I want to ask you a question. Has there ever been a time when you’ve asked God to do something or provide something or stop something and it hasn’t happened?

That’s what I want to talk about today – Why does God sometimes appear to go deaf?

If you’re new or new-ish you’ll need some context

• First talk – Lord’s prayer = ‘Prayer for dummies and a reference for the rest of us’
• Second talk – How to pray – Make a PACT with God – a practical outline of Praise God, Admit to God, Come to God and Thank God

But anyone who has realised the huge potential of prayer will have discovered that prayers aren’t always answered.

How come?

Truths we rely on

God is sovereign

He is sovereign over all of his creation and we can easily water down this idea by bringing to the word ‘sovereign’ our own concept of a constitutional monarchy. When the Bible uses the idea of a sovereign it means someone with complete and immediate power. Such a monarch does not need to consult a parliament or seek an electorate’s permission, he just acts. His position as sovereign gives him both the power and the right to act as he (or she) chooses.

This is the idfea that lies behind the sovereignty of God. He has the power to act and he exercises that power from moment to moment in the affairs of men, even though His actions leave us mystified at times.

When we pray, however, we pray to our sovereign. We plead with our monarch. We are given rights of access in prayer that may not be available to everyone.

For me that add enormously to the sense of privilege that I have when praying.

On this we can rely.

God genuinely loves his children

This is an aspect of God that many people, especially those of us just investigating Christianity, may find it hard to get our heads around.

We have been so conditioned to thinking of God as some breed of cosmic ogre, someone I should steer clear of unless I’m absolutely desperate. Someone who will punish me if I step out of line.

Whereas in reality he loves you with a passion that drove him to let his son die in your place!

John (Jesus closest friend) put it like this

“Here is love. Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and gave his son (=Jesus) to be the one who bore away the penalty of our wrong-doing”

Because he loves us, God has taken away our sin and has given us freedom to be the people he always made us to be.

So when my prayers don’t appear to be answered, I hang on to this truth that God loves me. The one I know and who knows me, has my very best interests at heart.

William Cowper was a man in the 18^th century who wrestled with depression throughout his life.

• One night he sank to his lowest point and de­cid­ed to com­mit su­i­cide by drown­ing him­self in the Thames. He called a Hanson cab and told the driv­er to take him to the Thames Riv­er. But such a thick fog descended on London that not even the cabby could navigate the streets, let alone find the river. He became completely disorientated and, after driving round for a while he gave up and let Cowper out.
• To Cowper’s complete sur­prise, he found him­self close to his own door­step: God had sent the fog to keep him from kill­ing him­self. Even in our black­est mo­ments, God watch­es over us.

He wrote a poem about this mysterious fog:

‘God moves in a mysterious way

his wonders to perform

He plants his footsteps in the sea

and rides upon the storm

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,

But trust Him for His grace;

Behind a frowning providence

He hides a smiling face.

When life is at its toughest, I hang on to this truth that God loves me – and that no-one could love me more.

Unanswered prayers in the Bible

When we look into God’s word we get a few surprises when it comes to unanswered prayer.

Some of the greatest characters, the people we admire for their faith, experienced God apparent deafness.

Moses

He had just led the nation of Israel on a 40 year journey through the desert and they are poised to enter the promised land. He’d seen the miracle of getting a million people across the red sea on dry land and now they’re waiting to make the final push, with Moses at the head. This is a big moment.

Here’s what Moses said

23 At that time I pleaded with the Lord: 24 ‘Sovereign Lord, you have begun to show me your greatness and your strong hand. For what god is there in heaven or on earth who can do the deeds and mighty works you do? 25 Let me go over and see the good land [you’re leading us to]

But God didn’t give Moses the answer he wanted. Instead he said

27 Go up to the top of [the hill] and look west and north and south and east. Look at the land with your own eyes, since you are not going to cross this Jordan.

Paul

When St Paul was writing about one particularly painful situation in his own life (and he never identified exactly what it was) he described it as a “thorn” that had been given to him by God. But far from it being purposeless pain, Paul saw it as a way of proving to himself that God’s grace is “sufficient” for us, even when we feel weak. He put it like this:

In order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, … Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:9 paraphrase)

So the supply of God’s grace is what we really need if we are to be resilient, especially when we feel our prayers aren’t being answered.

Jesus

Jesus is in the garden of Gethsemane. He is about to be arrested, tried and crucified – and He knew what’s coming to him!

So he agonises in prayer and asks his heavenly Father if there is any way out of this

“Father, take this cup from me – but not my will but yours be done”

With hindsight we can see that Jesus was willing to give in to his Father’s will, but there is no question, like any human being, he wanted to avoid the pain if he possibly could!

And here’s the wonder of it – He went through all fo that for you – and me – and it couldn’t have happened if Jesus’ prayer was answered by His Father.

And there are others.

Why my prayers may not receive an answer

What prayer busters might there be that causes the God who loves me so much to go deaf?

I’m concealing some sin

David Psalm 66:18

If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened;

If there is something that’s sinful, something that’s outside God’s will for life that I “cherish” (i.e. I hold is as precious – and give it a higher place that the Lord Himself)

• Then he can’t hear me when I pray.

There’s a blockage. My sin is a prayer buster (until I do something about it of course)

I’m disobedient to God somewhere in my life

Proverbs 1:28 ‘Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me,

29 since they hated knowledge and did not choose to fear the Lord.

If I’m being disobedient to the Lord

I can’t have Jesus as ‘Lord’ and say ‘no’ to his demands on my life. If he’s not Lord of all he’s no ‘Lord’ at all.

That also a prayer buster.

I’m just being selfish

I want God to answer my prayer so I can be one up on someone else

Janis Joplin song: ‘O Lord wont you buy me a Mercedes Benz’ (LOL!)

I’m party to some injustice

Isaiah 1:15-17

15 When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you;

even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening.

Why?

17 Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed.

Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.

God bluntly declares that in addition to our personal spiritual state, our social concern for each other (or lack of it) matters enough for it to be a prayer buster.

• My concern for single parents, for the widows, for the orphans, for the powerless has a direct bearing on how my prayers are received.

I can’t say to my neighbour “I love you and I like spending time with you, but I hate your stupid dog and will you darn well make sure your kids don’t play on their bikes in my driveway”

It’s a prayer buster

I just don’t really believe God can do it

Lack of faith

James 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives it generously to all who ask, without finding fault. 6 But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind. 7 That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Beware false logic!

But these reasons don’t tell the whole story and we must be really careful not to turn the logic on its head.

Here’s a classic logical fallacy: All dogs have four legs, my table has four legs, therefore it is a dog.

We can instantly see the stupidity of that, but when it’s dressed up in spiritual language we may not spot it so easily.

Prayer busters mean God doesn’t hear. But if God doesn’t hear it doesn’t mean there’s necessarily a prayer buster somewhere.

What about EMW?

If I accept that false logic then then there must have been some sin hidden in my life (although I wasn’t aware of it).

• Or there must have been some disobedience somewhere (there may have been, but it wasn’t obvious to me)
• or maybe I’d been complicit in some injustice to someone here, for example, (again I wasn’t conscious of it)
• Or I just didn’t believe that God could do it. Actually I did, I firmly believe God can and does heal

Yet He still took our daughter.

Now; if he took Esther because of one of those prayer-busting reasons, I accept that he’s entitled to do it, but surely, that would be utterly disproportionate!

The prayer buster represent the easy answers – and sometimes the easy answers are right.

Other times life is more complex than that. And we find ourselves having to live with that complexity.

God is much bigger than that – He is not a slot machine in the sky for whom I can slot in a prayer and out pops an answer.

Actually if that was the case, then he would no longer be sovereign because I could manipulate him with my prayers.

Living with Mystery

Let me illustrate this mystery and complexity with another example:

There is a true story about an Indian couple who were both caught in the word trade centre when it was blown up in 2001. the husband was in one tower and the wife in the other.

They both prayed to get out of the tower – and miraculously, God answered both their prayers. In fact the husband was so moved that God could do this that he has given his life to telling people about Jesus and become an evangelist. And a very effective one!

It’s a wonderful story! And a fantastic example of answered prayer.

But it begs a question: What about the other 3000 people who perished in the WTC. Did none of them pray to get out? Of course some did!

Can I come up with a simple answer to that? No I can’t.

Two things I’ve discovered, and still wrestle with

There no prescribed formula for prayer.

After having said all this about explanations for unanswered pray, in fact especially after saying all this, God is bigger than a formula – he’s more magnificent than a method.

The formula that runs like this – “Get you life in order + say the right things and the desired result will come” is inadequate to explain real life.

If that were true,

• Paul would have been freed from his ‘thorn’
• Job would have avoided so much of his suffering
• and Jesus would not have gone to the cross for us.

Between the two questions “Does God answer prayer?” and “Will God answer my specific prayer for this sick child, or this particular injustice?” lies a deep pool of mystery.

God is never absent

… from the prayers of his children, nor from the pain that provokes their prayers.

He is with us in the pain which tears us to bits and, as we trust him, gives us resilience to see it through.

Psalm 46 ‘God is our refuge and help. A very present help in time of trouble’

I’ve come to a place where, when God answers my prayers – and He does! – I rejoice that he’s a prayer answering, life affirming, unconditionally loving, infinitely gracious, eternally faithful heavenly Father. My heart skips a beat when that happens.

But I’ve also come to a place where, when God doesn’t answer my prayers I sometimes argue with him. But when I’ve finished his rant, and I cling on to the reality that he is with me, and that he is still a life affirming, unconditionally loving, infinitely gracious, eternally faithful heavenly Father.

And Knowing Him like that is what being a Christian is all about.

Let’s pray