In Good Company

The Fellowship of Unanswered Prayer

A Fellowship of Unanswered Prayer

“Truly, I say to you, if you have faith and do not doubt, you will not only do what has been done to the fig tree, but even if you say to this mountain, you taken up and thrown into the sea, it will happen. Whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”

These words of Jesus, found in Matthew’s Gospel, are inspiring. They are even empowering. They promise that through prayer, and faith, we will receive that which we ask for. We are taught that through prayer all things are possible, and that we should pray unceasingly. But are these ideas really true? Do we really understand prayer and its efficacy? What about all of our prayers that seem to go unanswered? Do the people praying those prayers not have enough faith? Are their prayers stifled by doubt? Is God even listening?

Of course, I think the answer to that last question is yes, or else I probably wouldn’t be taking the time to write this. But I think the questions are fair, and perhaps represent a misunderstanding of how prayer works, or at least an incomplete expectation. I remember a scene from a movie we watched recently at church called “Miracles from Heaven.”

The movie recounts the story of a young girl with a serious disease. It explores the faith of her family and how facing the almost certain death of the little girl, their faith is tested. The movie is based on a true story, this really happened. In one scene the girl’s mother is in church and is confronted by a few of the elders in the church. These people express that they are concerned that the prayers for the little girl’s healing are going unanswered perhaps because of something the parents or the little girl are doing wrong. They seem to insinuate that God will not answer their prayers, because they are somehow unworthy. The mother is hurt, and disgusted by the insinuations that are made. I would be too.

Now, the story above has a happy ending. As Louie Giglio put it in one of his messages, there was a bow at the end, the girl recovered miraculously, and is doing well to this day. But what about all of the stories that don’t come with a bow at the end? What about the prayers for relationships that still fail, for jobs that are still lost, for loved ones who still die?

In light of the verse quoted above I think it raises real questions, both spiritually and intellectually. If the verse is taken at face value, then it appears those people who do not receive an answer to their prayers, must not have enough faith. On the spiritual level this is potentially disastrous. Why pray to a God who does not do what he promises?

In his book, “A Grief Observed” C.S. Lewis recounts the pain of the loss of his wife Joy. Lewis was a prolific Christian writer and is considered by many to be one of the greatest voices of Christianity of the 20th century. He’s also just an amazing writer who can craft words that just drip with emotion. Regarding the prayers he prayed for Joy, and the apparent silence from God Lewis wrote the following:

“When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to praise, you will be-or so it feels-welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all your help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become. There are no lights in the windows. It might be an empty house. Was it ever inhabited? It seemed so once. And that seeming was as strong as this. What can this mean? Why is He so present in our time of prosperity and so very absent a help in time of trouble?”

In the book “Night” Elie Weisel describes the night he was marched into Auschwitz. Having been separated suddenly from his mother and sister, with only his father at his side, the young Elie witnessed horrors beyond imagining within the first few minutes of his imprisonment. He wrote, “For the first time I felt anger rising within me. Why should I sanctify His name? The Almighty, the eternal and terrible Master of the Universe, chose to be silent. What was there to thank Him for?”[1]

To some extent, many of us have felt that way at one time or another about God. Despite our most earnest prayers, it often seems the door is being slammed and bolted in our hour of greatest need, and when we strain our ears hardest for his voice, we are met with silence. Here’s another example ripped from the headlines.

A month or two ago, in a Middle Eastern country overrun by ISIS, a bus full of Christians was pulled over. These were families of men, women, and children. The terrorists pulled them off the bus and one by one ordered them to renounce Christ and confess Islam as the true faith. If they refused they would be killed. One by one the Christians refused to renounce their faith and were executed. As this happened I can only imagine their fervent prayers being lifted up to heaven. And yet the only response appears to have been the crack of gunfire. How did a loving God fail to answer these prayers? Where was He?

There is an answer, but it’s not always the one we want. It’s not necessarily the bow we sometimes feel we should expect at the end of the story. But it is an answer that I believe is richer, and one that truly offers hope. Not the kind of hope that could be described as rainbows and unicorns, or a warm fuzzy feeling. Rather, it’s the kind of hope that matters, the kind that is with you when you can’t take anymore, and when all other hope is lost. Here’s another story.

It’s about a man who was facing his own execution at the hands of the state. Some felt this man was a criminal, a rabble-rouser, a man the world would be better off without, and so they persuaded the local authorities to execute him barbarically.

The night before his execution, this man prayed with everything he had. He even expressed that the fear and sadness of his death pained him to a point beyond imagining. As he prayed, a physician recounts that the man was even sweating blood. While this may seem an exaggeration, it is actually a rare medical condition called Hematidrosis. This condition sometimes presents itself in patients who are undergoing enormous amounts of stress and seems to be part of the fight or flight mechanism in all of us. Rarely though such stress causes little blood vessels, called capillaries, to rupture. When this happens the blood can actually exit the body through the sweat glands.

Though this man prayed fervently, and had more faith than any of us could claim, the next day he was brutally tortured, and nailed to a cross until he died. His name, as you will have figured out by now, was Jesus. And his prayer for deliverance went unanswered; at least it appeared to have. And like the door slammed in the face as described by Lewis, even Jesus felt abandoned. He had prayed not once, not even twice, but three times for the burden of this death to be taken from him. All three of the synoptic gospels note this prayer. And yet, this man of perfect faith, cried out from the cross, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus himself felt that crushing fear, that God had ignored his pleas.

Of course we all know that Jesus was not forsaken. Just as Lewis and Wiesel later realized the door had not been slammed and bolted. In fact it is in the forsakenness felt by Christ that we see God with us even in our worst times. But in order to see this I think there are two points that need to be considered. The first is the entirety of Christ’s prayer as a model for our own, and the second is the self-emptying sacrifice made by God that day at Golgotha.

As to the first point, it is vital to realize that when Jesus prayed for deliverance from crucifixion, he also prayed for God’s ultimate will. In Matthew’s accounting Jesus prays the first time, “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will.” In the second prayer he says, “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done.”

Here Jesus serves as a model for our prayers. We must not pray with the expectation that God will supplicate himself to our will. Instead we must pray in a way that allows us to accept God’s will. We have to know that God has a reason for all that He does, including those things He does not do. Now here I want to be very clear. I am not saying that God only answers the prayers of certain highly qualified and deserving people, nor am I saying that God causes illness or other bad situations. He is neither capricious in whom He blesses, nor malicious in deciding the fates of people. At the end of the day we have to faithfully accept that the answer to some prayers will be no, and we cannot know the reasons why some prayers are answered and others appear not to be.

There is a line in C.S. Lewis’ “The Great Divorce” in which a character describes the choice of accepting God’s will. It is not specifically about prayer but it fits nicely with the notion of accepting God’s will. “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

The second point is that of Christ’s self-emptying sacrifice, and how it relates to where God is in our greatest need. This point may not work for everyone, but it works for me. In becoming man Christ self-emptied Himself from His status as God. The Greek word for this is Kenosis and it generally means that he came down from His divine throne to become fully human. Lest I be accused of heresy, I want to clarify that this does not mean Christ was not fully- divine, rather he also made Himself susceptible to the same pains and sufferings we experience in life.

When I think of Christ’s overall salvific mission, especially his death on the cross and later resurrection, I often think of it as His defeat of death. This is known as the Christus Victor model of understanding salvation. Bishop N.T. Wright described it as Christ’s punching straight through death and out the other side. But it seems to me, that in order for Him to really do that then Christ has to get down in the muck, and really experience death, because its more than just a physical suffering, its also a spiritual, emotional suffering.

Because of the Kenosis, because Jesus was also fully human I believe he experienced the full pain and anguish of death both physically and spiritually. This would include that most painful feeling of having been abandoned by God. The hopelessness of the door slammed in the face. Because of this, I believe that we can look at our times of greatest need and have confidence that even though we may not feel Him, God is there with us, because He was there on the cross.

Finally, the point of this message. There are times in all of our lives when we are faced with what seems like insurmountable difficulty. As Christians we turn to prayer. We often do so hoping for the very best of results. We hope in earnest that a loved one will be healed, or a broken relationship mended. And in those moments we hope our faith is strong enough to move mountains, and even to move God to favor us. But frequently it seems God does not favor us with a yes. Our prayers are often met with a no, or with silence.

It is in those times, and really in all times that we must direct our prayers not only to what we would wish for, but to the will of God, as Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. And when it feels like God has abandoned us just as Jesus felt hanging from that cross, we must realize that we are not the first ones to feel this way. As it turns out we are in fact, not alone, we are in the best of company. The company of a God who knows what it is to suffer, and to feel abandoned, and one who will never truly abandon us.

And this, is what 19th century theologian and author George MacDonald calls, “The Hope of the Gospel.” It is not the empty promise or platitude of a God who doesn’t care, or who ignores our needs. Instead it is the hope and support and trust that comes from a God who gets down in the muck with us. Who experiences the pain and suffering of forsakenness, who knows what it is to lose a child, and to die a tortuous death. It is also the God who offers the hope of punching straight through death and coming out the other side.

God does not say we will not have pain, He says He will share that pain with us, and in the end, He will take it away. To quote George MacDonald in The Hope of the Gospel,

“The Lord has come to wipe away our tears. He is doing it; he will have it done as soon as he can, he would have them flow without bitterness; to which end he tells us it is a blessed thing to mourn, because of the comfort on its way. Accept his comfort now, and prepare for the comfort at hand.”