01.E 01. Why Our Prayers Are Not Answered

I WHY OUR PRAYERS ARE NOT ANSWERED “Ye ask and ye receive not because “ — James 5:3.

If parts of this study have been a trifle hard and a bit difficult to understand, we are now at the part where writer and reader must understand whether they will or not. This may not be the most pleasing part to read for some of us, for some of it is sure to rise up from the page and condemn us, but it is the easiest to write about, because there are no knotty problems to solve; no mysteries to unravel in answer to the question that stands with such searching emphasis at the head of this chapter.

God does answer prayer, and yet so many thousands are complaining of prayers that have been unanswered; and you may be thinking the question now, If it be true that God can and does answer prayer, and why is it that He does not answer mine? Let me say it in the bluntest possible way. You can answer that question for yourself a good deal better than any one else can answer it for you. It used to be said of Luther, that he could ask anything he wanted of God and get it, but God has no favorites in this matter, and if your prayers are not answered, nothing is surer in the world than this, that the fault is yours and not God’s. By an answered prayer is meant one to which God has said Yes. No use to evade this by tampering with definitions. Some say that “asking and getting things from God is a pitiably small conception of prayer.” Well, it is if all that is implied in prayer ends in your mind just there. Nevertheless, the fundamental idea of prayer is just that. Both your Bible and your dictionary are authority for this. “Ask and ye shall receive” — i. e, the thing you ask: not something else. Some say God’s No is as much an answer to prayer as His Yes. But No is a denial — it is a negative answer, but when you pray the answer you wish and expect is God’s Yes and not His No, and this is what the average child of God has in mind when he is thinking or talking about answered prayer.

Let us ponder awhile over these unanswered petitions. Bear well in mind, in the first place, that DELAYED ANSWERS ARE NOT DENIALS

God’s purposes are planet sized, and even His plans for you and me are oftentimes much bigger and better than our short-ranged vision warrants us in believing. You may pray in strictest keeping with the conditions laid down in the preceding pages, which sort of praying we have seen makes the answer certain, yet it does not follow there from that the answer must come just at the time or just in the way expected. But if the answer is delayed, you may be sure some purpose in the divine mind is being served, or some obstacle stands in the way which a little time only can remove.

1. The answer may be delayed as a means of spiritual discipline. We are here to be educated and God knows best how to time His good gifts to that end. Humility, patience and hope; how much we need such virtues as these and a Faith that “Knows Omnipotence hath heard her prayer. And cries, ’It shall be done,’ sometime, somewhere”; and what heavenly graces are to-day adorning many a soul because of a period of suffering hard to bear and a good deal harder to understand, except for the sweet knowledge that God’s best is being accomplished, and that some glad day *’the whole of life’s painful experience will be poured into song before the throne.”

If Jacob’s desire had been given to him in time for him to get a good night’s rest, he might never have become the prince of prayer we know to-day. If Hannah’s prayer for a son had been answered at the time she set for herself, the nation might never have known the mighty man of God it found in Samuel. Hannah wanted only a son, but God wanted more. He wanted a prophet, a ruler and a saviour for His people. Some one has said that in this instance “God had to get a woman before He could get a man.” This woman He got in Hannah precisely by delaying the answer to her prayer, for out of the discipline of those weeks and months and years there came a woman with a vision like God’s, with tempered soul and gentle spirit and seasoned will, prepared to be the kind of a mother for the kind of a man God knew the nation needed.

2. The answer may be delayed by the very force of circumstances. You want to know if God cannot overcome these instanter? Yes, He doubtless can, but it is hardly the part of reverent trust to ask Him to do the miraculous if He can do this thing in His own good time in any other way. Impatience with God is the meanest sort of distrust. To pray for the instant healing of a diseased body is to ignore every second cause and every law of nature and to ask God to do the same, and that we fear not so much for His glory as for our own gratification. May not the same thing be true in some instances when prayer is sent up for the instant conversion of some soul? In fact, of the two is not the former much more reasonable? God can handle the laws of nature as He will, but can He thus handle a human will and still leave the individual a free, moral and responsible agent? A man’s will must be influenced by motives; the evil of sin must be seen and something of the character of God appreciated. The power of these motives depends a good deal upon their proper presentation by the proper person and at the proper time.

We do not need to explain why, but just to recognize what God has shown us to be true, that He has chosen to limit Himself very largely to human instrumentality in saving another man’s soul. God will not coerce a man’s will, but He may remove him from influences that have made it hard for him to be reached and bring him into new surroundings that may lead to the saving of his soul. In all these things the element of time must not be ignored.

No! child of faith, a delay is not a denial. The answer must come, but at a time known only to His infinite wisdom. “For the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it, for it will surely come; it will not tarry.” And yet prayers do go unanswered. *’Ye ask and ye receive not because — “Well, it might be, thinking back through what has been said before, because the specific petition you make is not in harmony with God’s better plans for you.

1. Petitions are sometimes denied because if granted they would bring us positive injury. True wisdom, if we had it, would never allow us to be at cross-purposes with God.

“... So weak is man, So ignorant and blind, that did not God Sometimes withhold in mercy what we ask.

We should be ruined at our own request.”

You denied your little one the razor he craved, but you knew why. (And possibly if we would all think back a little through our own history we could recall some earnest prayer of the heart, some cry of the soul, which later events proved to be against our own best welfare.) Is not a word of warning appropriate just here.’^ Is there not some peril in prayers that are uttered rashly and persistently.

Some of our best lessons are learned in the school of adversity. Here is an illustration gathered from the writings of a fellow minister, *’A pastor’s wife once prayed for the life of her child, sick with scarlet fever. She demanded that her child be spared, telling God that she could not give up her boy. The child lived, but was deaf, dumb and idiotic. It would have been far better if the mother had consented to the Lord’s will and the Lord had taken the lad to Himself. Does God do things like that? What ponderous questions come up about God! Is God responsible for everything? No, He certainly is not. Yet we know that Israel prayed amiss in the wilderness and God “gave them their request, but sent leanness into their soul.” God answered Hezekiah’s prayer, but the fifteen years of life He gave him brought sorrow into his own family and woe and misery to Jerusalem and all Judea. *’Be not rash with thy mouth, and let not thine heart be hasty to utter anything before God.”

2. Petitions are sometimes denied that the larger desire of our heart may be granted. Augustine’s mother prayed fervently that her boy might be kept from going to Rome, but God permitted him to go. Yet the going to Rome became the means of Augustine’s conversion, and very beautifully he says that God denied his mother once to grant her what she had prayed for always.

3. Closely akin to this is the denial of our prayer in order that a higher and better blessing may come to us. Earnestly and repeatedly did Paul pray that a certain thorn in his flesh — some constantly pricking irritation that had come into his life — might be taken away; but God let him know it was a thing in which he would some day glory, and I imagine when Paul looked back upon it from the close of his life he would tell those gathered about him of the special nearness of God and the glory presence of Jesus which had been a millionfold sweeter to him than any fleshly ease the removal of that ugly, annoying thorn might have brought him.

If a mother bending over her sick child and praying with all the intensity of motherly affection could only have lodged in some way in her heart the unmistakable conviction that its early removal was the sure condition of its eternal salvation, would she not gladly relinquish the smaller desire of her heart that it might be swallowed up in the greater blessing that represented the answer to the greatest prayer a mother heart can make.

Those of you who have read the little book entitled “Expectation Corner” will remember how Adam Slowman’s guide stopped in front of a handsome storehouse and told him it was the Royal Exchange Office, “the place,” he said, “where our Lord Himself considers our applications and changes His grants to what is really most for our good. Some ask for success and speedy deliverance,” he said, “and they get disappointments which bring them nearer to Him who will deliver them gloriously in trouble if not always out of trouble.

Some ask for health of body and they get health of soul instead and learn what it is to gain the highest attainable gift of a submitted will which brings changeless peace and is worth all the prosperity gifts put together.”

If we could only pass, like Doddridge in his famous dream, into the spirit world and find, as he did, our own life traced on the wall of our own chamber, we too could run our eyes along the mysterious lines and discover His appointment in every disappointment, and learn that our final glory is reached through prayers that have been answered in larger measure than we had ever ventured to implore.

What we have said so far may be taken as a partial answer to the question introducing this chapter, but it has not one thing to do with the difficulty as presented in the Scripture which stands alongside the question. These have been denials because of petitions either out of harmony with God’s richer plan for us or out of the line along which God must act to bring us the larger blessings we have craved, but the Scripture to which we have referred says, “Ye ask and receive not because — “ and then follows a reason that startles you. The longer you think about it the bigger it gets. It brings a sensation with it — not the most pleasant, did you say? You begin to search your own heart and to think about your own life, and the first thing you know you find yourself wondering if, after all, this may not be that which more than anything else has kept the blessing away. The matter of the prayer may have been all right, but the heart which indited it has been all wrong. It is the life, you will recall, that prays, and some evil in your life has broken the connection between yourself and God.

What does God say about this?

1. First, He makes it plain that it is our sin that deafens His ear. “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you, that He will not hear” (Isaiah 59:1; Isaiah 59:2). God says it is your sin that is hindering your prayer. God hates sin with a perfect hatred. His greatest horror is to have hands stretched out to Him that are all soiled and besmirched with it. In fact, He will not look; He will not listen. “And when ye spread forth your hands, I will hide mine eyes from you” (Isaiah 1:15). The very privilege of prayer implies the most intimate relation with God. Indeed, some say its chief essence is communion with God. It is communion and more: it is community, just because it is communion of the most intimate sort. God maker; over to me what belongs to Him, and I am expected to be thus equally loyal to Him. It is, in fact, partnership. But I have sinned against my partner. I have done the mean, low thing that has injured Him, and not only have I lacked the decency to apologize for it, but I am doing the thing repeatedly! How, then, can I expect any fellowship with Him or any favor from Him?

Here is the trouble. We have looked down deep into our own hearts and we have found the thing that God has put His finger on time and again, and it’s there still. It may be some sin of the past yet unconfessed and unforgiven, or it may be some sin that is being cherished to-day, and all the while here is His word: “If I regard iniquity in my heart the Lord will not hear me” (Psalms 66:18). It is the inwrought, fervent prayer of the righteous man that availeth much. “Your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you that He will not hear.” Is it not time to say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart”.’^ If we want power in prayer we must be merciless in dealing with our sins. No quarter must be shown here.

2. There is another certain thing, just a special form of sin that is mentioned as crippling our power to pray, and that is the unforgiving spirit. Can an unpardoned sinner hope to have any influence with God? Then hear! “If ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you.” This lack of loving one another — Aye, this actual hatred of each other — what a dark, ugly thing it is! “Murder already,” God calls it, and to hold it and to harbor it is to lose His pardon and His favor. If prayer is, or implies, or is based upon communion, community, partnership, then the disposition of the one must be the disposition of the other. The closet door of prayer has two hinges. One is, “Love God supremely,” and the other “is like unto it,” “Love your neighbor as yourself.” The “recompense” of the “Father who seeth in secret” comes when the “door is shut,” but the door will never swing on broken hinges. Many a person who might have power with God is losing the best wish of their heart — some mighty blessing from heaven — just for the contemptible and miserable gratification of hating some one who has possibly injured them. Jesus makes it very plain that we must say farewell to enmity or stand back from the holy place. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, He says, *’If thou bring thy gift to the altar — that is, when thou comest to pray — and there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against thee; leave there thy gift and go first and be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift.” Reconciliation goes before worship. “A broken and contrite heart” He will not despise, but His message to the unforgiving heart is, “Leave thy gift and go and be reconciled.” It is S. D. Gordon who has said, “The shortest way to God for that man is not the way to the altar but around by that man’s house.” “But, Lord, here’s $100, 000 to endow a Christian university.” “Leave there thy gift and go and be reconciled.” “But, Lord, I’m a pillar in the church, and the largest subscription to its treasury is mine.” “Leave there thy gift and go.” *’But, Lord, others speak well of my life and Thou knowest I am faithful to all the services in the sanctuary, and every one knows I am not the one to blame in this offense.” “Leave there thy gift and go first and be reconciled, and then come and offer thy gift.” Plain enough! isn’t? But He would have no misunderstanding about it. So munificent and liberal, so bountiful and unsparing might be your gifts for charity’s sake, that all the world would be singing doxologies ^of praise to your generosity. You might be counted a Christian of deep spiritual experience; Aye, you might go as a herald of the Gospel into heathen lands, but if you left behind one unreconciled person whom you have not in the tender and loving spirit of the Christ endeavored to reconcile, whatever you give, whatever you are, wherever you go, your heart will not be right in the sight of God, and when you bow down at His altar you will hear these words, *’Go and be reconciled to thy brother,” and when you have gone and done your part and come again, then will the heavens open and your prayer will enter and the blessing of God will be upon you.

3. Yet one other thing brings denial to our prayers. This is that in particular which St. James had in mind when he wrote the Scripture part of which we started with at the beginning of this chapter. *’Ye ask and ye receive not.” Now let the Apostle finish it for us — “ because ye ask amiss,” that is, wickedly; and now he tells us why — “that ye may consume it upon your lusts,” or, more literally, “that ye may spend it in your pleasures.” This means praying with a selfish purpose. The very form of the second verb “ask” is changed into what is called the middle voice, that is, “asking for oneself,” and this is the secret that explains why so many prayers go unanswered. They are selfish prayers.

Possibly if we would hold this text up before us as a mirror we might some of us see our own face reflected there. We sometimes want a thing just because we want it — ^want it for ourselves. With God’s great purpose for the world and some part, whether small or great. He would have us take we are not concerned. The truth — the plain truth, spoken as bluntly as words can speak — is that our selfishness is paralyzing our petitions. Here is an individual praying that the power of the Holy Spirit may be upon him. It is a splendid prayer to make. It is just for that which God so much wants every child of His to have, but way back in the breast of the one who offers the prayer is something that spoils it all and makes the petition a sheer waste of words and a thing abominable in the sight of God. What a fine thing for himself it would be to have this power. He has seen some mighty man of God in a marvelous ministry, and the power that man had he has coveted for himself; and why? This is it — the purpose — that makes it right or wrong. And if we search honestly for the reason, some of us, I fear, would find our own ambitions striking us full in the face.

You have asked God to heal your disease, but just why do you want your failing health restored? One of the members of Dr. Dixon’s church came to him once and said, “Pastor, I want you to pray for my healing, for I am afflicted.” Dr. Dixon said, “I knew why she was afflicted; she had been spending two or three nights a week at a ball or theater, and as a result of her dissipation she was afflicted.” He said, “What do you want to live for, any way?” and he said, “I could see that her principal reason for desiring health was that she might attend more balls, give more parties and have a better time in the world. She wanted health that she might spend it in her own pleasures and for God to have answered her prayers would have been to fix her in a worldly life forever,” and he did not pray.

Here is a mother praying for her boy. It would make such a nice young man out of him to be a Christian; it would keep her from any further disgrace — it would be such a joy to her to have such a son, and then the thought of his being lost forever is so painful. But if God should say, “I need a missionary for the jungles of Africa, and I shall redeem your boy for that noble work,” she would cry, “Oh, no. Lord, not my boy for that!” Selfish prayer! Many a woman is praying the same way for the conversion of her husband. And if we would dig down deep and examine the tap-root at its very end possibly we might discover some such motive in many of our prayers for a revival. Of course, we persuade ourselves— if we can — that it is otherwise; the thing is so contemptibly mean that we spurn the thought of it; in fact, we don’t think it; we don’t allow ourselves to. But a revival means something; increased membership, easier finances, splendid reports at Conference or Presbytery, prestige among the brethren and possibly a better call. We know better than any one else that we are zealous for God’s glory, but if while we are planning and praying for a revival these other unworthy thoughts flit through the mind with persistent recurrency, we’ll have to account for them some way, and usually just a bit of deep, genuine heart searching will do it; and the revival does I not come.

Oh, for a hungering and thirsting only for God’s glory; for a passion something like the Son of God’s, that cannot bear to see men lost; for a zeal for the house of God that cannot endure to see it dishonored by the worldliness of its professed worshipers. Oh, for an utter self -forgetting concern for the thing that is dearest to God that cannot bear to think of one jot or tittle of His word being made void by the proud unbelief of the day! How the sound of abundance of rain would be heard in the land; how the windows of heaven would go up; how the mighty floods of blessing would come!

“Ye ask and ye receive not because —“ Fill it out for yourself, and when you have hit upon the thing that is hiding God’s face and taking the sense of His presence away from you, put it away by His grace, for it is sin and where there is sin He will not tarry. It may be something we have not thought of before as wrong, but if we say, and say it sincerely, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thought, and see if there be any evil thing in me,” He will discover the thing to us that ought to go from us.

“ Oh, for the times when on my heart.

Long prayer hath never palled;

Times when the ready thought of God Would come when it was called.

“What can have locked these fountains up.

Those visions what hath stayed;

What sudden act hath thus transformed My sunshine into shade?

“One thing alone, dear Lord, I dread. To have a secret spot That separates my soul from Thee And yet to know it not.

“If it hath been sin of mine, Then show that sin to me; Not to get back the sweetness lost, But to make my peace with Thee.”