08/20/2024
Do you pray and not receive? Have you blamed or doubted God for His silence towards your prayers? Well, sometimes He is answering and we are not listening or we simply don’t wanting to hear the answer. Sometimes our timing and His are out of synch, but often we are completely outside the will of God in our requests. The book of James speaks to our asking "wrongly" and that is what I am contemplating this morning; praying outside the will of God and how I can know and avoid this.
“You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.”
James 4:3 ESV
Many years ago I worked in downtown Nashville on the same block as a diner-style restaurant and, as a matter of fact, my workplace was just a few doors away, but next door to this diner was a “one day employment agency”. The restaurant served breakfast and lunch to businessmen, and the employment agency provided a day's work for men and women who were without steady jobs. The patrons of the agency were mostly men, and those who lined up for work each morning were what today would be called indigent, or homeless; men and women who for one reason or the other were unemployable in a job that required them to be dependable, and to show up for work each day. A vast majority were alcoholics and worked only long enough to buy their next bottle of booze... But although they were pitiful, and despite their shortcomings, they were God's children.
I tried to help these vagrant men with a few dollars or a meal, but it became clear that anything I gave them went towards their addiction. One morning I was walking towards my office with a friend and we were approached by a man asking for money to buy breakfast. We knew that if we gave this man money he would buy a bottle with it, but we could also see that he needed a meal. So we took him into the restaurant, sat him at the counter, stood there while he ordered his meal, paid the waitress, and then went on to work. This seemed like a perfect way of helping while protecting the man from himself and his addiction.
Later that day we went back into the restaurant for lunch, and the waitress from breakfast came to us and told us what had happened after we left that morning. The man had promptly cancelled his order, took the money, and headed towards the nearby liquor store.
Sometimes we are just like that vagrant alcoholic... our prayers become vehicles of desires that are outside the will of God and harmful to our journey of faith and occasionally damage our physical selves. What is it that we are praying for that might place us in such a position? Is our addiction some form of earthly comfort, placing our needs before another’s, an aversion to pain or suffering at all cost, or some other "wrongly" asked prayer?
Jesus had these same desires and temptations, as a matter of fact we hear one of them in the Garden of Gethsemane when he asked in prayer that "this cup", or the suffering of the cross and the sin he would bear, pass from Him. The difference is what He did next, He prayed "not my will, but thine, be done."
“Saying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
Luke 22:42 KJV
This is how we should pray and how we should look and listen for our answer as it fulfills the will of God in our particular situation. Like my friend and me as we cared for the homeless man, God wants the best for us but sometimes He knows that what we are asking for will bring us, or others, harm. Sometimes the suffering we are asking God to remove brings with it a blessing or consequences that we can't possibly see yet.
This morning as we pray let's ask for those things we wish God would take away, or perhaps for those we would like for Him to provide, but then let's repeat the words of Jesus as we say "nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done." Let’s listen for God's voice, and watch for His provision, in a manner that will make His will obvious to us.
Earlier this week I received a phone call for prayer while driving home in my car. I then prayed for a man's sister in law who lived in the path of a great western wildfire. She had recently lost her husband and now it looked as though she might lose her home and all she had remaining. I prayed for her and, after some time, my prayer concluded, and as it did I looked up to see a truck on the side of the road. Across the back of the truck was written in plain black lettering "Nothing Is Impossible" and I knew instantly my prayer for her had been heard.
God isn't always mysterious. Sometimes we just need to listen when He speaks. Maybe He will answer us in bold lettering, but even when the answer is "no", "not right now", or "really Rich??" We can rest assured that it will be within His plan and His will for us or others... And by His very nature it will always be good.
Prayer:
Father, we thank you for hearing our prayers, even those that are being prayed wrongly. We thank you for answering them with various provisions and blessings, but we pray that we will use those things you do for us in the way you intended them to be used. Help us to consume the meals you have set before us so that we will be nourished, and so that they will give us the strength to resist the temptations to trade them, and use them to feed our sinful addictions instead. Open our eyes and our hearts to your will, and transform us into believers and people who are healed and lifted up as we obey you. If we are merciful and bless others, don’t let us become discouraged if they turn those good deeds you have asked of us into food for their worldly addictions or sinful behaviors. Help us to do as you ask us, and leave the lessons, no matter how mysterious or hidden from us, up to you and your transformative teaching. Ours is to obey, while it is you who turns what appears to be bad into good. Sometimes we might feel like our gift is not being used as you had intended it to be, when it is actually the final straw that broke someone of their bad behavior… or you are using our obedient benevolence to change the heart of a sinner in ways we can’t see happening. Holy, Holy, Holy, are you our God whose will is often mysterious, and whose plan for our salvation takes us down some twisted paths before finally using our pain and suffering to turn us from our sinfulness to believing in Christ, and thus leading us to the straight roads of righteousness you have prepared for us. You are merciful and full of grace in ways that we might find hard to fathom, but in the end you work all things for good to those who love you, and believe… help us to believe, help us to love, and help us to overcome our doubt. Father, in all things let your will be done, and not ours.
We praise you now with all our being… with all our body, mind, and soul. Let your will be done. Amen
“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good,[a] for those who are called according to his purpose.”
Romans 8:28 ESV
“Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them; and them which suffer adversity, as being yourselves also in the body.”
Hebrews 13: 1-3 KJV
Rich Forbes