6-1-08 Prayer: When God Doesn’t Answer

We’ve been talking about prayer, and today is the last of a four part series and to kind of some it all up. Jesus had some very specific things to say about prayer and they’re different than many of the ways and ideas that we’ve learned about prayer. And we said something pretty offensive upfront about prayer and we’ve been saying it all along and I’ll say it again, “It could be that you’ve been praying wrong, or that you’ve been praying incomplete.

That might be hard to come to grips with and I wouldn’t say it except that the people that were following Jesus, said to him one day, “Jesus, teach us to pray.” And he didn’t say, “you already know how to pray, just pray, just talk to God, you can’t get it wrong. All prayers are the same, all prayers are acceptable.” On the contrary, and we’re going to see specifically today, Jesus said, “Ok, I’ll talk to you about prayer.”

The second week, we learned that Jesus told us something very specific about prayer. He said, “when you pray, go into your room and do what?” Close the door. Because in this fast paced world that we live in, we get caught up in saying our prayers on the move – driving down the road, on our way to take a test, or a job interview, or on our way to the hospital. Jesus says, when you pray, I want you to find a place where you and I can be alone, where you and I can have some quite time together.

Jesus also said, don’t spend a lot of time praying about what you want and what you need, because your Heavenly Father already knows what you need. But, what else are we going to do when I go the room and close the door, because that’s pretty much all that I know how to pray. When I pray, I pray about those things that I want and need, right? I mean, I might thank God for a few things, but then let’s get down to business, my business, “God, will you help me, help me, give me, give me, fix that person, amen.

Then what are we going to pray about? Jesus said, I’m glad you asked that question, he said, “I want you to pray this way.”

And Jesus taught us to not start with me, but instead to start with God. Remember who God is, Remember for a while how great God is. Remember how much he loves you and how much he loves me, and how much he loves this world and then once you’ve remembered who God is, then surrender your will to him, pray, “God, your will be done – not mine, Your kingdom come – not mine, because that’s what most of my prayers are about if I’m honest with myself. They’re about my kingdom becoming great and my willing be done, but Jesus reminds us not to pray like that, because our lives become so small when we pray like that. Pray that God’s will would be done and that God’s kingdom would come and that heaven would come to earth. That up there would come down here. That God’s goodness would come down.

Prayer is not about getting stuff or getting stuff done. Prayer is about connecting with God. Prayer is about connecting with the one who created you and the one who created me. Prayer is learning about the one who created us, so that we can become all that he created us to be. Prayer is not just about talking to God, but prayer is about becoming one with him. Not to become God, but to know God so well that his love, and his wisdom, and his goodness resides in us.

If you have your Bibles with you, I want you to turn to Luke Chapter 11, because today as we finish up this series on prayer, Jesus is going to tackle our biggest frustration with prayer. The biggest frustration with prayer is that after I declare God’s greatness, and after I hand over my will, and then I ask for some stuff and I don’t get it, it doesn’t happen. God doesn’t answer my prayers. And some of the stuff that I’ve asked for is surely God’s will, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen.

How many of you can think of a time in your life where you prayed and prayed and prayed for something and it not only didn’t happen, it got worse. How many of you can think of a person that you prayed and prayed and prayed for that person and they got worse? . . . and they’re sitting next to me today – just kidding! For some of you, that may be the reason why you gave up on church or God or quit praying. That’s frustrating . . . isn’t it?

That frustration that you and I have is the frustration that Jesus addresses in this passage today. The reason that he addresses it is because he knew that we would have these questions and these frustrations. This is the good news. If you’ve ever had those kind of frustrations in prayer, God knows about, addresses it and there’s not something wrong with you, and there’s not something wrong with God. Because there’s this tendency to think that if my prayers are not being answered, then there’s something wrong with me or there’s something wrong with God, right? Jesus is going to say, nope, it’s a common occurrence, and I want to tell you what to do about it. Luke chapter 11.

There were four accounts of Jesus’ life, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They all are just a little bit different because each of the people writing them were different. We are reading Luke’s account of what Jesus said today.

Luke 11:1
One day Jesus was praying in a (Where?) certain place. Now why would Luke put that in there? He doesn’t just write, “one day Jesus was praying, but instead he writes, “One day Jesus was praying in a certain place. Jesus had some certain places that he prayed. No wonder why he told us a couple of weeks ago to find a place to pray, because place is important.

When he finished (praying), one of his disciples said to him, “Lord, teach us to pray, just as John taught his disciples.” He said to them, “When you pray, say: “‘Father, holy is your name, your kingdom come. ³ Give us each day our daily bread. ⁴ Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who sins against us. And lead us not into temptation.‘” Amen.

Its that right? Can you imagine being one of Jesus’ disciples, Um, Jesus, you didn’t say that right. You left some pieces out. It’s “Our Father, who aren’t in heaven, holy is your name.”. You got, “Your kingdom come“, but you forgot, “Your will be done.” Jesus you miss quoted the Lord’s Prayer!

I don’t know how to tell you this but you messed up your own prayer. Scholars go into a tizzy, because in Matthew he says it this way and in Luke he says it that way, but it’s pretty simple. Jesus doesn’t want you to memorize any prayer. God wants to talk to you. He doesn’t want you memorizing and reciting prayers that end up being dry and dead and heartless. God wants you. He wants your intellect and he wants your heart. Don’t memorize the prayer, or if you do, don’t recite it back to God. That’s not what he wants.

Jesus could have told us anything about prayer when his disciples asked him how to pray, but these are the things that he says. These are the most important. And then Jesus goes into what frustrates us most about prayer. This is a story and it has a point about prayer. This is one of those things about the Bible that makes you believe that somebody didn’t just make it up, because if you were going to make up things about what Jesus said, you wouldn’t make this up. Here’s the story or parable.

Luke 11:5 Then Jesus said to them, “Suppose one of you has a friend, and he goes to him at midnight and says, ‘Friend, lend me three loaves of bread, because a friend of mine on a journey has come to me, and I have nothing to set before him.’

So your neighbor has a friend who was traveling well into the night and showed up on his doorstep at midnight. It had been a long journey and they didn’t have phones, much less cell phones, so there was no way for these friends to contact your neighbor and let you know that they were coming and that they’d be coming in late, and so this friend shows up at your door at midnight and wakes you up.

Your neighbor’s friends are hungry because of the long journey – they’re weren’t any fast food joints or 24 hour restaurants and so they get to your neighbor’s door late at night and your neighbor didn’t expect them, and they don’t have any food for them, so they come to your neighbor and knock on your door at midnight.

Now, people’s door and even their house was much different in Jesus time. The best way to explain what’s going on in this ancient Middle Eastern culture is if you’ve ever been tent camping with your family. Think tent camping with your entire family, because that’s how they slept. If they had a large family, all the men would sleep in one room and all the women would sleep in the other room on some kind of cot or mat. And getting everybody in bed was an ordeal.

Everybody was stacked up like cordwood. As a parent, you would put little Jimmy to bed, and then you’d put his brother Johnny to bed, and then you’d put little Janney to bed, and then you’d put her sister Jenny to bed and you’d get all the kids tucked in and then you’d lay back and go AHHHH! Nobody could move. Well this guy comes knocking on your door.

“Then the one inside answers, ‘Don’t bother me. The door is already locked, and my children are with me in bed. I can’t get up and give you anything.’

And it’s true, you can’t get up and give your neighbor any bread, because if you do, you’re going to have to crawl across everyone else in your family and wake them all up. You’re thinking I’m exhausted, my family’s exhausted, if I get this Ninny some bread, it’s going to be hours before we all get back to sleep and I got to get up and go to work in the morning, “I’m not going to get up and get him bread. He’s got to be out of his mind.

I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man’s persistent he will get up and give him as much as he needs.

So my neighbor comes to my tent at midnight and we’re all in bed and he asks for a several loafs of bread, and I tell him, “No”, we’re already in bed. I can’t get up without waking everyone else up, but the neighbor persists in asking. He won’t go home, he keeps on asking. Everyone in my tent is now already awake or they’re waking up, so what do I do, I get up give him as many loaves of bread as he needs, so that he’ll leave me and my family alone so that we can get some sleep. The man didn’t give him the bread because he was a friend; he gave him the bread because he wanted him to leave him alone.

Kids. I remember doing this when I was a kid. I certainly remember my kids doing this to my wife and I. They say, “Dad, can we do this or Dad, can we have that.” No. They come back, maybe a few minutes later, but Dad, this is important to me. Dad, my friends are going to be there and there are going to be parent chaperones, and my friends parents are going to be there. Dad, can I go please. Sometimes, those kids just wear me down. You see it in their eyes, they really want to do this and they are mostly good kids, and even though I said, No at first, I wait to see if they persist. I wait to see what’s really in their hearts. I wait to see how badly they want it, and sometimes, because of their persistence, and because I love them, I say yes.

Jesus says: ⁹ “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Just because God says, “No” at first doesn’t mean that God won’t eventually give in.

Luke 18 (Project the words “Luke 18″) Jesus tells another story about a judge in this certain town, who neither feared God nor cared about people. In this same town there lived a widow who kept coming to the judge saying, “Grant me justice against my adversary” and she kept coming to the judge over and over again. For some time the judge refused, but finally, he thought to himself, though I don’t fear God or care about woman, I’m going to give this widow justice, because she’s wearing me out with her coming.

This is how Jesus ends that parable by saying, “Will God keep putting off his children when they cry out to him day and night? NO, he will see that they get justice. God does not get angry because of your persistence. God wants us to be persistent in our prayers. He wants to know our heart, and sometimes, when we are persistent, God changes his mind. There are numerous places in the Bible where it says that God changed his mind.

There’s the time when Moses is up on the mountain with God and he’s getting the ten commandments from God and when he comes back down off the mountain, the Israelites have made a golden calf and they’re worshipping it and Moses is stunned and there’s a bunch of stuff that goes on and then Moses goes back up the mountain to ask God to forgive them, but God has made up his mind. He’s going to take em all out, but Moses

So the Lord Changed his mind about the terrible disaster he had threatened to bring on his people Exodus 32:14

God doesn’t always change his mind, just like I don’t always change my mind with my kids, but God calls us to be persistent in our prayers.

Sometimes, thought I have been very persistent, God still says, “No”, in the same ways I say, “No” to my kids. Sometimes, my kids don’t understand why, even when they’re persistent, that I say no. They can’t understand. God sometimes says, “No” even though we are persistent and I just don’t see why he says “No”. It doesn’t make sense to me. In the past several months, I have lost two friends. I prayed harder for them then I’ve prayed for anything or anyone in my life. I was persistent. I just kept asking. God kept saying, “No”, but I was persistent, and I know many other people were persistent and yet God said, “No.

But I know this one thing. When I say, No to my kids; I say No, not because I don’t love them. I say No because I love them and it breaks my heart to say, No, because I see how sad it makes them feel. I know they don’t understand.

God calls us to be persistent in our prayers. When we keep coming back to God and we keep asking, asking, asking, asking, asking – God’s not bothered by that – God is honored by that. Jesus’ parable could not be any clearer. When you pray, tell God he’s great, tell him that you want his will to be done in your life, and oh yeah, don’t quit asking, because your persistent prayer has the potential to move the heart of God. And Jesus finishes his teaching on prayer with this statement.

⁹ “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. ¹⁰ For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Don’t just knock on the door. Seek it out. don’t give up. Be persistent until the door is opened, and you get the bread that you went there to get. Be persistent in your prayers. Don’t stop till you get justice like the widow. Keep pounding on God’s door. Seek out a response. Don’t give up until the door is opened. You asked me how to pray. This is how you pray – Ask and Seek, and Knock – Ask and Seek, and Knock and Ask and Seek and Knock, and don’t give up and sometimes your Father will respond, because sometimes God is moved by your persistence.

¹⁰ For everyone (that’s us) who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

Some of you are thinking, like I’ve already stated, that you prayed for someone and they didn’t get better and in fact they got worse, and some of us want to point to all the exceptions, and I understand that, but you asked me how to pray and this is how you pray. YOU DON’T LET GO UNTIL YOU ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO, because God is honored and moved by your persistent prayer.

Like God, the father, I sometimes say “No” to my kids even though they are persistent. But I always say no, because I know more than they know, and I always say no, not because I’m mean and stingy, but because I love them and I know it’s best for them. They don’t understand when I say “No” and they’re often times upset when I say “No” but I say “No because I love them.”

But then the reverse is true. I have friends that are diligent prayers and they keep pray journals and when God answers a prayer, they thank him and they highlight the prayer in their notebook. And you know what they tell me? They tell me that about 95 percent of their prayers are answered. Not always the way that they expected them to be answered, but answered non the less.

¹⁰ For everyone (that’s us) who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.

When you pray, be persistent and the God who is our Father is blessed by your persistence and is often times moved to give you what you ask.