are answered or not.

We can’t just be praying for people to come to know Jesus. We have to also tell them

about Jesus. Our action has real consequences on the outcome.

To use a more simple example, we have all prayed that we would do well on a test

that we didn’t study for. The prayer may have some influence, but given God’s respect

for human free will, he may not always answer your prayers and bail you out. If he did

that, he will take away the natural course of consequences for our free will.

If God answered all of our prayer for a relationship, that would take away the

other person’s free will. You can’t make God coerce her into saying yes to your asking

her out. She has a real say-so. If you want your marriage to work out, you should pray.

I believe there is power in the prayers. But, God may not answer them by coercing your

spouse to be married to you if he does not want to be. He has a real say-so about whether

he wants to stay in the marriage. I know for some of you, your faith was actually shaken

when God didn’t answer your prayer for reconciliation in your marriage.

Now, this is not to say that God never intervenes in nature or never stops the

consequences of human free will. He does do miracles. But, if he did miracles all the

time, he would effectively take away human free will.

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Don’t be too pessimistic about prayer. There is good news even when people

make things messy. We will talk about that in a little bit after I finish all the variables.

[Slide 15] VI. Spiritual warfare in the heavenly realm.

TC knew that I was going to talk about this. That’s why he said this sermon is

going to be part 2 of his sermon on spiritual warfare. There are things going on in the

spiritual realm that affect what happens in the physical world. As Apostle Paul taught us

in [Slide 16] Ephesian 6:12, “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the

rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the

spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” There is a spiritual war going on

between God and Satan. God has already defeated Satan but we are still in a mop-up

operation. The Bible tells us that he has been defeated but not yet destroyed. He will be

destroyed when Jesus come back to restore the world. For now, we live in a war torn

world. Romans 8:20-21 says that creation has been subject to frustration, the creation is

in bondage to decay, it is groaning as in the pains of childbirth. The work of the prince of

this world, the principalities, rulers, Satan, and demons, has caused this frustration, this

bondage to decay, this groaning. Our bodies are decaying because of this reality. Look,

you are not sick because God made you sick. You are sick because we live in a war torn

world and the prince of this world, Satan, has messed it up. There is hope in our future

because of the resurrection of the dead. There is hope in the world because the what is to

come in the future has broken into the present in the person of the Holy Spirit. That’s

what Romans 8 tells us. But, for the present, it doesn’t say that we will not suffer the

consequences of the actions of the Satanic forces. It does not say that we will completely

escape the influence of the demonic forces. The choices and influences of the Satan is

very real in our lives.

In fact, Paul said to the Thessalonians that he had “intense longing” to see them

and made every effort, but could not see them because he said, “ Satan block our way.”

Sometimes, things happen because of things happening the spiritual realm that we cannot

see. In Daniel, when Daniel began praying and fasting, and God immediately dispatched

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an angel in response to Daniel’s prayer, but he was delayed for 21 days because the angel

was resisted by “the prince of Persia” and Michael, the archangel, had to help him get

free.” What does that mean? I don’t know. But, there is something that is going in the

spiritual realm that affects the outcome of prayer, and we don’t really understand it. It’s

complicated because the original angel couldn’t win on his own. Michael had to come

and help him. What does this mean? I don’t know. We don’t understand this. We don’t

really know what’s going on. But, what is clear is that something is going on behind the

veil and what is going on there is actually affects what is going on in the physical world.

So, it is important to pray. And as TC said last week, it’s important to pray in the way

that drop shalom (peace) bomb to our enemies by loving them and praying for them.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Satan is running the show, and God can’t do much

about it. No no no. It just means that there is something going on in the war torn

spiritual reality that may have an affect in our present world. This is a variable that

affects the outcome. Again, we can’t put everything here and create a formula. There are

many variables that affect the outcome of our prayers.

The point of these variables to show us that it’s complicated. We don’t know why

God answers Joe’s prayers and not Jane’s. Can you just say that? I don’t know. Look,

in order for us to know, we would have to understand God’s will, our faith, the

complexity of human free will and consequences of everyone’s actions, and all that is

going on behind the curtain in the spiritual realm. I think we have a desire to over-simply

things and live with pat answers. But, the reality is much more complicated and we have

to learn to live in that ambiguity. It’s like what God said to Job at the end: do you really

understand the complexity of the universe as I do? God is saying, do you know? We

don’t.

Last few suggestions:

(1) Continue to pray. Do not let anything I said hinder you from prayer. There is

power in prayer. Our prayers really do change things. When we come together, there is

power in an added dimension. When we persist in prayer, there is power.

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(2) Don’t make these variables into a formula. They work together in mysterious

ways. Any effort to simplify and explain can cause more damage.

(3) Do not underestimate the power and wisdom of God. [Slide 17] Romans 8:28

says, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,

who have been called according to his purpose.” This doesn’t say that it is God’s will

that Jane died , but it does means that God can use even the bad things caused by the

principalities of evil, even the bad things that have happened in the broken world, even

your illness, everything to do something good. It does not mean he caused the bad. It

means that he is so sovereign, so powerful, so wise, that he can even use the bad choices

you made, the bad choices that your ancestor made, bad choices that our nations have

made, even all the unanswered prayers, and make them work for the good of those who

love him. There is hope in the present. Remember that God loves you. Even in the

midst of your pain and suffering, remember that in Christ, God came down, became

human, and died for us so that we might be free from the powers of the Kingdom of

Darkness.

(4) It is not just in the present that God can do something good through even our

unanswered prayers. He will come and completely free us from the bondage to decay.

He will completely come and restore the universe.

Our prayers in a sense are like a messy wrestling match with God. Did you know

that the word Israel means one who wrestle with God? We persist. We join with others.

We cry out. We complain. We don’t know why it is sometimes not answered. We

struggle with the reasons. We struggle to see what God is doing. But, there is hope. It

ends in a dance. In the end, there is complete restoration. There is liberation from

bondage. There is no more unanswered prayer.

The early church went through a time of tremendous difficulty as they were

persecuted and killed in droves. They cried out to God and many probably felt that God

did not answer their prayers. Apostle John was exiled to an island called Patmos and left

to die. At this island, God unveiled reality so that the church can see the present in light

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of the unseen realities of the present and future. [Slide 18] That’s the Book of

Revelation. We are going to start a series on Revelation from next week.

Let’s pray.

Invite Prayer team.

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A Prayer-Full Life “Unanswered Prayers” Various Passages ...newcitychurchla.com/wp-content/uploads/sermons/... · “Unanswered Prayers” Various Passages Kevin Haah March 20,