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Sunday, October 7, 2012

Unanswered Prayers

Below is the message given Sunday, October 7, 2012, in the Wheatland Parish.  The scriptures used are Mark 11:12-14, 19-25 and Luke 11:5-13.


            Today we start a new sermon series.  It’s called “Does God?”, and it’s going to look at just who God is and what God does.  Today, the question we’re going to look at is “Does God answer prayers?”

            Now, most of us would probably say, “Well, of course God answers prayers.”  That’s the answer Jesus seemed to give in our reading from Mark for today, too.  When we think about it, though, the answer is a little more complicated than that.

            The thing is that I’ve had lots of times in my life when I prayed for things that did not happen.  I’ll bet you have, too.  When I was a kid, I prayed that the Minnesota Vikings would win the Super Bowl.  That did not happen.  In fact, it’s forty-some years later and it still has not happened.  Maybe this year.

            As I got older, I prayed for lots of things.  Some of they happened, some of them did not.  When I was in law school, I prayed that I would do well enough to graduate and become a lawyer.  I did.  On the other hand, when I was in law school, I also prayed that a young woman I was dating would marry me.  She did not.

            It continues.  When Wanda’s grandmother was very ill, several years ago, I prayed that she would recover.  She did.  A year later, she became very ill again, and again I prayed that she would recover.  She did not.  It seems like, when I look at my prayer life, the record has been that I win some and I lose some.  I suspect it’s probably the same for you, too.

            Now at this point, some of you are probably thinking, “Well, look, saying that God answers prayers is not the same as saying we’re going to get everything we want.”  That’s true, of course.  It’s true for a lot of reasons.  Sometimes it’s just not possible for God to give everyone everything they want.  For example, if I pray for the Vikings to win the Super Bowl this year, and someone else prays for the Green Bay Packers to win the Super Bowl this year, obviously we cannot both get what we want, because there’s no way both of them can win the Super Bowl this year.

           Other times, the reason we don’t get what we want is because God knows better than we do.  I am much happier and much better off for the fact that I’m married to Wanda rather than the woman I hoped to marry all those years ago.  Sometimes, too, the reason we don’t get what we want is that we’re praying to stop the inevitable.  I would never have been ready for Wanda’s grandma to die, no matter when it happened.  Since she clearly could not live forever, there was going to have to come some point at which things did not go the way I was praying for them to go.

            Asking God to give us things or to do things for us is not the only reason to pray, of course, but it’s a legitimate one.  People did it in the Bible all the time.  In fact, Jesus himself encouraged it.  In our reading from Mark for today, Jesus said, “Have faith in God…Truly I tell you, if you say to this mountain, ‘Go, throw yourself into the sea,’ and you do not doubt in your heart but believe that what you say will happen, it will be done for you.  Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.”

            The thing is, how do we square that with what we just said about prayer, that God sometimes does not give us what we want?  I mean, the Bible tells us Jesus actually said this, so I don’t think we can just dismiss it.  But how does that statement relate to our experience with God in answering our prayers?

            Well, Jesus did throw in a couple of things that may shed some light on this.  For one thing, he said that we have to not doubt, but believe that what we’re asking for will, in fact, come about.  It could be, then, that sometimes, when we pray, we don’t have enough belief that God will do what we ask.  I don’t think that really answers the question, though.  There have been times when I had a very strong belief that God would do what I asked, because it seemed so right and so good, and it still did not happen.  So there has to be more to it than that.

            It’s the same thing for when Jesus said, “Have faith in God.”  That seems to have been the key to the Old Testament understanding of prayer.  That’s what we heard in our reading from Jeremiah, that if people honor God and live the way they’re supposed to live, God will answer their prayers and take care of them. 

            It’s been said that, if we truly have faith, what we pray for will be in accordance with God’s will, and so it will be done.  There is some support for that.  When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we say, “Thy will be done.”  When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, he told God what he’d like to have happen—that a way be found to bring about salvation for us that did not require him to suffer and die—but he also prayed, “Thy will be done.”  Praying for God’s will to be done can never be a bad thing to do.

            On the other hand, does it change anything to pray that way?  It did not change anything for Jesus.  Do we even expect anything to change when we pray that way?  I mean, it seems like if we pray, “Thy will be done,” all we’re doing is praying for God to do what God’s going to do anyway.  What’s the point of that?  It’s not like God needs our permission to do things.  If God’s going to do something anyway, it really does not matter whether we pray for it or not, does it?

            I especially think of this when I pray for healing of people who are ill.  It seems like if God’s going to heal someone, then God will do that whether I pray for God to or not.  It’s not like God’s sitting in heaven waiting to see if I pray for someone to be healed, and if I do, God heals them, and if not, well, too bad for them.  Yet, I do pray for God to heal people.  I must think it makes some kind of difference, somehow, or I would not do it.  Still, I don’t know if my praying in that situation is a logical response to what’s happening, or if it’s something I do just so I can feel like I’ve done something.

            In thinking about this question, I thought about our reading from Luke.  This comes right after Luke’s version of the Lord’s Prayer.  Jesus went on to tell the disciples more about prayer.  Listen to this again:

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead?  Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?  If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!

            Maybe that’s the way to resolve this.  As Jesus says here and other times, we are God’s children.  We’re very small children, really, compared to God.  We ask God for things, the way little kids ask for things.  Sometimes we demand, or beg, or try to make deals with God to get the things we want, the way little kids do.  Sometimes we don’t understand why we cannot have what we want, the way little kids cannot understand why they cannot have what they want.  Sometimes we even get mad at God when we don’t get what we want, the way little kids get mad when they don’t get what they want.

            God does not give us everything we want any more than good parents give their kids everything they want.  God does give us everything we need, though.

            In fact, God does more than that.  After all, loving parents don’t just give their kids the bare necessities and nothing more.  If they can afford to, loving parents will sometimes give their kids what they ask for, just because they love them.  In that same way, God sometimes gives us the things we ask for, even if we don’t need them, just because God loves us.

            And sometimes, God gives us even more.  Sometimes, God gives us something we never asked for, something we did not even know enough to ask for, just because God knows it will make us happy, just like loving parents sometimes give their children extra gifts they think the kids will like.  God does that not because we deserve these extra gifts, but because God loves us.

            So, should we pray?  Yes, we should.  Should we expect God to answer our prayers?  Yes, I think we should.  Most of all, though, we should trust God.  We should have faith in God.  We should not doubt that God has our best interests at heart, even if we don’t understand what God’s doing sometimes.  God knows how to give good gifts to God’s children.  God won’t give us everything we want, but what God does give us will be good.  If we trust that, we will see our prayers answered.  Not necessarily in the way we want or expect, but in the way that’s best.

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