“The Problem of Unanswered Prayer”

Luke 11:1-13

Rev. Margaret Manning

We’ve been exploring the theme of prayer over the past several weeks, and today I have the daunting task of exploring the very difficult issue of unanswered prayer. Like many of you, I’ve wrestled with God in prayer, and I’ve often walked away wounded and broken when the answer I wanted from God wasn’t given to me. I’ve wondered over the apparent silence of God in the face of my cries for help, for healing, or for deliverance. And perhaps like many of you, I’ve asked those all familiar questions, ‘Why doesn’t God answer all our prayers?’ ‘Why is God silent?’ ‘Why does God so often answer our prayers with a resounding ‘no’?

Now, as I reflected on these and other questions, as we’ve been studying prayer, I noticed that Jesus makes some very bold statements about the way God answers prayer, in both Matthew’s gospel, where we’ve spent the past several weeks, and in our passage for today from Luke’s gospel. First, in his own model for prayer, what we’ve called, ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ Jesus instructs us to ask God for our daily bread – our basic needs. And, second, we heard last week, that prayer is a journey of asking, seeking and knocking. Jesus teaches that as we undertake our prayer journey God gives us what we ask, God will be found by us as we seek after God, and as we knock, God will open the door before us. Those are some very bold teachings! In addition to all these promises, Jesus ends his teaching on prayer with the promise that like our earthly fathers, God longs to give us what is good in response to the asking, seeking, and knocking of prayer. This is the section of teachings I want to focus on this morning because so often, our personal experience with unanswered prayer calls into question the very teaching Jesus gives in this passage. If God promises to give us what is good, then why does it seem that God says ‘no’ so much of the time to our requests?

In our passage from Luke, Jesus asks a question to illuminate God’s goodness towards us. “What father, if asked by his son for a fish will give him a snake? Or if his daughter asked for an egg, he would not give her a scorpion, would he?” Well, I don’t know about you, but in my personal experience, and in my pastoral ministry, I’ve often been given what seemed to be a snake instead of a fish, and I’ve seen others who have received a scorpion instead of an egg, and my whole concept of God’s goodness has been challenged. Take my friend Judy, for example. She gets the news that her cancer isn’t going away, it’s spreading throughout her body. We’ve been praying for God to heal her. Isn’t the ‘good’ thing for her to be healed? My best friend in high school, Jacki, watched helplessly as the paramedics tried to resuscitate her two week old baby, last fall. She had prayed for his life. Wouldn’t the ‘good’ thing have been for her baby to live? Lisa Beamer, who prayed for a safe flight for her husband Todd from New Jersey to San Francisco, that clear September 11^th morning – got the news that instead of safety, her husband’s plane was hijacked by terrorists and flown into the ground killing everyone aboard. She was a young mother, and at the time carrying their unborn child. Wouldn’t the good thing have been for God to save her husband, Todd? They asked God for a fish and got a snake instead; they received a scorpion, instead of an egg.

What are we to make of Jesus’ promise that God longs to give us what is good in the face of this kind of suffering – in the face of unanswered prayer? I’m sure you’ve either had experiences like these or have known someone who has experienced the pain of unanswered prayer – experiences in which prayers for God’s protection, God’s healing, or God’s intervention in the life of a loved one have gone unanswered. Most of us have experienced the force of the answer ‘no’ as we’ve pleaded and prayed for God to say, ‘yes’ to our need, to answer the negative of whatever situation we’re facing with a positive outcome. How can Jesus claim, as he does in both Matthew and Luke’s gospel, that God will give us what is good when we get these kinds of answers to our prayers?

Well, before we consider that question, let’s consider some of the reasons why God doesn’t always answer our prayers. First, God does not answer prayers that are trivial, or self-centered or impossible. Many of you have read the novel, Huckleberry Finn and you may remember the episode in the novel when Miss Watson tries to teach Huck to pray. Here is what Huck said about prayer:

Miss Watson took me in the closet and prayed. But nothing come of it. She told me to pray everyday and whatever I asked for I would get it. But it weren’t so. I tried it. Once I got a fish line, but not hooks. It weren’t any good to me without hooks. By and by, one day I asked Miss Watson to try for me. But she said I was a fool. She never told me why and I couldn’t make it out no way. I set me down one time back in the woods and had a long think about it. "No," I says to myself, "there ain’t nothin’ in it."[1]

I’m sure many of us can relate to Huck’s prayers. Often, we base our ideas about whether or not God answers prayer by putting trivial or self-centered or impossible requests before God. I know when I was in the throes of adolescence, with all the adolescent symptoms and sign-posts, I’d ask God to get rid of my pimples, or straighten my hair, or make this or that boy like me instead of his girlfriend, or to help me make the cheerleading squad instead of that other girl, or any number of things that weren’t wrong to ask for in my youthful naiveté, but that God would not answer because these requests were trivial, self-centered and/or impossible. I mean to ask God for clear skin as an adolescent is to ask God to do the impossible, right? And to ask God to pick me over someone else for the cheerleading squad is both trivial and self-centered. So, despite all our fervent prayers for the Tennessee Vols to defeat all the other teams in the SEC, or more importantly when we ask God for things that pit ourselves against other people, we’re asking God to take sides, and God just will not do that! When our prayers concern the advancement of our own vanity, or our own self-interest that may very well hinder another person’s growth or progress, God will not answer prayers on this level. While God cares for all our concerns and needs, God does not deal in trivialities. Likewise, prayers motivated by self-interest or that ask God to contradict God’s nature, will not be answered.

Second, God does not answer our prayers when there is willful or persistent sin in our lives. Let me be specific about what I mean here. All of us come before God with an unclean slate since we deal everyday with the consequences and the pervasive nature of sin. None of us would have our prayers answered if this is what the bible meant when it speaks about sin hindering our prayers.[2] Rather, God will not answer our prayers when we knowingly have areas of our life that go against God’s will and God’s way for us. Here are some examples. Do we harbor unforgiveness? God will not hear our prayer to be forgiven.[3] Do we treat our spouse with contempt and/or dishonor? God will not hear our prayer for a better, more loving spouse.[4] Do we neglect the needy and oppressed around us? God will not hear our prayer for prosperity and blessing.[5] Do we live our lives independent of God, practical atheists as it were, living with a false sense of pride in our self-sufficiency? God will not hear our prayer for self-justification.[6] We cannot come before God and ask for our needs to be met, when we live contrary to God’s way. And frankly, if we’re living contrary to God’s will, why would we want God’s answers? God will not and cannot answer our prayers when we live in persistent disobedience to God’s way.

Finally, God often withholds an answer or says ‘no’ in response to our prayers because God has something infinitely greater for us. If God were to give us what we ask for, it would short-change us of God’s abundance. Often, God withholds answers to our prayers, or says ‘no’ to our prayers because God also wants to correct our understanding of what it means to have abundance. This is what Luke emphasizes in his account of Jesus’ teaching on prayer. Both Matthew and Luke present the same teachings on prayer, except Luke makes explicit an important detail that Matthew only implies. In Matthew’s account Jesus tells his disciples that the “Father will give what is good to those who ask Him!” In Luke’s account, Jesus defines what is good and tells us that God will give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him.” Ah ha!!!!!! This helps us understand the claim Jesus makes in Matthew’s gospel that God longs to give us what is good, and that good gift is the gift of the Holy Spirit!

So, how does the abundant and good gift of the Holy Spirit help us as we deal with the problem of unanswered prayer? And how are we to understand the Holy Spirit as God’s abundant answer to our prayers – even those prayers that go unanswered? First, what God promises to us through the answer of the Holy Spirit is the promise of God’s presence with us – in and through all the circumstances of life. The bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as the ‘comforter,’ the One who comes alongside of us.[7] So, we don’t ever face life’s difficult circumstances alone, but God longs to come near to us, to come alongside us with the comforting presence of God’s Spirit. The promise of God’s presence with us sustains us, even when God says, ‘no’ to our specific requests. And really, God’s promise to be present with us is God’s eternal answer to all our prayers. It is God’s ‘yes’ even if God answers our specific requests with ‘no.’ And as we grow in our Christian lives, God wants us to find our comfort, not in the things of this world, but in the person and presence of the Holy Spirit. M. Craig Barnes, former pastor of the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. said it this way:

“Sometimes life gets overwhelming, and we realize we could use a little help. So we pray for our health to get better, for our marriage to work out, for success in our work that has taken a turn for the worse. There is nothing wrong in praying for these things, but they are not what our salvation is about. Don’t expect Jesus to save us by teaching us to depend on the things we are afraid of losing! He loves us too much to let our health, marriage, or work become the savior of our lives. He will abandon every crusade that searches for salvation from anything or anyone other than God. So he delays, he watches as we race down dead-end streets, he lets our mission du jour crash and burn. To receive Jesus as Savior means recognizing him as our only help. Not our only help for getting what we want. But our only true help.[8]

God’s answer to our prayers is the promise of the Holy Spirit – the promise that God is ever-present with us, no matter what life brings our way. The gift of God’s presence is the ultimate answer – it’s not the answer we always want, or expect from God, but it is God’s answer to provide us with His abundant presence, each and every day of our life.

There is another aspect to God’s answer of the Holy Spirit, and that is the promise of resurrection power both now, in our present circumstances and as the promise of eternal life for our future. The Holy Spirit raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and so we have hope that we too, will rise from death to everlasting life when we put our faith and trust in Christ. Even though all of us will pass through the doorway of death, everlasting life is the final word. In addition to this, however, the Holy Spirit in our lives now gives us the ability to rise from the ashes of the most crushing events and circumstances. We often forget that the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit is available to us before we die! Lisa Beamer demonstrated courageous strength, a determined sense of purpose, and a desire to help others in the wake of the 9/11 tragedy. Where does that strength come from? Lisa Beamer would tell you it comes from the power of the Holy Spirit in her life, now! My friend Judy’s determination to live her life, not be consumed by her imminent death comes from the resurrection power of the Holy Spirit in her life now. My high school friend Jacki is able to get up out of bed everyday and take care of her three remaining children because of the power of the Holy Spirit in her life now. And in the face of your unanswered prayers, and in the face of my unanswered prayers, God longs to give to each one of us the supernatural power that comes from the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit, today and in our lives right now!

We all have that power available to us, even in the face of unanswered prayers. It is the power to see new answers and find a new strength in the midst of life’s tragedies – just as these friends of mine have found. Does that mean they always feel great, or wear a smile on their face, or never shed another tear in their life? Of course not! The Holy Spirit gives us the power to find God and God’s strength in and through our tears, our suffering, and our pain. God understands our suffering too – for somehow in the mystery of the cross, God experienced the pain and the sin and the suffering of the world. And now, through the Holy Spirit, God again comes near to us in our suffering and longs to empower us and ‘come alongside of us’ in a way that enables us to live in the face of the difficult questions and challenges that come with unanswered prayer.

Finally, the answer of the Holy Spirit reminds us that God provides the possibility for new-creation and re-creation out of the chaos of our lives. The bible tells us that in the beginning of all things, the Spirit of God hovered or ‘brooded’ over the chaos of the deep darkness and created order and beauty, light and life.[9] God’s creation work has not ended with the creation of this world, but it continues through the work of the Holy Spirit. Just like the Spirit hovered and brooded over the chaos that would become this world, so too the Spirit hovers and broods over our lives in order to create something beautiful from them, even out of life’s chaos. All we have to do is say, ‘yes.’ Let me give you a very personal example.

Most of you know that Sonny and I do not have any children, and without going into all the details of that situation, let me just assure you that this has been a very difficult and painful journey for both of us. Out of the pain of this journey, God has created opportunities for me to minister to others who have suffered loss in a way I would have never been able to had I not experienced loss myself. Out of my own pain and hurt, God has created a tremendous sensitivity and compassion that I wouldn’t have had unless I had walked down the road put before me. Now, would I have wanted God’s answer to this prayer in my life for children to be a ‘yes’? Of course, I would! Would I have chosen the road I’ve been down? Of course, not! But, through this struggle with unanswered prayer, God would answer softly: ‘I’m giving you the gift of myself, Margaret. Draw on my presence, draw on the resurrection power of my Spirit, and let me create something new, something beautiful from the sorrow, and the suffering of your life.’

God doesn’t always answer our prayers the way we’d want God to answer them. Oftentimes, we feel we’re being given a scorpion instead of an egg, or a snake instead of a fish. But, the promise of the Holy Spirit as God’s ultimate answer assures us that even though we will go through difficult times, even though we might hear ‘no’ to our prayers for healing, for help, and for deliverance, God’s answer of the Holy Spirit is the best gift, the best answer, indeed the only answer we could hope for. No matter what, God is with us, God puts at our disposal the immense power of the Holy Spirit to live a resurrected life, and God promises, if we’ll allow God to work through our suffering, to recreate something beautiful from the chaos all around us. We simply need to ask, and receive God’s answer. Amen.

[1] Cited in a sermon by Philip Wogaman, “The Patience of Unanswered Prayer,” December 28, 1997.

[2] Psalms 66:18; James 4:3 also tells us that when we ask we don’t receive because we ask with wrong motives.

[8]From M. Craig Barnes, When God Interrupts – pp. 124-125. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996.