What If... My Prayers Are Not Heard?

Trinity Church Tamworth

WHAT IF … MY PRAYERS ARE NOT HEARD? Trinity Matthew 6:5-15 31.12.23 What if? What if I don’t know what God wants me to do? What if I have fooled myself about Jesus? What if I can’t forgive someone? What if I can’t stop worrying? If you follow the Sunday at Trinity program, you will know that they are our planned sermons for the next four Sundays. Today? What if my prayers are not heard? We pray for a sick child, and he doesn’t get better. For wisdom, and we still don’t know what to do. For a marriage to work, but it breaks. For a job, for a home, for a child, for justice, for the conversion of people we love … and it is as though God has not heard. We pray for the blocking of the expansion of Islam, for wars to cease, for famines to be relieved, for heresy to be banished from churches, for our church to be more godly. What we hear is silence! How can that be when Jesus promised “Ask and it will be given to you … everyone who asks receives.” (Mt 7:7,8) We’ve been asking, and asking –as Jesus has told us to do – and the things for which we have been praying are NOT given? >>> Let’s make sure we’re all starting at the start: When Jesus taught his followers to pray, he told them to start with a sense of who God is: “Our Father in heaven” (Mt 6:9). He is not Allah who has no interest in you whatsoever, but who just rolls out fate, and you just accept how it rolls. For the real Christian, God is Father … who “knows what you need” (Mt 6:32). That doesn’t mean he is like Woolworths, where you turn up with a list of what you need. Woolworths just wants your money, not a relationship with you. “Father” is a name of relationship and care. You might have an indulgent father who cares for you and would give you the world if he could, but who can’t. Our Father is IN HEAVEN, full of all power and profound wisdom. We speak with our Father. We praise and we thank him and we tell him what we need. That’s what children do. If he is our Father who cares for us, and our Father in heaven who is well able to give anything at all, then why does he not give what we seek, which seems so good and often very necessary? I think there are two big answers to that question. 1. MY FAILURE What I do has an impact on my praying, and the way in which my prayers are answered. If praying is something that is relational, that won’t surprise us one bit, will it? God is personal, so praying is bigger than just a religious exercise. If God the Father loves his Son deeply and primarily, then if I reject or sideline Jesus, you could hardly expect God to say, “That’s okay; just pray and ask what you want, and I’ll give it.” Praying is for those who belong to Jesus – with one exception which we will get to. Prayer is for the children of the Father. “Our Father” is not a prayer simply to start each session of Parliament or to add some respectability to some civic occasion. It is the family prayer for those who belong to THE Son, and certainly not for those who persist in being enemies to that Son. That is why King David could say if his enemies: “They cried for help, but there was none to save; they cried to the Lord, but he did not answer them.” (Psalm 18:41) This is why King Solomon writes “If one turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination.” (Proverbs 28:9) Maybe it all comes together in what King David wrote in Psalm 66:18: “If I had cherished iniquity in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.” That’s not about perfection, but it is about being honest about what I really love. I am no longer Jesus’ enemy, but might there be failure in me that is a block to answered prayer? There sure could be. May I give two specific instances: James writes “You do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.” (James 4:2,3) You want food for your idols! When Peter writes about the need for husbands to love and honour their wives, the reason he gives is “so that your prayers may not be hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7) Who would have thought that relational carelessness, and failure to love others as we ought, would have anything at all to do with our praying. God plainly links the two there. Don’t explain all this away by saying you can’t stop God from giving what he plans to give. Of course, that is true. You can’t, but what we have just read is also true. Some things are not given because we do not ask for them. Perhaps when we do ask, it is with the wrong motive. Perhaps we are failing at this (horizontal) level of our relationships. God links what I do, and what I am like, with answered prayer. I dare not overlook FAILURE IN ME as a pointer as to why my prayer is not answered. There is a second reason God gives for why prayer is not answered: 2. GOD’S FATHERLY LOVE If our God is a strong, wise, and loving Father will he bless and help and do what is best for his children? Absolutely. Every time. In Matthew 7 Jesus asks “Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or is he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children. How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Mt 7:9-11) Might that mean he will not give us what we think we need most? Perhaps to give this world what we think it needs most? Perhaps what we think our friends need most? Perhaps it is when we think they need it? We pray that our children might not hurt or suffer or must endure hard things. What if that’s not the best or biggest thing to pray for them, since we know from so many parts of the Bible that “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character” (Rom 5:3,4)? What if character is a more important gift from a loving Father than feeling better or not having to face hard things? What if it is better that my prayer for me is not answered this week so that I learn patience? It may be to grow in deeper trust in the wisdom and goodness of my heavenly Father? Wouldn’t that be more precious than a fish or loaf of bread any day?  What if my prayer not being answered means that I learn to pray better?  What if it is better to pray for grace to love a difficult person, than to pray that that person changes to make life easier?  What if it is better to pray that the churches in Ukraine will be bold for Jesus than to pray, they won’t be harmed?  What if it is better to pray for the conversion of the Hamas murderers than for their destruction?  What if it is better to pray that the Lord will do whatever it takes to bring our children to Jesus, than to pray that tough things in their lives should ease up?  What if it better to pray that we will be a more godly church in 2024 than in 2023, than to pray that we are a bigger church? What if the Lord delays an answer to prayer simply because he wants us to know his love? A friend of mine from school was a guy I had spoken to many times about Jesus and prayed for quite a bit. After university he became a successful lawyer and barrister and I guess that was the end of that. When Sue and I were flying to Sydney for the funeral of our baby daughter, he came off the plane from Sydney, at the airport, and bowled up to me and told me that he had just become a Christian. I don’t think the Lord waited 15 years just for my encouragement. But the timing was perfect for a dark day, and a tangible and very timely assurance of his eternal goodness. Do we always see why the Lord doesn’t answer prayer? Sometimes we have no idea at all since he has not told us. • I am asking whether his Fatherly love can be trusted when he doesn’t answer when we expect, or in the way we expect. • I am asking whether we can be confident that the way he does things is best, when it seems like the doors of heaven are closed? • I am asking whether God’s children will ever be denied the right gifts and helps and answers at the right time … whether the love of God for his children in Jesus, is rock solid no matter what. Is it hard to keep praying when the lights are off, and there seems to be no answer? There is not much that is harder! Luke says in 18:1 Jesus “told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.” You see, he knows how hard it can be, and knows we need help to keep at it. The parable he told was of the lady who had no one to stand up for her, who came to an ungodly magistrate for justice. He didn’t want a bar of it. She kept coming however, and coming, and in the end, he helped her just to get her off his back. That story is often understood to mean we should wear God down by our constant praying until he says “Okay. You can have what you want”, but that wasn’t the point. It is not as though our heavenly Father is like the ungodly judge who had no interest in justice but only in getting a good night’s sleep. Jesus’ point is that our heavenly Father is the opposite. He is good and righteous and full of mercy. Of course, he will give his children what they need most because he loves them. What I know about him is much better than what I think will be best for me. That’s what frees me to pray and not lose heart. This morning you might need to think more about whether the reason for unanswered prayer is that you’ve got it wrong. Or it might be that the reason is in the fact that God is getting it right. May I say one important thing as I close. Earlier I said that God will not hear the prayers of those who do not belong to Jesus, except for one. It’s the prayer that man in the temple prayed when he knew he was as lost as any man could ever be. “God, be merciful to me, the sinner.” (Luke 18:13) It is the prayer that turns your back on sin and trusts Jesus for mercy. It is the prayer of becoming a Christian. It is the prayer God promises to hear and answer every single time it is prayed. What if I have a bad record against God? Or a bad heart? What if I’ve missed 10 or 1000 opportunities to pray that prayer of faith before now? What if I’m not too sure I’m going to be all that good at following him? God says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 Jn 1:9) This is a prayer that will absolutely be answered. What if I’ve been praying to get what I want for my idols? Or not been living in a godly way towards those around me? Or trying to pretend I am something I am not? And my failures have been hindering my prayer? Isn’t it the same answer? “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (1 Jn 1:9) The answer to wrong praying is right praying. The God of the Bible is so much more gracious than you can imagine, and fuller of mercy than you’ll ever know, and far closer to his children than any earthly father is to his. Who wouldn’t pray for grace to be a more faithful pray-er in 2024 than in 2023, in the light of that?