Prayers that God will not Answer!

The title of this article may startle the readers! Yes, there are prayers that God may not answer. It is hard to believe this in a world where there is so much of talk about miracles, deliverance and so on. We are made to believe that God answers prayers unconditionally. We are also made to believe that certain places and certain people have so much charisma that anything they pray for will be answered. So we tend to flock to these places and around this people to get our prayers answered. We are encouraged to subscribe to some prayer plans (quite similar to some saving plans) that for a small subscription our children will be prayed for from birth to their adulthood. Childhood ailments, successful education (a main worry for Indian parents), job security and marriage are all covered in these plans. All that we need to do is to subscribe, sit back and relax for the rest of your life!

However, God doesn't answer prayers unconditionally. He is not a slot machine, where the machine delivers what one want by simply inserting a coin or token without any questions.

God does not answer prayers when there is sin in our lives. God want us to receive his forgiveness and correct our lives before coming to him. God has moral demands and he insists that our lives be according to his will before he grants us our requests. King Saul prayed to God for help against the Amalekites, but he was terribly defeated. God did not answer his prayer because of sin in his life (1 Samuel 14:37, 1 Samuel 28:6, 7). David prayed for the healing of the child that was born in his illegitimate and sinful relationship. God did not answer, the child died. Though David had repented, it was God's will that he feel some pain of his sinful action (2 Samuel 12:13-23). However, God allowed the second child (Solomon) in the same wife to ascend to David's throne later.

God also doesn't answer prayers that are not in line with his will. His will is supreme above all our wills and his will is perfect and flawless. He knows what is best for us. So he answers prayers only according to his will. Elijah was a great man of prayer. Bible says that he could stop rain (James 5:17), he had brought down fire from heaven that burnt the sacrifice, dried up the water and even melted stones of the altar (1 Kings 18:32-38). However, God did not answer one of his prayers: He wanted to die but God did not allow him (1 Kings 19:4; 2 Kings 2:11). Because that was not in God's will that he die at the time he wanted. So was also Jonah who wanted to die but God did not allow him to die when he wanted to die (Jonah 4:3). Saint Paul was not a sinner and but though he prayed for healing of his physical ailment (we don't know what exactly it was) God simply refused instead gave him the grace to live with it (2 Cor 12:7-9).

Thirdly, there are things in our control that God will leave us to address than bringing it to him, especially matters that have to do with our character and our moral life. For example, God is not going to answer the prayers of those who pray that they will be more humble because being humble is in their control. If they want to be humble all that they need to do is to go ahead and be humble! If people pray that God make them more liberal, I don't think God is going to make them liberal in their giving because they just need to go ahead and start giving. Many times such prayers are used to shun human responsibility and put the blame on God! However, we need God's grace to live lives pleasing God. So, God is certainly going to grant the grace to be humble, more liberal in giving etc. Nevertheless, doing it with the grace that God provides is our job.

Now let us turn the question on its tail. Instead of asking what are the type of prayers God will not answer let us see how to pray in a way that God will answer. God answers prayers from hearts that are right with God. Secondly, God answers prayers that are according to his will and thirdly, God want us to do what we can do depending on his grace instead of using prayer as an excuse.

Personal Worship and Corporate Worship

Worshipping together is one of the salient features Christianity which it shares with its predecessor Judaism and is followed by its successor Islam. Most of the religions have individualized worship experience. Worshippers visit shrines on their own to pray to their deity and does not necessarily need the company of others. However, gathering together for worship in the church, synagogue or the mosque is important for the above religions besides the private time of worship. So the two terms: "Personal worship" which signifies the individual's act of worship and "corporate worship" which is the worship which individuals offer in the company of other believers.

Some people are very keen on corporate worship but at the expense of the personal worship. They are regular at church services, praise and worship meetings etc but may not pour out their devotion and adoration to God when they are alone. These people find it difficult to meet God alone; they need the company of others. There are people on the other extreme who have a dislike to worship God in public, in the presence of others and they tend to be very private in their devotion and adoration of God. They are in the habit of shunning the gathering together of the saints in worship (Hebrews 10:25). They are very private persons and have a dislike for people.

However, both these extremes are certainly wrong. Personal time of worship and prayer is essential component of Christian spirituality. Jesus spent nights in praying alone. He taught that we should pray in secret (Mathew 6:6). He also went to the synagogues for corporate worship and the bible says it was his usual practice (Mark 10:1). This was the practice of the early church as well (Acts 2:42). They gathered together for fellowship, to receive apostles' teaching, prayer and breaking bread together besides their personal times of worship of God.

Personal worship and corporate worship are the two wings on which Christians soar to the presence of God in adoration and praise. They are two aspects of one act called worship: the creatures adoring the majesty of the creator, the sinners pouring out his their profound love for their saviour. Personal worship leads the worshipper to corporate worship because the worshippers have reached a level of adoration which they cannot hold within themselves any longer and need to get it out of their chest! So they look to corporate worship as a place where they can share it with others and to receive from people who have something to share. In a similar manner, the corporate worship should be so rich an experience that the worshipper leaves the place of worship to continue the worship at a personal level until another time for worship arrives. Personal worship propels people from their prayer closet to the chapel and the chapel is so compelling that they return to their closet to continue the worship. They are mutually enriching experiences.

Road Map Approved by God

Sometimes we enter streets ignoring signs to realize later that it is a dead end and back track in embarrassment. Sometimes we enter one way roads and may not realize it until we spot the first vehicle in the opposite direction. In sum, we realize that we are in the wrong direction only when faced with the consequences. However, it is important if we knew where the road leads before took the turn to that road and before bumping into something that is disastrous.

Making wrong choices about the direction our life takes is much serious than the analogy used so far. It is okay in driving to enter the wrong roads and to realize that we are wrong direction. We can always take a U-turn or reverse. But life may involve choices of huge consequences as one of my friend recently found out. His family did not realize that the road they have taken will lead them to a financial ruin when they were close to their retirement. Each step in the path was comfortable, there was no warning signs until calamity struck them unaware.

The prayer of the psalmist in Psalm 139:23-24 is helpful here. Most of the translations agree more or less with that of TNIV: "Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." The word translated "offensive" could also mean "hurtful". These are ways that may lead us to situations that may hurt us.

However, we are limited in our knowledge to know what awaits us at the end of the road. Will it end in situations that may bring deep loss and sorrow? The choice is between ways that leads to sorrow and the one that is ever for good and pleasing to God. However, being lost as to what choice to be made the psalmist will leave it to God. For God is all knowing and all searching God. He has been there before us. That is how the psalmist has portrayed God in this Psalm: a God who knows us from the moment we were formed in the mother's womb. He has been in the world long before us. Just as trekkers would seek the advice of guide who has been there before, we surrender to the eternal God because he has been there much before us. He knows the territory well! Moreover, he can tell us what is going on inside us, in our thoughts!

Searching is a constant activity, each step and every turn in life we need to surrender to God's scrutiny and approval. That is the secret of life that has outcome which is eternal.

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Making Our Faith Stainless

Faith of a believer need not always maintain the same level. As the days go by people grow weaker in their faith. This is true of faith as trust, our ability to trust God but also of faith that controls our moral behavior. Faith in Christ has made us new persons, people with a new value system, a new world-view etc. However, this may deteriorate as the days go by. Loss of sensitivity to sin, casual approach spiritual disciplines, general coldness to spiritual matters, lack of love for God and other believers are some of the symptoms of this. This is caused by the overwhelming influence of the world that we live in from which we have made a departure. The kingdom of darkness (the old way of life, values and world-view) hasn't given up the fight and always has been trying to take back the grounds it lost. It is possible that believers of Christ succumb to this. Peter calls this " the corruption that is in the world caused by evil desires" (2 Peter 1:4).

Analogy with iron probably may help us to understand this concept. Iron exposed to the elements rusts. When exposed to moist air, a piece of iron forms an oxide which degrades the metal slowly and finally makes it useless as iron. Christians are in the world, susceptible to its temptations, which corrupt the moral dimensions of their faith. Finally, they become one with the world. However, stainless steel never rusts! When 11% Chromium by weight is added to steel to make stainless steel it resists the formation of the oxide and thus rusting. It can withstand corruption.

Peter continues by suggesting how to fight corruption. The same metaphor from metallurgy helps us to understand this. He encourages his readers to "add to" their "faith" (2 Peter 1:5) seven virtues that will fortify their faith just as steel is fortified by Chromium. These virtues are: goodness, knowledge, self-control, perseverance, godliness, mutual affection and love.

Faith as a tool to get things done by God or faith as an identity tag that connects us with a community rusts and turns useless unless it is fortified by Christian virtues. For example, a Christian without self-control would turn to a carnal being very fast. Or a Christians without love for each other puts up a bad show before the world.

Rusting can be prevented by giving the iron a coat of paint! However, the paint also peels off when the elements are harsh on it. Some make futile attempts to protect their faith by a thin coating of outward spirituality. It doesn't help. Iron can also be protected by keeping it away from air and moisture, but such a piece of iron is useless! People have tried to keep their faith uncorrupt through asceticism, by keeping themselves away from the corrupting world. However, taking life taken out off active engagement with the world is useless too. The only option seems to turn our faith to stainless faith, the faith that can stand the world by fortifying it with Christian virtues.

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The Story of Two Seeds

A life pleasing God has to draw its spiritual nourishment from the Word of God on a daily basis. This is what Peter tries to explain using the metaphor of the seed and sapling. He wrote, "For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God" (1 Peter 1:23).

The metaphor is a powerful one. A seed normally has two halves (cotyledon) and a small plant sleeping between them (embryonic leaves and roots). Once it finds favourable conditions like moisture and soil the little sleeping plant begins to grow and peeps out of the cotyledons. The seed divided into two separate pieces by the sprout can be seen on either side of the little sprout. Then it develops small little leaves and runs its roots to the soil. In the entire process, the cotyledon on either side of the sprout provides it with nourishment for this crucial stage of its growth and turning into a sapling. Then once the sprout turns into a sapling the cotyledon (seed for the uninitiated) fall off, with the great sense of self-fulfillment. Their task was to provide nourishment to the sprout until it can develop roots to find food and leaves to process the food. That is the story of the perishable seed.

The sprout grows to a sapling and the sapling to a tree, left to its own fate. It has to find its own nourishment and grow. Finally the tree dies when there is a drought, when the roots cannot find water and nourishment. Or the roots may grow too weak and can't support the tree or find food for it. The tree eventually dies.

The story of the plant growing from the imperishable seed is radically different. The cotyledon provides the nourishment for the sprout to come out of the seed, to grow into a sapling. The sapling develops leaves and has roots but the cotyledon does not fall off. Being imperishable it will remain on the sapling and on the tree for ever. One day the roots may fail or may reach to bad water or dangerous chemicals but the seed (cotyledon) are there still on the tree (unusual in nature) to provide the nourishment.

The Christian life that pleases God is possible because it springs to existence from a different kind of seed which is the Word of God. The Word of God is imperishable and the Christian continues to draw nourishment from it. Many Christian lives shrivel and die in the heat of adversities because they are not drawing nourishment from the Word of God on a daily basis.

Shaky Foundations and Solid Rock

It is in utter dismay that the Psalmist asks, “When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?" (Psalm 11:3) This question has the answer implied in it: there is not much a person can do when the foundations are destroyed!

Foundation is basis of the existence, like a building rests on its firm foundation. A building cannot be hung from thin air! Human life also has many such foundations on which it stands. Good health is a firm foundation. When the health of the breadwinner is affected the family begins to feel the shake and eventual fall. Financial security is certainly an important foundation. I once met a man in his late sixties who lost all his money when the investment company where he invested all his retirement savings collapsed. He did not know what to do for the rest of his life. All that he has saved for the future is gone and he is too old to work.

The factors that shake the foundations are many, but they shake foundations across the board. The foundations of those who love God (the righteous) as well as that of who hate God may also be shaken. The Bible does not teach that there is no suffering for God’s people.

Though the Psalmist presented the question as if it has no answer he does have an answer to his problem. He looks down to see that his foundations are being shaken and in the process of being destroyed. However, he also looks up to heaven to see another firm foundation, which is the throne of God (Psalms 11:4). God’s throne never shaken and will never be destroyed.

Foundations will be shaken and will be destroyed. However, a believer who has made God his foundation and if his security rests on the eternal throne of God never feel the shake when he passes through struggles in life. It is the rule of God in our lives that gives stability to our lives. That is what made the hymn writer sing, “On Christ the solid Rock I stand, All other ground is sinking sand; All other ground is sinking sand.” (Edward Mote, around 1834).

Betraying our Children

The Psalmist said, “If I had spoken out like that I would have betrayed your children” (Psalms 73:15). This is a confession of a man who reflected on life’s realities and had drawn his own conclusions. He realized that some of his conclusions would have destroyed an entire generation of people.

The psalmist was pondering on the question of why the wicked people prosper while people like him who lead honest life do not fare very well in life. This has led him to conclude that his upright life is a waste of time; he should have tried to be rich and not bothered about being a good person. He said, “Surely in vain I have kept my heart pure and have washed my hands in innocence. All day long I have been afflicted, and every morning brings new punishments” (Psalms 73:14). However, later on he took his questions to the God and received an entirely new perspective on life. He realized that the prosperity and comforts of the wicked are not permanent. He came to know that paucity with deep devotion to God is more desirable than godless prosperity (Psalms 73:28). This relationship with God is what he would long for than wealth (Psalms 73:25).

Now, having received a new perspective on life he regrets that he harboured wrong thoughts. He also realizes that his wrong conclusions about life would have misguided a generation. In sum, he realizes the potential danger of our human reflections on life that we often jump to disregarding a divine perspective. Human beings are endowed with the power to reason; however, mere human reasoning may not help. We need to know the limits of reason and admit that there is a higher wisdom available with God, which is infallible. The purpose of human reasoning is to find out that divine perspective on life’s issues. However, if we fail to do so we betray our own generation and the generations to come.