Warren Wiersbe tells of the time when he was helping to paint the outside of his neighbors’ home. His neighbors had a small black dog that had a ritual of going to the back door of the house. Once the little dog took up his station at the back door, he would bark and bark until someone finally got the message and let him out.
One day Wiersbe was painting the outside of the house when no one was home. The neighbor’s dog started his ritual at the back door and barked and barked all day long. The sad thing, Wiersbe said, was that it never dawned in his little brain that all his barking was totally useless—no one was home to hear!
Perhaps many of you feel like that dog. You have prayed and prayed for something and there seems to be no answer—there seems to be no one home! And maybe you are beginning to have this nagging wonder why your prayers are going unanswered.
You are not alone! Throughout Scripture we see instances of followers of God who cried out and did not seem to have their prayers answered. The two biggest examples were Jesus and Paul. Remember, Jesus pled for God to “take this cup from me,” but to no avail. And the Apostle Paul begged God to take away “the thorn in his side,” but God never did. Obviously, their prayers were not answered to their satisfaction.
We can receive comfort from the fact that even Jesus and Paul went through times of fervent praying for God to do something and God not complying with their requests. We are not alone with what seems like our unanswered prayers.
What is Prayer?
Perhaps you are thinking, “Wait a second, didn’t Jesus tell us that if we ask, seek, and knock, we will receive an answer” (Luke 11:9-10)? Yes. That is what he said, and his words are true, but we must first understand what prayer is before we can understand the truth and power of Jesus’ words. Prayer is one of the most misunderstood and misused practices of our faith, and until we understand the nature of prayer all of our barking and praying for an answer will leave us frustrated. Our wondering about unanswered prayer is often about a misunderstanding about the nature of prayer.
For many, prayer is understood as an exercise in magic. There are a number of popular religious books out there that seem to support this. People often believe that if they say the right phrases or have the proper technique, they can persuade God to answer their prayers.
There is an old story of a monk who was bothered by mice playing around him when he prayed. To stop it, he got a cat and kept it in his prayer room so the mice would be scared away. However, he never explained to his disciples why he had the cat. One day the monk walked down the corridors of the monastery and noticed that each of his disciples had a cat in their prayer room. After seeing the monk with a cat, they thought having a cat was the secret to powerful praying!
I believe this is a parable for many Christians today. Many believe they have to do something special in order for God to hear them and have their prayers answered. You will often see folks running here and there to learn the latest prayer gimmick from self-proclaimed spiritual gurus.
Prayer is not rubbing a magic lamp. It is not presenting some Santa Claus in the sky with a list of things we want. Prayer is intimate communication with our Lord. It is as natural as turning around and speaking to a friend. More importantly, it is being quiet and still and listening to God and being transformed by what he is communicating to us. Prayer is vital, for how can we expect to be in relationship with God if we don’t communicate with God?
The Prayer Life of Jesus
Jesus taught us what prayer is by his own example. Just read through the gospel of Luke, and you will find Jesus praying consistently at every turn in his life. He prays as he senses God’s call on his life; He prays before choosing his disciples; He prays as he serves and heals other people; He prays as he feels the demands and pressures of his ministry; He prays as he faces the cross; He prays as he finishes his work on the cross. Jesus is continually praying. You could say that prayer for him was as vital as taking his next breath. He knew that in order to live out the life God called him to live, he needed to be continually connected to God in prayer; God was the source of his power.
It was out of his own consistent prayer life that Jesus gives us the teaching we find in Luke 11. The disciples notice Jesus praying frequently, and they finally get a clue and say, “Teach us to pray.” They observe that prayer is a vital practice for Jesus, and they want to learn how to do it. What follows is a profound lesson from Jesus about prayer. However, notice that it is not a lesson in right technique. It is not a lesson in right phrasing. It is not a lesson in how to persuade God. It is a lesson in persistence. Through the story of the man banging on the door all night, and the repeated words, ask, seek, and knock, Jesus is telling us that effective prayer is consistent prayer. Effective prayer is a continual connection to God.
If we look close at Luke 11 and the prayer that Jesus gives us, we will also notice Jesus telling us what is perhaps the most important lesson about prayer. Effective prayer is not about what we can get from God, but what we receive from God. There is a big difference! For, often times, what we want from God and what we receive from God are two different things.
Don’t Like the Answer?
Perhaps this changes your wondering about unanswered prayer. Maybe God has answered you and you just don’t like the answer. Someone once said that God answers prayer in one of four ways: “yes, no, wait, and are you kidding?” Bill Hybels says it quite well: “If the request is wrong, God says, "No." If the timing is wrong, God says, "Slow." If you are wrong, God says, "Grow." But if the request is right, the timing is right and you are right, God says, "Go!" This is somewhat glib, but there is some truth to it. I recall times in my own life when I prayed and prayed for God to give me something, and my prayers were never answered, or so I thought. Later, I discovered that what I wanted was not right for me. That event always reminds me of the country song, “Thank God for Unanswered Prayer.”
There have been other times when God seemed to know that I was not ready for the answer to my prayer or the timing was not right, and God asked me to wait. It was then that I relied on the words of the Psalmist: “Wait for the Lord!” Ophelia Adams put it this way:
Unanswered yet? Nay, do not say ungranted;
Perhaps your part is not yet wholly done;
The work began when first your prayer was uttered,
And God will finish what He has begun.
Though years have passed since then, do not despair;
His glory you shall see, sometime, somewhere.
We need to keep in mind that what is implied in Jesus’ words for us today is that God always answers prayer. Now, God may not give us the answer we want or answer us at the time we desire, but God always answers us. And God will always answer us with our best interest at heart. Remember, Jesus said: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him” (Luke 11:13)? This is a great promise that should encourage us to pray more!
Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say, “How much more will the heavenly Father give you what you want when you ask for it?” He says that those who ask him will be given the Holy Spirit. This means that when we pray, God gives us what we need to be empowered and to grow.
Prayer Changes Thing
I remember playing with the pew pencils in church when I was a kid. The pencils always had these words inscribed on them: “Prayer Changes Things.” As I have grown in my faith, I have learned that prayer does indeed “change things,” but it is not God who changes. It is me. There is a wonderful old phrase: “Prayer does not give us what we want, but prayer helps us want what we need.” How true that is. You see, prayer is not designed to change or persuade God; it is designed by God to change us! Prayer is a spiritual discipline through which we are formed into disciples of Jesus Christ.
In his classic book, The Meaning of Prayer, Harry Emerson Fosdick put it this way: “Some things God cannot give to a person until he has prepared and proved his spirit by persistent prayer. Such praying cleans the house, cleanses the windows, hangs the curtains, sets the table, opens the door, until God says, “Lo! The House is ready. Now may the guest come in.”
I believe this is what Jesus is driving at in his teaching about prayer in Luke. When we ask long enough, seek hard enough, knock loud enough, and pray persistent enough, something happens on the inside of us. The discipline of prayer begins to awaken us to the Holy Spirit within, and our motives and desires begin to change. It is like the persistence of our praying becomes the axe that breaks up the frozen numbness of our souls. The power and wisdom of God break in and we begin to be formed by the will of God.
Peter Annet once said that those who pray persistently are like sailors who have cast anchor on a rock. As they pull on the anchor, they think they are pulling the rock to themselves, but they are really pulling themselves to the rock.
This is what persistent prayer does. It pulls us closer to The Rock, God Almighty. As we move closer to God in prayer, we find that we do not get what we want from God. We get something better. We get what we need. We get what God wants. We find that as we move closer to our Rock, we begin to desire what God desires, so that what we ask for, knock for, and seek after becomes what God so desperately wants to give us. The truth of Jesus’ words come to life so that what we pray for we truly receive. It is a sacred surprise. Soon we begin to pray a prayer that God always answers with a yes: “Oh Lord, I surrender to your will. Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing else!”
A Picture of Prayer
A colleague of mine knew two brothers growing up. They lived on a farm just outside of his neighborhood. They would often play together. Years later he ran into these two brothers in an airport. The brothers said they were on their way to a Christian Conference. Remembering that the brothers were not terribly religious growing up, my colleague asked, “What happened?”
One of them replied, “Well, it all started when we were kids. You remember our Dad. Well, growing up we noticed that every morning right after breakfast he would disappear for a while. We wondered where he was, but we did not think much of it.”
“Well, four years ago he passed away, and we were fixing up the farm to get ready to sell it. And we were both in the barn one day working and we discovered a small room in the rear of the barn. We never knew it was there as kids. It was kind of hidden. Well, we slowly opened the door, not sure what we would find. And what we found surprised both of us. There was a little wooden stool in the corner with an open Bible on it. In front of the stool were two worn out places on the ground, indentations which had taken a long time to depress. We just stood there in reverent silence.” He continued and said, “Then we said to each other, ‘So that’s where he was and what he was doing.’ And then we both wondered how many of his prayers he said for us. He was always talking to us about God, you know. Then, without thinking, we both knelt down in each of the knee prints, and a few minutes later the love of God was in our hearts.”
Are you still wondering about your unanswered prayers? God has an answer for you. But whatever your request, know that God’s answer will always involve your heart being changed by his love.
Let us pray: Dear Lord, “Drop they still dews of quietness, till all our strivings cease; Take from our souls the strain and the stress, and let our ordered lives confess the beauty of thy peace. Breathe through the pulses of desire they coolness and they balm. Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire; Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire, O still, small voice of calm.” - John Greenleaf Whittier
Amen.
Series: The Seven Wonders of the Faith