Unanswered prayer explores the challenge of trusting God when our requests seem unmet, highlighting the mystery and faith required in waiting for His timing and wisdom (Romans 8:28). Illustrations often use the imagery of delayed answers, unexpected outcomes, and the refining process of faith through trials (James 1:3-4). This subject invites preachers to encourage perseverance and trust in God's sovereign plan beyond immediate answers.
Boy is kidnapped for 7 years, is molested by man whom he calls dad, escapes around 1981 with recently kidnapped boy. Classmate tells him she is glad their prayers where answered by God. He objects, saying his prayers were never answered, and he had to escape on his own.
In his book "Why Prayers Are Unanswered," John Lavender retells a story about Norman Vincent Peale.
When Peale was a boy, he found a big, black cigar, slipped into an alley, and lit it up. It didn't taste good, but it made him feel very grown up... until he saw his father coming. Quickly he put the cigar behind his back and tried to be casual.
Desperate to divert his father's attention, Norman pointed to a billboard advertising the circus.
"Can I go, Dad? Please, let's go when it comes to town."
His father's reply taught Norman a lesson he never forgot.
"Son," he answered quietly but firmly, "never make a petition while at the same time trying to hide a smoldering disobedience."
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John Allan Lavender, Why Prayers are Unanswered (Judson Press, 1968)
How will you respond when God's answer to your prayers wasn't what you had in mind? After her husband got tired of their church (and spiritually depressed), Lynn Hallimore was devastated when he announced they would be looking for a new church. Joshua gave her insight: he made plans to conquer Jericho militarily, but God had his own ideas.
Lynn's husband went to another church, was revived, and she decided to go with him. By following her husband's leadership (and God's), she gained a spiritual victory.
I once read through all the miracle stories of the Gospels and found they reveal remarkably different degrees of faith. A few people demonstrated bold, unshakable faith, such as a centurion who told Jesus he need not bother with a visit - just a word would heal his servant long-distance. "I tell you the truth, I have not found anyone in Israel with such great faith," Jesus remarked, astonished.
Another time, a foreign woman pursued Jesus as he was seeking peace and quiet. At first Jesus answered her not a word. Then he replied sharply, telling her he was sent to the lost sheep of Israel, not to "dogs." But nothing could deter this Canaanite woman, and her perseverance won Jesus over. "Woman, you have great faith!" he said.
Jesus seemed impressed that, as foreigners, these were the least likely people to demonstrate great faith. Why should a centurion and a Canaanite put their trust in a Messiah his own countrymen had trouble accepting? These stories threaten me, because seldom do I have such outstanding faith. Unlike the Canaanite woman, I am easily discouraged by the silence of God. I identify more readily with the wavering man who declared to Jesus, "I believe, Lord. Help my unbelief!"
To my surprise, I found the people who knew Jesus best faltered in their faith. Jesus could do few miracles in his hometown because of his neighbors' lack of faith. John the Baptist, who had heard a decisive voice from heaven at Jesus' baptism, later questioned him. And several times Jesus remarked with astonishment on the 12 disciples' faithlessness. Jesus' three most intimate disciples saw a dramatic miracle shortly before his death. On the Mount of Transfiguration, Jesus' face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. The dazed disciples found themselves in the presence of two long-dead giants of history, Moses and Elijah.
Yet what impact did such a stupendous event have? Shortly, the eyewitnesses of the Transfiguration joined the rest of the Twelve in abandoning - denying, in Peter's case - Jesus in his hour of deepest need.
We easily forget that Judas had for three years watched Jesus work great miracles and listened to his teaching; even so, he betrayed Jesus. Another disciple, "doubting Thomas," gained the reputation as a skeptic, but in truth, all the disciples showed a lack of faith. None of them believed the wild reports the women brought back from the empty tomb. Even after Jesus appeared to them in person, says Matthew, "some doubted." A curious law of reversal seems to be at work in the Gospels: Faith appears where least expected and falters where it should be thriving.
I remember my first visit to Old Faithful in Yellowstone National Park. Rings of Japanese and German tourists surrounded the geyser, their video cameras trained like weapons on the famous hole in the ground. A large, digital clock stood beside the spot, predicting 24 minutes until the next eruption.
My wife and I passed the countdown in the dining room of Old Faithful Inn overlooking the geyser. When the digital clock reached one minute, we, along with every other diner, left our seats and rushed to the windows to see the big, wet event. I noticed that immediately, as if on signal, a crew of busboys and waiters descended on the tables to refill water glasses and clear away dirty dishes. When the geyser went off, we tourists oohed and aahed and clicked our cameras; a few spontaneously applauded. But, glancing back over my shoulder, I saw that not a single waiter or busboy - not even those who had finished their chores - looked out the huge windows. Old Faithful, grown entirely too familiar, had lost its power to impress them.
A little later, our church back in Chicago faced something of a crisis. The pastor had left, attendance was flagging, a community outreach program now seem threatened. The leadership suggested an all-night vigil of prayer. Several people raised questions. Was it safe, given our inner-city neighborhood? Should we hire guards or escorts for the parking lot? What if no one showed up? At length we discussed the logistics and the "practicality" of such an event. Nevertheless, the night of prayer was scheduled.
To my surprise, the poorest members of the congregation, a group of senior citizens from a housing project, were the ones who responded most enthusiastically to the prayer vigil. I could not help wondering how many of their prayers had gone unanswered over the years - they lived in the projects, after all, amid crime, poverty, and suffering - yet they showed a childlike trust in the power of prayer. "How long do you want to stay - an hour or two?" we asked. "Oh, we'll stay all night," they replied.
One black woman in her nineties, who walks with a cane and can barely see, explained to a staff member why she wanted to spend the night sitting on the hard pews of a church in an unsafe neighborhood. "You see, they's lots of things we can't do in this church. We ain't so educated, and we ain't got as much energy as some of you younger folks. But we can pray. We got time, and we got faith. Some of us don't sleep much anyway. We can pray all night if needs be."
And so they did. Meanwhile, a bunch of yuppies in a downtown church learned anew a lesson of faith from the Gospels: Faith appears where least expected and falters where it should be thriving.
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Copyright (c) 1994 Christianity Today, Inc./CHRISTIANITY TODAY Magazine
Are our expectations divinely appointed? Scripture presents a viewpoint we naturally resist: reality.
1. Many Christians experience dashed expectations.
a. We continue to struggle in the faith.
b. Non-Christians don't respond to the gospel.
c. Prayer is not answered.
2. Why doesn't God answer my prayers?
a. In Bible, struggle is usually portrayed as a normal part of life.
b. Many unseen variables, apart from us, determine how people respond
to the gospel.
c. What we view as problems are often the vehicles God uses to teach us
lessons we otherwise might never learn.
3. The fruit of faulty foundations.
a. Inventions of an evangelical subculture.
4. The blessing of Biblical expectations.
a. Reshaping expectations by Biblical criteria.
5. How to identify and re-adjust expectations:
a. Pray.
b. Objectively analyze and condense expectation into one sentence.
c. Assess the fruit of your expectation.
d. Study your Bible.
e. Restate the expectation.
f. Pray to internalize God's expectation.
6. Is God enough?
Real question: On what or whom will I base and focus my expectations and hopes?
Steve Hayner was a Christian leader who had been the president of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and also president of Columbia Theological Seminary. A few years ago he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He endured extensive chemotherapy but tests showed his disease was still growing.
Hayner wrote a blog post for the many people who were praying for his healing. He commented one day:
“Many are praying for one of God’s ‘big’ miracles. We are as well. But it is not how God answers prayer that determines our response to God. God is committed to my ultimate healing. But being cured of my cancer may or may not be a part of that healing work....”
One woman told Hayner that it was disturbing to her to see so many thousands of prayers being given on his behalf and yet there was no evidence of physical healing. It made her question if God really heals, and if the amount of prayer has any special impact. To her, the unanswered prayer was a closed door from God. To Hayner, it was an open door to something far greater. [He went to the Lord on January 31, 2015]
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Adapted from “Columbia president affirms faith despite spreading cancer,” by Leslie Scanlon, The Presbyterian Outlook, July 29, 2014;
More from this article:
Hayner spoke directly to the many people who have prayed for him and his family – some, knowing how aggressive the cancer was, praying specifically for a miracle of healing.
“There is a much bigger story of which this is only a tiny part,” he wrote. “And it is God’s story of love, hope, forgiveness, reconciliation, and joy. We went into this journey choosing to trust God and to offer our fears to God. We’ve been so grateful for the freedom from fear and the abundance of peace that we have experienced. There are, of course, times of discouragement, grief, pain, and wonder. After all, there are a lot of unknowns ahead of us.
“Many are praying for one of God’s ‘big’ miracles. We are as well. But it is not how God answers prayer that determines our response to God. God is committed to my ultimate healing. But being cured of my cancer may or may not be a part of that healing work.”
Before he got the results of the medical tests, Hayner wrote this about prayer:
“Of course, what we would love to see is significant healing. So many people are praying and hoping/expecting that God is going to intervene in a really spectacular way. With God, nothing is impossible, and I would certainly welcome a miraculous intervention.
“One person told me how disturbing it is to her to watch so many thousands of prayers on my behalf and yet (so far) to see a minimal of physical evidence of healing. Does God really heal? Are the ‘prayers of the righteous’ effective? Does God listen to the desires of our hearts? Does the amount of prayer have any special impact?
“Honestly, while I understand the importance and logic of questions like this–and many others–most of these questions are not ones that are important to me.
“I truly don’t know what God has planned. None of us really know what the physical symptoms of my cancer will be over time. I could receive ‘healing’ through whatever means, or I could continue to deteriorate.
“But life is about a lot more than physical health. It is measured by a lot more than medical tests and vital signs. More important than the more particular aspects of God’s work with us (in the physical, social, psychological, spiritual, mental realms of life) is God’s overall presence with us, nourishing, equipping, transforming, empowering, and sustaining us for whatever might be God’s call to my life today. TODAY, my call might be to learn something new about rest. TODAY, my call might be to encourage another person in some very tangible way. TODAY, my call might be to learn something new about patience, endurance, and the identification with those who suffer. TODAY, my call might be to mull through a new insight about God’s truth or character.
“The prayers and support of people along the way are also about God’s call to each of them (and me!) TODAY. As people pray, we are all changed, and we are all called to focus in a new way. We are all changed as individuals and as a community.
“Yes, I’m really eager to know what is happening in my body to this cancer. I’m hopeful that the report about my tumor will be a ‘good’ one and that it might portend a more physically healthy future. But whatever we find out over the next days, I am more eager that it would help me to be more attentive, more grateful, more loving, more joyful and more gracious.
“I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that I loved: ‘More wagging; less barking!’ At that moment I was grumbling inside because it was so hard just to complete my short walk in the neighborhood. But almost immediately my perspective changed. Grumbling was changing nothing, but a fresh infusion of joy could color the world.”
In his most recent post, Hayner wrote that he was beginning a new chemotherapy regimen on July 30, with the hope that it would slow the spread of the cancer without too many side effects or robbing him of energy. “We’ll see,” he wrote adding that he and Sharol are focusing on projects including the remodeling of the house they own in Decatur (the Hayners currently live in the Columbia seminary president’s house), which “will be a great place for Sharol to live in the years ahead.”
He also wrote that he’s not taking on projects that some others may be expecting of him – including writing a book, which several people have suggested to him (“and they have a lot of opinions on what they would like me to write about”). Hayner said the idea of writing does not bring him joy – he wants to focus on other tasks instead, such as the remodeling; seeing friends and colleagues from the Columbia community; and “giving away my library in creative and productive ways.”
He remains committed to “a number of deep human and global concerns for which I want to do my part in helping with the healing. As I have indicated before, there is a kind of daily ‘calling’ to which I want to be attentive. Some days this will include more active options, while other days I will likely only have energy for quieter possibilities.”
He closed by quoting the poet e. e. cummings: “I thank you God for most this amazing day...”
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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #2078]
Sermon in Philippians series. Diving healing. Philippians 3:25-30
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DOES GOD HAVE TO HEAL?
======================
I. How do you feel today?
II. The Pentecostal dilemma.
A. A renewed expectation of miracles.
B. Name it and claim it.
III. Benefits of a stress on healing.
A. If God can do it, he might do it.
B. Many conversions result from healings.
IV. Dangers of overemphasizing healing.
A. What happens when Jesus doesn't heal?
B. Some Christians are never healed, no matter how hard they pray.
C. Perspective on the miracles of Jesus.
V. I believe in faith healing.
A. If God wants, he can heal anyone of any disease.
B. I also believe healing can come by more ordinary means.
C. God can heal by normal means, or by raw supernatural power.
VI. The one kind of healing I can guarantee right now.
How concretely can we trust God?
I. God's promises can be problematic.
A. What he seems to promise doesn't always come true.
B. Despite his promises of protection, Christians still get hurt.
II. The nature of the promises.
A. Requirements of promises.
1) Some are conditional upon our obedience.
2) All require our faith.
B. General promises. John 3:16; Phil 4:19
1) For many people, of all times.
C. Specific promises.
1) To certain individuals, for unique situation, at a given time.
2) The Holy Spirit impresses them on our hearts.
a) Claim them carefully.
1> Don't read your own wishes into them.
b) Read them rightly.
1> Look at the context.
2> Don't be purely subjective.
3) Daniel's example.
a) He comes across God's promise through Jeremiah.
b) He prays about it.
1> Opens with confession.
2> Reviews with God the situation they are in.
3> Reminds the Lord of his character.
c) He makes his request based on what God has promised.
1> He requests, but does not demand.
III. Unfulfilled promises.
A. Obedience on our part is required.
B. Undermined by unbelief. Mark 6:5-6
C. Our lack of patience.
1) We need the proper heart attitude for claiming the promises.
IV. The nature of the Promiser.
A. When God says "no" He has a reason.
1) The prayer of Gethsemane received a "no" answer.
a) Not because Jesus was sinful or request invalid.
2) He let his Son die on the cross for a higher goal.
B. We must submit to a higher will than our own when we pray. Mk 14:36
1) "God's will is what you would choose if you knew everything
He knows."
V. Standing on the promises. Psalm 119:140
A. God's promises demonstrate his goodness and faithfulness.
1) They also glorify himself.
B. Whether God grants them or not, our deep confidence is that his
perfect will, founded in his love for us, is working
itself out.
#4416
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Remember the old joke about the guy who angrily brought his new chainsaw back to the hardware store for a replacement? He stormed through the door and flung his purchase onto the front counter. It lay there, bent and beat up, much of the paint chipped off and the teeth at all angles.
"I've been using this thing all day," he sputtered to the first face within shouting range, "and I haven't even cut a handful of firewood!"
The sales clerk, trying hard to remain cooperative, assured the man he'd be glad to take a look at it and do what he could. The saw was a mangled mess, all right. And trying to see if it might start in this condition seemed a foolish waste of time. But not knowing where else to begin, he took a chance and yanked hard one time on the ripcord. Sure enough, after several uncertain seconds of tired gasps and coughs, the motor somehow rattled its way to full throttle.
The red-faced customer suddenly went white, backing up two full steps from the counter in stunned confusion. "So that's what that string was for!"
From a prayer perspective, here's the point: Before concluding that it doesn't "work," you need to ask yourself how you've been trying to use it. I have frequently heard people despair that their prayer wasn't answered. Perhaps someone they loved was sick, and they prayed asking God for healing. But instead of getting better, the person died. They had asked for one thing, but they had gotten another. Therefore, their prayer didn't "work."
Don't misunderstand. God does answer prayer. I know it from experience. Besides that, Scripture is full of instances where God's people prayed and he responded exactly as they had asked.
However, having our requests granted is not the primary goal of prayer. Prayer is not simply the process of giving God our wish list. Many times we ask for things that seem to be what we need, but later recognize that had we gotten them, they would have been far from our best interests.
Neither is prayer a way to alert God to our needs. God knows our needs even better than we do and he needs no formal reminders about where we are and what we're up against. Prayer is in no way a squeaky wheel designed to manipulate God into remembering us.
One of the most primary purposes of prayer is to spend time in conversation with our Father. And when this is our goal, we can pray at all times guaranteed that it will be rewarded.
Before I accepted the presidency of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, I spent a great deal of time flying across America to lead church growth conferences. Like many frequent travelers, I got into the habit of always bringing home a small gift for my two girls who were still at home at the time.
It happened almost without fail. As soon as my car would enter the driveway, they would run from the house and greet me with tender address. "Hi, Daddy. What did you bring us?"
After one particularly long and exhausting trip, I arrived home to be greeted by the same predictable welcome: "What did you bring us, Daddy? What did you bring us?"
But for some reason this time, I just wasn't in the mood for giving presents. Instead, I gave my girls a short but strong lecture. I explained how hard it was to be apart from them and how tired I was every time I came home. I tried to help them imagine what it would feel like for them to be away from home for days at a time. Just once, I expounded, it would mean so much to me if I knew they were simply glad to have Daddy home -- not just to have a gift. I gave them a guilt trip.
The following weekend I returned home after being out of town again, having forgotten my lecture from the past weekend. As usual, my girls ran to meet me in the driveway -- only this time, my youngest daughter leaped into my arms, gave me a big hug, and said in the sweetest voice, "I love you, Daddy. I'm so glad you're home."
My heart melted within me. With her next breath, of course, she asked, "Now ... what did you bring me?" Well, it was a start, but my daughter's behavior made me realize that my own prayers to my heavenly Father often began like that -- with little more than requests, requests, requests. I'm sure that my words often sounded just like my girls' childish refrain: "What did you bring me, Daddy?"
When I finally comprehended the fact that prayer permits me to come into the presence of my Father, to express my love for him, to thank him for his constant provision and give him the honor he is due, I discovered a new passion for prayer.
Communicating with him is reward enough. And if that is the purpose, there is no such thing as unanswered prayer.
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Adapted from "The Prayer of Jesus" by Ken Hemphill. Copyright 2001.
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Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents. At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the youngest one began praying at the top of his lungs.
"For my birthday, I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE... I PRAY FOR A NEW NINTENDO,
I PRAY FOR A NEW VCR."
His older brother leaned over and said, "Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn't hard of hearing."
His little brother replied, "No, but Grandma is."
[Holwick: prayers, especially public ones, can be very manipulative. Are we praying to humans or our Divine Father?]
The headlines seemed almost triumphal in tone.
“Prayer Doesn't Aid Recovery, Study Finds.” That was the WASHINGTON POST. “Long-Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer.” That was the NEW YORK TIMES.
Both papers were describing a study designed to determine the power of prayer. Not only did it show that prayer apparently makes no difference, but some prayed-for patients in the study actually fared worse than the unprayed-for ones.
The research, led by Jeffery Dusek of the Harvard Medical School, involved 1,802 heart-bypass patients. One-third were told they would be prayed for (but they weren't), one-third were told they MIGHT receive prayer, and one-third were told they would definitely be prayed for. Catholics and Protestants who agreed to pray for certain patients were told to ask for “a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”
Patients in the two groups that did not know if anyone was praying for them had about the same rate of complications — 52 percent — regardless of whether they were being prayed for. But 59 percent of the patients who knew they were being prayed for suffered complications.
The researchers were quick to downplay the unexpected results. Knowing they were being prayed for may have led to stress among patients, they noted. And as one doctor put it, “Did the patients think, 'I am so sick they had to call in the prayer team?'“
Naturally, some observers were delighted at the results. They think the study proves conclusively that prayer doesn't work, and it's time for men of science to “stop dabbling in the supernatural,” as one academic put it.
But wait a minute. The researchers acknowledged that they could not control for the fact that many “unauthorized” people may have interceded for loved ones in the so-called “unprayed-for” group. And plenty of other studies indicate that intercessory prayer DOES have an impact.
But perhaps the study's biggest flaw involves how the results were interpreted. Christians know that there are three possible answers to prayer: “Yes,” “no,” and “wait.” The Harvard study measured only the “yes” answers. But just because we don't get the answer we're looking for does not mean God is not listening or answering.
We are given a glorious example of this truth by Jesus Himself. On the night before His arrest, praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, an agonized Jesus asked God to remove the cup that was before Him. He prayed that He would not have to go to the Cross. And yet, not long afterward, Jesus did die on the Cross.
To a modern researcher, this is the perfect example of a prayer that went unanswered. But we know that God did answer this prayer. He answered it in a way that led, over the next twenty centuries, to salvation for millions. And on Easter Sunday, millions of Christians around the world will thank God for answering it the way He did.
Yes, Jesus died on the Cross. But He rose again on the third day. And thanks to that so-called “unanswered prayer,” you and I can say this Easter, “Hallelujah! Christ is risen!”
And no matter what the researchers tell us, we know we can trust God to hear, and answer, every prayer.
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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.
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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18973]
WAS THE OPERATION A SUCCESS?
A man opened his eyes after an operation, and said, "Well, was the operation a success, doctor?"
"I beg your pardon," came the reply. "I'm not the doctor. My name is PETER."
The requests we make to God are not unheard because we do not receive the answer when we expect them. "If the ships of prayer do not come home speedily," says a writer, "it is because they are more heavily freighted with blessing."
By J. Wilbur Chapan, "Present Day Parables."
Though James Long never knew him, his mother's twin brother was his introduction to doubt, long before he embraced faith. The uncle was the subject of unanswered prayer, long before James found answers. This man was, it seemed, the object of Heaven's coldness, long before James discovered the warmth of God's love.
Carl died at 17, electrocuted in a freak accident. He lingered briefly, comatose, in the sterile world of a hospital in Topeka, Kansas. And as he lay, suspended between death and life, his brothers and sisters prayed for him. They clawed to find shreds of faith to hold onto. But he died.
Years later, James' mother would often voice her memories. She told him how she had prayed that Carl would live. And she told him how her mother had finally returned from the hospital one day with the news: Carl would not be coming home.
"But I prayed," James' mother said weakly. "I prayed that he would live."
And Grandma had startled her with the confession: "I prayed that he would NOT live." Had Carl "lived," he would have been incapable of life. Even before he died, that great jolt to his system had done its irreversible work. And Grandma could not bear to see her son live on in such death.
And so James' mother wrestled with doubt and faith, with unanswered and answered prayer, with Heaven's coldness and Heaven's warmth. Years later, James shared in the struggle. And grieved an uncle he never knew.
Christians don't generally set out to doubt God, to call the essence of their faith into question. For most of us, life's pain simply catches us off guard; the reality of hardship trips us up. Doubt overtakes us in the race of faith because earth's suffering screams in our ears, distracting us. If faith cannot reasonably address hurt, what good is it?
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[previous illustration at this location was a duplicate of HolwickID #5166]
My Source: NORTH MARSHALL MESSENGER
Volume 5, #23... April 9, 2000
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PRAYERS HINDERED
by David Lemmons
As Christians we sometimes become discouraged and do not have the kind of appreciation and expectancy that ought to characterize our prayer life. Surely we recognize such a state as this to be a problem. Recognizing a problem is one of the first steps toward solving a problem. For the faithful Christian, the source for answers to our problems is God's word, the Bible.
I am convinced that Satan is very aware of the power of prayer and that there is nothing that he fears more than a Christian who finds much time for prayer. He will lay before us many roadblocks to hinder our approach to God in prayer. He will use his devices to create doubt in our hearts regarding the power of prayer. We must be like Paul and be aware of Satan's devices (2 Corinthians 2:11).
Consider the roadblock of PRIDE. Pride is manifested in self-trusting; self-sufficiency; self-glorying; self-service; self-will; and self-righteousness. One of the best examples of this hindrance in action is the Pharisee of Luke 18:9-14. He spent his entire prayer talking about how good he was and how much better he was than anyone else. These kinds of attitudes and these kinds of prayers are not received well by our Lord. Jesus noted the contrast between the Pharisee and the publican and gave commendation to the publican, who recognized himself to be a sinner (Luke 18:14). We need to spend a little time looking into the history of God's dealing with His people in the Old Testament. Here we will find that those times when the people became lifted up with pride and thought they could do it all on their own were the times when the judgment of God came upon them. They had the same need as we have today and that is to see that our sufficiency is OF GOD (2 Corinthians 3:5). Pride will keep us trying to solve our problems on our own and hinder us from turning to God in prayer.
Another huge roadblock in the way of having our prayers answered is simple DISOBEDIENCE. What was it Solomon wrote in Proverbs 28:9? "He that turneth away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer shall be abomination." If we are not obedient to our God how can we expect Him to hear our prayers? Without obedience there can be no communion with God. Sins of dis-obedience place distance between us and our God (Isaiah 59:1-2). It will be necessary to do those things which are pleasing in His sight (1 John 3:22) to be blessed with the privilege of praying to our God in heaven. Seriously, can we think of any activity that is considered such a great privilege and pleasure here that we deem it worthy to deprive ourselves of this privilege of prayer to God?
In addition, the Bible teaches us that our prayers are hindered by IDOLATRY. In Ezekiel 14:1-11, there is a fine discussion of the folly and fruitlessness of having idols in the heart and seeking to petition God. The fact is that our God is a JEALOUS God (Exodus 20:5) and He demands our complete loyalty (Matthew 6:24). We are to keep ourselves from idols (1 John 5:21). When we allow our loyalty to become divided and we begin to love the world or the things it contains we are loving things that are not of God (1 John 2:15-17). When we love things that are not of God, most likely we won't even try to communicate with Him, but even if we do, He won't be listening.
Also please consider the hindrance which Satan loves to create and has such success with: DOUBT. If we study the first chapter of 1 Samuel we will see that God answered the prayers of Hannah. She prayed for a son and was granted a son. God will answer our prayers as well. But how does God answer prayer? Generally speaking, the Scriptures show us that God answers prayer in five ways…
1. YES (James 5:17).
2. NO (Matthew 26:39; Hebrews 5:7).
3. WAIT A WHILE (Jeremiah 42:4, Jeremiah 42:7).
4. SOMETHING DIFFERENT (2 Corinthians 12:7-9).
5. BY GIVING MORE (1 Kgs 3:11, 13; Ephesians 3:20).
To create doubt regarding the power of prayer is one of Satan's most effective tools to weaken us. We must know better and then elevate our practice to our knowledge.
A seldom considered hindrance to prayer is mentioned in 1 Peter 3:7. "Likewise, ye husbands, dwell with them according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife, as unto the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life; that your prayers be not hindered." It is important to the Lord how we treat our companions in marriage. If it is the case that my prayer life seems to be suffering, perhaps I need to look into how I am treating my wife/husband. If we do not consider the will of the Lord in our homes, our homes are not going to be the kinds of places we will want them to be.
We are also warned that a spirit of UNFORGIVENESS will hurt our efforts in prayer. If we pray to God for forgiveness and we have demonstrated an unforgiving spirit, we are assured that we will not be forgiven (Matthew 6:12-14).
Other matters such as not hearing the cries of the poor (Proverbs 21:13) and not being persistent in prayer (Luke 18:1-8) also hinder our prayers. These are obstacles over which we can soar, if we have the will so to do!
The most harrowing event in former First Lady Laura Bush’s life was the November 6, 1963, car accident she caused that took the life of her high school classmate, a popular varsity athlete named Mike Douglas. The accident occurred when 17-year-old Laura was behind the wheel of her father’s Chevy Impala, driving with her girlfriend, Judy Dykes, to the movies. As the girls were chit-chatting, the future Mrs. Bush blew a stop sign at an intersection and hit Welch’s car at 50 miles per hour.
“In those awful seconds, the car door must have been flung open by the impact and my body rose in the air until gravity took over and I was pulled, hard and fast, back to earth,” she writes. “The whole time ... I was praying that the person in the other car was alive. In my mind, I was calling ‘Please, God. Please, God. Please, God,’ over and over and over again.”
Bush writes that afterward, she lost her faith in God for “many, many years.”
“It was the first time that I had prayed to God for something, begged him for something, not the simple childhood wishing on a star but humbly begging for another human life. And it was as if no one heard,” she writes. “My begging, to my 17-year-old mind, had made no difference. The only answer was the sound of Mrs. Douglas’ sobs on the other side of that thin emergency room curtain.”
*
[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #12789]
In Jon Krakauer’s bestseller "Into The Wild," he recounts the fascinating yet sad story of Chris McCandless.
Krakauer writes: "Immediately after graduating, with honors... [Chris] McCandless dropped out of sight. He changed his name, gave the entire balance of a twenty-four-thousand-dollar savings account to charity, abandoned his car and most of his possessions, [and] burned all the cash in his wallet.... He invented a new life for himself, taking up residence at the ragged margin of our society, wandering across North America in search of raw, transcendent experience. His family had no idea where he was or what had become of him until his remains turned up in Alaska."(1)
In his travels Chris met an elderly man whom Krakauer calls "Ron." Devoutly religious, Ron lived in seclusion in the desert. Ron became quickly attached to the boy, for he lost his only son many years before. He asked Chris to consider being his adopted grandson, and Chris replied that they would talk about it when he returned. But he never returned - his body was found in Alaska.
Said Ron, "When [Chris] left for Alaska, I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that the boy was special. But he let [him] die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn’t believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like [Chris]."(2)
Can you empathize with Ron’s response? How many of us have not wondered why God didn’t answer a particular prayer as we had hoped?
There is much that can said here, for too many lines converge simplistically to ignore the complexity. But one question surfaces: Is prayer a mechanism to bring whatever we want within reach? Is that what it is about? If that is what we think of prayer, then prayer is just a euphemism for playing God.
Prayer is something far different because it begins with the grand realization that God is sovereign and wise. And what is more, it shapes our souls to bear what His will is for us, not to shape Him to bear our will. When a man renounces God because of unanswered prayer he is doubly proving that he wants to play God himself and will not yield until he can. That is not seeking God. That is using God. Ron’s problem was not with prayer. His was a struggle with God’s wisdom over his autonomy. Until that is understood, one’s prayer is nothing more than a form of control, not surrender.
_________________________
Copyright © 2002 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
*
Sermon in series "Questions People Ask" Acts 10:3-4
WHO CAN PRAY?
=============
I. Prayer can get you in trouble.
II. There are prayers God will not hear.
A. Self-centered prayer to get attention. Matthew 6:5
B. Mechanical prayers. Matthew 6:6
C. Wavering and faith-less prayer. James 1:6-7
D. Prayer not according to God's will. 1 John 5:14-15
III. There are people God won't hear.
A. Believers who are far from God:
1) Disobedient and violent. Isaiah 59:2-3
2) Self-centered and self-righteous. Luke 18:9-14
3) Hard-hearted. 1 Peter 3:7
B. Non-believers who don't know God. 1 Kings 18:26
IV. Whose prayers get heard?
A. God hears prayers of devoted believers. John 15:7-8
B. He hears prayers of sinners who seek God. Acts 22:16
C. The interesting case of Cornelius. Acts 10:3-4
V. Check your own prayers.
VI. Prayer that is always heard. "Sinner's Prayer" Luke 18:13
Many people were shocked when, at a banquet in Orlando, Florida, where he was given an award by the American Humanist Association for his work on behalf of the environment and world peace, cable television mogul Ted Turner criticized fundamentalist Christianity and said Jesus probably would be sick at his stomach over the way his ideas have been twisted.
According to an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Turner said he had a strict Christian upbringing and at one time considered becoming a missionary. "I was saved seven or eight times," the newspaper quoted him as saying. But he said he became disenchanted with Christianity after his sister died, despite his prayers. Turner said the more he strayed from his faith, the better he felt.
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Spokesman-Review, May 1, 1990
How can a person’s faith be maintained when it seems like God hasn’t answered important prayers?
The day will forever be imprinted on my mind. It was the Monday after Thanksgiving in 1990. My husband, Don Stamps, had been having stomach problems. The gastroenterologist had given him several tests to try to determine the problem. We were to call the doctor on Monday afternoon to find out the results.
However, when the doctor called us on Monday morning, we knew it meant the news was not good. Cancer. The dreaded diagnosis of the 20th century. We clung to each other and cried. How could this be? We had one year left to finish the study notes for the Full Life Study Bible. We had been obedient to God in starting the project while we were missionaries in Brazil eight years before.
Surely, the diagnosis was wrong. If it was right, God would heal Don to bring honor and glory to His name.
The weeks and months that followed were a haze of surgeries and radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Don continued to write the study notes when he could. He worked at his desk with a machine pumping liquid food through a feeding tube into his body. On the other side of his desk was a large plastic wastebasket where he could vomit the bile that continued to rise from his cancerous digestive system. I continued to type the study notes and meet the deadlines for Zondervan Publishing House.
People all around the world were praying for my husband.
One Sunday morning I was sitting by myself on the last pew in my home church. Don was too sick to be there. The doctor had told us a few days before that they had done all they could. If God did not heal him, it was just a matter of time. My future looked bleak. Suddenly in that service, I felt an unbelievable peace flow through my spirit. Whatever happened, I could trust God for Don’s future, my future and the future of our three children.
In the month that followed, Don finished the study notes, and we watched him die. He did not waver. He said with Job, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him" (Job 13:15). Watching him trust God, my teen-agers and I were able to trust God for our future.
At times I was concerned that my children would turn away from God because our prayers for their dad’s healing went unanswered. I have watched as each has answered the call of God to serve overseas, proclaiming the good news that God can be trusted with our lives. My oldest unmarried son, Toby, is a cartographer. He recently left to spend at least two years in a sensitive country that needs the gospel. My youngest son, Todd, and his wife, Leslie, and son, Andrew, are in school preparing for missions. Tiffany, my 23-year-old daughter, is in Israel teaching in a Christian school.
We have had questions about prayer, but God’s grace has been sufficient (2 Corinthians 12:9). We have learned that God is faithful even when our prayers seem to be unanswered. As I have gone to the Word of God for answers, some of Don’s study notes have led me to the Scriptures that I needed. In the article on divine healing, he wrote, "Know that God’s delays in answering prayers or not answering are not necessarily denials of those requests. Sometimes God has a larger purpose in mind which, when realized, results in greater glory of God and in good for us. Realize that if you are a committed Christian, God will never forsake you or forget you. He loves you so much that He has engraved you on the palms of His hands."
Isaiah 55:8,9 says, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."
Only eternity will tell how God answered those prayers for my husband’s healing.
________________________
Linda Stamps-Dissmore is Women’s Ministries director of the Oklahoma District
*
We are too much given to thinking of the Cross as something we have to get through; we get through it only in order to get into it. The Cross stands for one thing only for us — a complete and entire and absolute identification with the Lord Jesus Christ, and there is nothing in which this identification is realized more than in prayer.
“Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask Him.” Then why ask? The idea of prayer is not in order to get answers from God; prayer is perfect and complete oneness with God. If we pray because we want answers, we will get huffed with God. The answers come every time, but not always in the way we expect, and our spiritual huff shows a refusal to identify ourselves with Our Lord in prayer. We are not here to prove God answers prayer; we are here to be living monuments of God’s grace.
“I say not that I will pray the Father for you: for the Father Himself loveth you.” Have you reached such an intimacy with God that the Lord Jesus Christ’s life of prayer is the only explanation of your life of prayer? Has Our Lord’s vicarious life become your vital life? “At that day” you will be so identified with Jesus that there will be no distinction.
When prayer seems to be unanswered, beware of trying to fix the blame on someone else. That is always a snare of Satan. You will find there is a reason which is a deep instruction to you, not to anyone else.
In 1999, a federal judge in Syracuse, N.Y., rejected another in a series of lawsuits by Donald Drusky of East McKeesport, Pennsylvania, in his 30-year battle against USX Corporation for ruining his life by firing him in 1968. Furthermore, Drusky sued “God ... the sovereign ruler of the universe” for taking “no corrective action” against any of Drusky's enemies and demanded that God compensate him with professional guitar-playing skills and the resurrection of his mother. [
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Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, March 15, 1999
Michael Perry, the stepson of a fundamentalist Baptist preacher and who now considers himself an agnostic, took part in a Creationist raft trip through the Grand Canyon. He pondered the claims of Creationism and also the ramifications of a thoroughly Christian outlook on life. He commented:
The spiritualization of everything necessitates a trivialization
that ultimately weakens the construct. During our bus ride out
of Phoenix, someone offered a prayer for the driver, and I
wondered if we might not also pray for the guy who tightened the
lug nuts or adjusted the brakes. Before the launch, God was very
specifically asked to prevent twisted ankles. When one of the
group twisted his ankle, it begged the question. Was this the
will of God, and if it was, was the request misguided in the
first place? Once you start with this stuff, it never ends.
Confiding in a co-worker, I told her about a problem in our office, and my fear that I would lose my job. She was concerned and said she would pray for me. I know she keeps a list of the ten people she believes need her prayers the most, so I asked if she had room for me on her list.
'“Oh yes,” she replied. “Three of the people have died.”
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Kate Gordon in Reader's Digest; secondary source: Sermon Fodder
*
Every couple of years it seems that a new team of researchers decides to put prayer to the test. There is quite a bit of variety among the focuses of such studies, which range from examining the effectiveness of prayer on in vitro fertilization to the effectiveness of intercessory prayer for cardiac patients undergoing surgery; essentially, however, each asks the question, “Does Prayer Work?” The latest study of the kind has been conducted by researchers at Duke University Medical Center. Like many of its predecessors, this study found no conclusive evidence that prayer decreases medical complications or increases the life span of those patients observed.(1)
Should the negative results of these scientific studies deflate believers everywhere and make us more hesitant to expect answers to our prayers? Not at all. Bishop Tom Wright explains the problem inherent to this sort of study:
[I]f God is God you can't put him into a test-tube. Remember the
children in THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE? When Lucy had
got through the wardrobe into Narnia, the other children tried to
test her claim by getting into the wardrobe themselves to see if
there was a way through. There wasn't. Only later on, when they
got in one day to hide, did they find themselves in a snowy wood
with a lamppost, a family of beavers, and the rumour of a lion
called Aslan.
And one of the things they learned about Aslan was that he wasn't
a tame lion. You couldn't get him to do tricks. He was
powerful, wise, and loving, but not tame. The question was not,
could you get Aslan to do things for you, but, could Aslan enlist
you in his service?(2)
Wright goes on to make the point that the correct question should not be “Does Prayer Work?” but “Does God Work?” We gravely underestimate the creator of the world when we view prayer as a technique that can be mastered to manipulate Him. The effectiveness of our prayers does not turn on how well we know how to pray but on how well we know the one to whom we are praying. A truly successful prayer is not one that has secured an affirmative answer to our petition, but one that has brought us closer to the one we've petitioned.
When we pray, we approach the throne of an omnipotent king. Such a thought should inspire so much awe in us that we nearly forget the cares that brought us there. Once we've made our request, we wait for the king's answer, knowing that He has attended to us and need only give the word to fulfill our plea. But when He answers us, if He presents to us a different plan, we must bow to his will. By coming into the presence of the king, we have pledged ourselves to his service. We have opened the door to friendship with the Ancient of Days, a prospect both terrifying and exhilarating. Bishop Wright concludes, “Once you start doing business with Jesus, there's no knowing where it will end. What do you WANT? Do you really want to ask Jesus, God's anointed one, the Son of David, to start doing things in your life? Because once you do, there's no going back.”
Prayer always works. But beware: through it God may work upon us in ways we would never have anticipated.
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1. http://www.dukehealth.org/news/9136
2. A sermon for the Eucharist at Hamsterly on the Last Sunday after Trinity, 26 October 2003, by the Bishop of Durham.
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Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
*
A recent survey of heart-bypass patients in six hospitals showed almost identical recovery rates for those prayed for and for those not receiving prayer. Though I’m sorry that a number of patients suffered setbacks, I’m glad God didn’t cooperate with this “Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer” (STEP).
God’s not a lab animal, subject to clinical trials. Neither is He an automatic secretion which can be triggered by one stimulus or another. He is a person with a sovereign will, with the highest dignity and honor, and experiments can be right undignified. I’ve been in a couple myself, and I can’t say the experience was all that gratifying.
In my college days, a fellow student enlisted me for a psychology test. The best I recall, I was supposed to do math problems with my right hand while holding some sort of weight with my left hand, maybe with music playing or the heat turned up in the room. The stress and discomfort were supposed to degrade my skill at calculation. I don’t remember the outcome. I was just one of a dozen guinea pigs he’d chosen for his class project.
Then, in graduate school, another psychology student put me to the test. While I was standing in the trade book section of the campus bookstore, a young man swooped through, took a volume from the rack, and then proceeded past the checkout line without paying. All the while, somebody with a clipboard was watching for my reaction. Would I shout in protest or chase the fellow down, or would I simply turn back to my reading, unconcerned with the theft that had taken place before my eyes?
The experiment was, at least in my judgment, inconclusive. I wasn’t sure what I’d seen, whether the man had tossed money on the counter in a scramble to class (“Keep the change!”) or had already worked out a quick exchange for a damaged copy. The counter was about 20 feet to my left, and I only glimpsed the exit in the corner of my eye. Then, not five seconds after the incident, the monitor was on me, asking why I hadn’t stopped him. I think I mumbled something about not knowing for sure what the “thief” had done and about my reluctance to make a scene under such circumstances. I do remember feeling put upon and unfairly judged.
But the big test came with a cash incentive. A doctor at the university’s medical school had been studying the low incidence of heart disease among the Masai of Africa. Reports of his cardio-vascular research had even made its way to Reader’s Digest. And now he had a new theory: Because these tribal herdsmen drank soured cow milk (among other unpleasant things), their cholesterol stayed at optimum levels. Accordingly, he devised a test wherein a group of folks would consume large amounts of yogurt over a six-week period and then give blood samples to measure the impact.
In those graduate school days of 1974, a hundred dollars for eating yogurt seemed like a lot of money, so my wife and I signed on. I’d already turned down $300 from another doctor to let him run a wire through some vein into my liver (“You’ll get a free physical checkup!”), but my interest in pay for clinical scrutiny was piqued.
It turned out to be a miserable, inconclusive experiment. We had to fix our own yogurt on the stove at home, with dollops of live cultures from a mother source. And though the assigned consumption started reasonably enough, with a half-pint a day, we were eventually eating (or drinking) a half-gallon a day. “Gag a maggot!” And to make it palpable, we were purchasing cans of pie filling for the mix. Some of the experimental subjects dropped out, with tears and angry words as we gathered for our weekly bloodletting. Most of us hung on grimly to the end, muttering as we finally drew our checks.
So what shall we make of the intercessory prayer test? Well, first, I assume that the STEP team was well-meaning, even hoping to find a strong connection between prayer and recovery. That way, they could encourage the enlistment of intercessors to speed or secure healing. But their approach was wanting. Reading through STEP’s press release, I see that the praying volunteers (both Catholic and Protestant) followed prescribed start and stop times, employed at least some formulaic wording, and worked only with first names and last initials. This seems to fall short of James 5:16, which teaches that the fervent prayers of the righteous are effective. “Fervent clinical prayer” may be an oxymoron, and who knows if those praying were sold-out Christians?
But more than this, how could God submit Himself to this trial? In a sense, the STEP team held a hoop in front of the Lord and said, “It’s showtime.” That He did not jump is not surprising.
Some believers have retreated to the position that prayer doesn’t change the world, just the praying person. It is meant only to bring the heart of the petitioner or intercessor in line with the will of God. Well, certainly that is an important component of prayer, but I think that view fails to do the biblical witness justice. Prayer is more than personal consecration; it is also, under God’s sovereignty, strategic, impactful work in the world.
If all the data for all the righteous, fervent prayers for the sick in church history were in, I am confident that intercessory prayer would be shown to “work.” (Though, of course, Christianity is more about how to die than how not to die.) I am just as confident that God is not amused at calls to perform healing feats on cue, and that He will ignore and resist the ringmasters, whether they wear lab coats or preacher garb.
In a “Calvin and Hobbes” comic strip it's late November and young Calvin is waiting with his sled for the first big snowfall. He waits and waits but all he finds is brown grass ... and no snow.
So he says, “If I was in charge, we'd never see grass between October and May." Then, looking to the heavens, he says, “On 'three,' ready? One ... Two ... Three. SNOW!” Nothing happens and the little boy is downcast. Then he shouts to the heavens, “I said snow! C'mon! Snow!” Then shaking his fists he cries, “SNOW!” Now thoroughly disgusted with God's failure, he says, “Ok then, don't snow! See what I care! I like this weather! Let's have it forever!”
But his defiance does not last. In the next frame we see Calvin on his knees offering this prayer: “Please snow! Please?? Just a foot! Ok, eight inches! That's all! C'mon! Six inches, even! How about just six??” Then he looks to heaven and shouts, “I'm WAAIITING . . .”
In the next frame we see him running in a circle, head down, fists clenched, making a little-boy sound which the artist spells out as “RRRRGGHHH.” That's not an English word but every parent has heard it many times. Finally, Calvin is exhausted, his energy spent, his prayer unanswered, with snow nowhere in sight. In the final frame, he looks up at God and cries out in utter desperation, “Do you want me to become an atheist?”
There are many Christian people who feel just like that little boy, only they have prayed for things much more important than a few inches of snow but the end result has been the same. And in their frustration and despair they have cried out to God, “Do you want me to become an atheist?” Most of them haven't, but some have.
Sermon in Book of James series, #3. James 1:5-8
MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
==================
I. Stupid decisions.
II. What is wisdom?
A. Much of the Old Testament focuses on this issue. (Proverbs)
B. God is the source of wisdom.
III. Asking for it.
A. One obvious problem: ASKING doesn't always produce GETTING.
B. James says you must know the One we are asking help from.
C. Problem: it still doesn't work.
IV. We must ask in faith.
A. We must believe God is hearing and can answer.
B. We must believe God's way is best.
V. When faith falls short.
A. There are reasons why God may not answer our prayers.
B. Lack of faith hindered Jesus' ability to do miracles. Mark 6:4-6
C. Don't go back and forth like the waves.
VI. When we need a little help to believe.
A. Story of man with demon-possessed son. Mark 9:21
B. Is he a double-minded person?
We can be confident that he will listen to us whenever we ask him for anything in line with his will. (1 John 5:14)
A couple in our church phoned to ask me to pray about a house they wanted to close on. It was near a preferred school and the price was right. We prayed over the phone. Later their realtor called. Someone else had offered a higher price.
More than the deal collapsed. Faith crumbled too. The couple’s disappointment watered previously hidden seeds of doubt that God really cared for them. We countered their crumbling faith by praying repeatedly that God would provide the best. Then we waited to see what God would do.
Two weeks later the local building inspector, also a friend of the home - searching family, called. In preparation for a loan approval, he’d inspected the house they wanted. It was full of dangerous mold and faulty wiring. Thousands of dollars would be required to make it safe. The family now realized that God had spared them from a financial disaster.
A home that provided for the family’s needs eventually became available. It wasn’t pretty on the outside, but the couple no longer doubted God’s care. Seeing how God had spared them from greater pain made them confident of His love and of the power of prayer.
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Bryan Chapell, adapted from PRAYING BACKWARDS (Baker, 2005); Copyright 2006 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. November/December 2006, Vol. 9, No. 6
An airline pilot made a pretty hard landing. He greeted passengers as they departed, but no one complained. The last passenger off was a sweet older lady. As she shook the pilot’s hand, she calmly asked, “Was that a landing or were we shot down?”
The Computer, the Internet and E-mail have us spoiled. If you have a modern normal speed computer, you have come to expect instant news, instant information and instant mail. We have become “instant” people. At peak times, however, the Internet seems to get as slow as an elephant’s gestation period. That is when we discover whether or not we have any patience — I don’t have a lot — I just give up and come back to the computer later.
Whether or not we are patient probably depends somewhat on our genes, so what can we do to develop more patience? Please tell me — I’d like an instant fix, so would you. With tendencies that we inherit through our genes, we should not be saying, “O well, that’s the way I am, and I can’t do anything about it.” That’s a wrong attitude! It’s a matter of self-determinite will and simultaneously invoking the Grace of God in helping us deal with it. We can work on it.
The ultimate test of our patience is how we deal with unanswered prayer. That’s a tough one, but we can do no more than to commit it to God and continue praying. In Galatians 5:22 (nlt) we read this: “When the Holy Spirit controls our lives, he will produce this kind of fruit in us: love, joy, peace, PATIENCE, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.” I just discovered our problem — read the first seven words of this verse again!
Just type the word “prayer” into an internet search engine as I did the other day and you’ll find almost 100 million different articles, sites, books, and periodicals on prayer! Prayer is surely one of the most important of our Christian disciplines. Indeed, we are exhorted to pray “without ceasing” in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians “for this is God’s will” for us (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18b).
And yet if we’re honest, prayer is one of the most difficult disciplines of the Christian life. We all struggle with prayer -- not only with what to pray and how often to pray -- but also with whether or not we believe that prayer makes any difference. Phillip Yancey’s book PRAYER: DOES IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE? attempts to address many of these questions about prayer. Why does God seem silent so much of the time to our prayers? Why does God seem to answer prayers so inconsistently? And when God does answer our prayers, why do we so often receive a resounding “no” for the answer?(1)
If these questions aren’t difficult enough, Jesus’s own bold statements about prayer make us all the more confused. After all, wasn’t it Jesus who proclaimed, “I say to you, ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and the one who knocks, it shall be opened.” Likewise, Jesus promises that like our earthly fathers, God longs to give us what is good in response to the asking, seeking, and knocking of prayer (Matthew 7:7-11).
Luke’s gospel narrative makes explicit what Matthew’s gospel keeps implicit about God’s ultimate answer to prayer. In the parallel passage found in Luke 11:11-13, Jesus tells his disciples, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” You see, according to Jesus, the goal of all prayer is to have more of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate “good gift” that God gives in response to our asking, seeking, and knocking.
So, too, prayer is about our relationship with God. The more we grow in our relationship with God, the more we’ll want of God. Hence, God promises to give us more of the Holy Spirit -- in and through all the circumstances of life -- as the deepest answer to our prayers.
The Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as the “comforter,” the one who comes alongside of us (John 14:16, 26). This is the same Spirit the apostle Paul tells us “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words,” and “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26b-27). Therefore, when we face difficulties, when our prayers seemingly go unanswered, we have the promise that we don’t ever face life’s difficult circumstances alone, but God longs to come near to us and to come alongside us with the comforting presence of God’s Spirit. M. Craig Barnes former pastor of the National Presbyterian Church adds, “Sometimes life gets overwhelming, and we realize we could use a little help. So we pray for our health to get better, for our marriage to work out, for success in our work that has taken a turn for the worse. There is nothing wrong in praying for these things, but they are not what our salvation is about. Don’t expect Jesus to save us by teaching us to depend on the things we are afraid of losing! He loves us too much to let our health, marriage, or work become the savior of our lives. He will abandon every crusade that searches for salvation from anything or anyone other than God. So he delays, he watches as we race down dead-end streets, he lets our mission du jour crash and burn. To receive Jesus as Savior means recognizing him as our only help. Not our only help for getting what we want. But our only true help.”(2)
God’s promise to be present with us through the power of the Holy Spirit is God’s eternal answer to all our prayers. It is God’s “yes” even if God answers our specific requests with “no.” Ultimately, as we grow in Christian discipleship, God wants us to find comfort, not in dependence on the things of this world, but in God’s presence with us and alongside us through the Holy Spirit.
Through the power and presence of the Spirit, God longs to be the very answer to our prayers. As we are filled with the Holy Spirit more and more, may our prayers reflect Christ’s own priorities: Ask, and the Holy Spirit will be given to you. Seek, and you will find the Holy Spirit with you. Knock, and the door of God’s kingdom will be opened to you. For how much more will our heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit, to those who ask?
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1. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.
2. M. Craig Barnes, WHEN GOD INTERRUPTS (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 124-125.
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Copyright © 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
Sermon in Daniel series, #9. Daniel 10:4-14
THE OTHER SIDE OF PRAYER
========================
I. An old prophet nears his end.
A. Charlton Heston passes on.
B. Daniel was old too.
II. Daniel feels kind of lowly.
A. Putting it in the right order.
B. Why the long face?
C. Persistence gets an answer.
III. What angels look like.
A. The experience was not just in his mind.
B. The angel's description is very detailed.
C. When you pray to God, what do you visualize?
IV. The unseen obstacles.
A. Even a clear vision of God can exist with frustrated prayer.
B. Nations can have angels, too.
C. We don't know all that shapes us.
V. The Force is with us.
A. If you feel overwhelmed, turn to God.
B. Albatrosses serve a purpose.
This story, my story, changed my view of success.
Allan and Helen Christopherson married June 4, 1960, in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. With only an eighth-grade education, Allan supported his young family cleaning beer storage tanks at Molson’s brewery. His salary package included only one benefit -- free beer. As with many at the plant, alcoholism was the trajectory of his career.
Then one weekend evening in 1967 my parents hired a babysitter and drove their black 1958 VW Beetle to the Orpheum Theatre. For $1.20, and by a “fluke,” they watched the movie “The Restless Ones,” produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The plot soon captured their attention, and they were engrossed in the human struggle flickering before them. Then they experienced a far more personal internal struggle.
In a final scene Billy Graham’s preaching emanated from a car radio, and my dad clasped my mom’s hand as they wrestled with the conviction of the living Christ.
The film soon reached its conclusion, and a middle-aged man, in suit and tie, strolled center stage. If anyone wished to respond to Christ, he said, they could come pray with him. He patiently waited. No one came.
But God wasn’t finished.
In the comfort of their car outside the Orpheum, Allan and Helen surrendered their past, present and future to Jesus Christ. Immediately God led Allan through faith steps: quitting his job at Molson’s, learning a new trade (welding) and eventually meeting a quiet and intense man God would use to change our family.
His name was Jack Conner, and he would help my dad, the beer-barrel-cleaner-turned-welder, see his place in God’s mission in Canada. That movie screening of The Restless Ones and my dad’s friendship with and discipleship under Jack Conner are two reasons my sister and I have a heart for missions.
Pastor Conner expected barbers and carpenters and schoolteachers and accountants and welders to carry the Good News. Soon, new churches were dotting the maps of towns, villages and native reservations.
Fast-forward 35 years. My father was invited to be on an interdenominational leadership team to host a Franklin Graham Crusade in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
This is the crescendo.
The chairman of the initiative made some introductory comments and then made a request: “I would like us to spend our first few moments celebrating what God has already done through the ministry of the Grahams. Would two or three of you in this room want to come to the microphone and share?”
My dad’s heart began to race. He sensed God saying, “Share your story.” Yet his flesh said, “You’re just a welder.” Before he knew it, he stood and was speaking about that day in 1967 and “The Restless Ones” at the Orpheum Theatre, about a skipped altar call and an encounter with Christ in a VW Beetle. He told about the church they’d found and those two small children who were now spending their lives starting new churches in Toronto and across Chile. “I do not know how many hundreds of lives are now in the Kingdom because my wife and I went to the movies that day,” he added.
Silence filled the room. Then an elderly man slowly made his way straight to my dad. Tears streaming, he stammered: “Hello Allan, my name is Tom Dice. I am a retired family counselor in the area. I want you to know something, Allan. God asked me to bring that movie to Prince Albert. I rallied my friends and colleagues, and we really expected great things to happen. Night after night we played the movie and night after night I stood before the audience and asked them to respond to Christ. Night after night I went home very disappointed. Until this day, to my knowledge, nobody ever responded. I thought my project was a failure. I wondered if I had heard God right in the first place. But I did hear Him, Allan. Now I see that it wasn’t a failure.” He embraced my dad and said, “Now I see. Praise Jesus, now I see.”
Pastors, I hope you also see that you serve a God whose Gospel bears fruit, even if you can’t see it. I stand as evidence of this.
Some of us have constructed a God of the good times. When our prayers are answered and life is going our way, we say, “God is good.” Does that mean when our prayers are unanswered and the job doesn’t come through, or the disease doesn’t go away, does this mean God is no longer good? If your God is only good during the good times, then your God is not the God of the Bible.
A few years ago Rev. Ray Pritchard’s oldest son and a few friends survived a terrible crash in the family’s van. All of them ended up in the hospital and they could easily have been killed. During a Thanksgiving morning worship service Ray’s wife stood and said something like this:
“We are very grateful that God spared our son and his friends. Many people have said, ‘God was certainly good to you.’ Ray and I believe that with all our hearts. But I want to say that even if our son and his friends had died, God would still have been good whether we understood it or not.”
Pastor Pritchard says he believes every word of that is true, but he was unnerved when she said it. As he gave it more thought, he concluded that faith is not a feeling based on our circumstances. True biblical faith chooses to believe that God is who he said he is and that he will do what he said he will do.
Sometimes you choose to believe because of what you see, often you believe in spite of what you can see. Many things in life remain mysterious and unanswerable. But if there is no God, and if he is not good, then nothing at all makes sense.
Ray concluded: “I have chosen to believe because I must believe. I truly have no other choice. Along with millions of believers across the centuries I have learned through my tears that my only confidence is in God and God alone.”
On August 31, 1998, a Caldwell, Idaho pastor was found dead, his legs wedged between two massive boulders in Wyoming’s Wind River Range. It was a freak accident followed by an ordeal of biblical proportions, endured by a man who sought out wild, high places to feel close to God.
But it’s not the manner of Mike Turner’s death that most resonates today. It’s the way he lived and the way he faced that death, trapped alive for about nine days and pouring his thoughts, fears and faith into a journal that brought peace to his family and friends.
The Rev. Turner’s saga drew national attention in 1998, but its impact is undimmed a decade later on those who lived it, including his widow, who plans to remarry next month, and the Wyoming man who led the search.
“It was a very intense search. It changed a lot of people,” said Dan Holgate, former search commander for Tip Top Search and Rescue in Sublette County, Wyoming.
The Rev. Turner, the 6-foot-6 pastor of Boone Memorial Presbyterian Church, strode into the Wyoming wilderness on July 30, 1998, with his black Lab mix, Andy. Capping the end of a three-month sabbatical, he planned a 10-day, 60-mile solo hike across the Continental Divide, ending with a family camping trip. He dubbed his itinerary “Wander in Wonder.”
The Rev. Turner, 48, never emerged. On Sept. 3 his family learned another lone hiker had discovered his body, still trapped by granite, near the shore of an unnamed mountain lake. The next day they received his journal and an understanding of his experience.
“I had dreamed of a special time alone with God, facing the elements, the passes, thinking about my life, the direction of the church, about my family,” the Rev. Turner wrote. “Indeed, this has been all of those things only magnified 100 times. Thoughts about life, God, people, risk, filling my time. ... God will make a way either earthly or heavenly. My only dread is not seeing my family and being present with them in body.”
“So much of the story is beautiful,” said College of Idaho Academic Vice President Mark Smith, a close friend who was part of the planned camping trip that was to cap the Rev. Turner’s adventure. “Its beauty is terrible at the same time.”
Although a pastor, the Rev. Turner never seemed preachy, Newton said, noting that he joined 500-member Boone Memorial after he met its minister at a Christian retreat. “He was nonjudgmental, but he made you want to do better and be better.”
On July 29, 1998, the last night together for the Rev. Turner and his wife, Diane, they attended a James Taylor concert in Nampa with Matt and Lisa Newton. The next morning, before the Rev. Turner left, he gave Diane a bouquet of flowers.
“It was totally surprising that he did that,” she said. “I still have the card.”
It reads: “Thank you for letting me live this adventure. Know wherever I am and whatever I’m doing, I am thinking of you.”
Turner and his dog started their adventure on July 30, hiking to Eklund Lake in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. In his journal, he described a scene “so quiet, so perfect.”
“Is it all just as you want it, God? Or, like skeptics say ... is it just random events and we are nothing before the beneficence and destructiveness of nature? You send the winds and rain and yet even amid the deep savagery and destruction of life, I sense your hand. In threatening my comfort, even my life, you challenge me to cope. In beauty and peace, you refresh me.”
On Aug. 2, the fourth day of his journey, the Rev. Turner was traversing a field of boulders along a mountain lake, more than 11,000 feet high and 16 miles from the nearest trailhead. When a boulder he stepped on teetered, he jumped to the next one.
But he slid off, and the 800-pound rock he had just leapt from rumbled toward him, catching him between boulders.
“Somehow, miraculously, the rock had barely touched Mike,” Smith wrote in an article, not yet published, that retraces his friend’s journey. “But when he tried to extricate himself, his legs wouldn’t move. They weren’t broken, barely even injured, but his feet were suspended in air. He couldn’t push them down or pull them up. Sideways motion was equally impossible beyond an inch or so. The two boulders had come together in the perfect configuration to form a pair of granite shackles.”
Through the hiker’s journal and physical evidence at the scene, it is clear he fought mightily to free himself and to stay alive. He used his tripod and anything he could lay his hands on to try to force himself free. His sleeping bag and clothing provided some insulation against the cold granite.
He melted, then drank, the snow he could reach, and used his tent’s rain fly to collect dew and rainfall. He tied a water bottle to a rope and tried repeatedly to toss it to the nearby lake. But the bottle, too, got caught between rocks.
“I am concerned about first, losing my legs, second running out of snow to melt for water, and fuel,” he wrote. “Third, hypothermia. My biggest concern is water. I have only 2 quarts left. The irony is that the lake is only 30 feet away. ... I am also saving my urine. I wonder how it will taste with Crystal Light?”
The journal, carefully protected in a zip-top plastic bag, slipped beyond his reach after about five days on the rocks. Desperate to maintain communication with his family, he began writing on the blank pages at the beginning and end of his Bible. When those filled, he wrote in the margins of the instruction sheet for his camp stove.
As his suffering continued, the Rev. Turner’s mood turned darker, despairing. Smith describes it as “faith on the edge.”
The Rev. Turner wrote:
“God is with me, but I am angry with him. What is the purpose of this ordeal? Will I ever know, or continue to be puzzled, angered, and feel quite abandoned by the one I serve?”
More than a week passed, with daytime temperatures in the 90s and nights dipping into the 30s. The Rev. Turner’s handwriting weakened; a mood of acceptance took over.
“Fill me with peace, Lord,” he wrote. “May the conditions not deny my love for you.”
No one knows for sure how long the Rev. Turner survived, wedged between those rocks. The Fremont County coroner reported that he died of hypothermia and dehydration on or around Aug. 11, 1998.
Some 70 friends and parishioners from the Treasure Valley and beyond joined dozens of professionals to look for the hiker. They searched on horseback, by foot, by helicopter. They put up posters and scanned trailhead logs to identify people who might have seen him. The scale of the search was daunting — hundreds of square miles spanning two counties and both sides of the Continental Divide. And the Rev. Turner had diverted from his planned itinerary, a fact he noted with regret in his journal.
“I feel so foolish taking this longer pass,” he wrote on Aug. 5. “So lonely, more than I imagined. Who would have guessed that four days would have gone by and no one has come this way?”
The search was called off after about two weeks, with the understanding that it would resume if there was a break in the case. That break came five days later, on Aug. 28. Andy the dog walked out of the wilderness, skinny, sore and accompanied by two hikers.
Family and friends mobilized to resume their search, hoping the Rev. Turner’s trusty dog would lead them to him.
Andy led them in the right direction, Diane Turner said. Searchers were about a mile from where the hiker was trapped when a radioed message turned them back: A hiker, who had found the Rev. Turner’s body Aug. 31, made it out of the mountains and into the Sublette County sheriff’s Office, carrying the Rev. Turner’s wallet.
A year later, Diane Turner carried her husband’s ashes on her back, following his path into the Wind River Range for a memorial service with family and friends.
They trekked two days to Island Lake, where the Rev. Turner had described “amazing beauty that fills my soul.”
“It was hard. It was good. It was really amazing,” Diane Turner recalls. “We had a service, and we scattered his ashes. We all cried. We all laughed.”
The journal comforted his family and friends. The depth of his suffering, and the belief and love that outlasted it, inspired many who never knew him.
“It was a gift,” Diane Turner said.
Over the years, she has allowed excerpts of the journal to be printed in several publications, including this one. A Backpacker magazine article by Jeff Rennicke drew widespread attention and was included in the book “Adrenaline 2002: The Year’s Best Stories of Adventure and Survival.” But parts of the journal are private, including personal messages the Rev. Turner wrote to his wife, their three children and his mother.
“Not being able to say goodbye was hard,” Diane Turner said. “But because he was able to, that made it a little easier.”
Their daughter Jill said she rereads the journal every six months or so, drawing inspiration from her father’s faith: challenged and battered, but steadfast.
His last, barely legible entries echo biblical accounts of hardship and devotion.
“I am ready to die, though missing my family. ... I will trust in God though he will slay me, yet will I trust in him.”
________
The article is originally entitled, "Pastor's dying words still an inspiration."
The Backpacker magazine story can be found at http://www.backpacker.com/june_2002_feature_survival_hiker_mike_turner_wyoming/articles/4585 [David Holwick read this when it was first published; it is a very powerful story, especially for those who venture into the wilderness.]
Many Christians today are praying the wrong way, all too often focused on themselves than on the mission of God, influential preacher and bestselling author Francis Chan lamented.
It is no wonder that many prayers are ineffective and left unanswered when the subject matter is limited to a list of to do’s and selfish desires, he explained.
“James 4 says a lot of times you’ll ask and you don’t receive because what you’re asking for you’re asking to spend on your own passions and no one warned me about that,” Chan said.
Challenging believers to examine the early church and return to the concept of church described in the Bible, the former megachurch pastor wants to help Christians rethink how they do church.
“I thought you could just ask for anything, say anything ... you know He’s like a big genie up there,” Chan said. “[But] you got to be careful what you say.”
When Chan was first taught how to pray, people advised him to just say whatever came to his mind.
“And so I did,” he remembered. “I would just start opening my mouth and talk to God about whatever and there’s some truth to that but I noticed in the Bible there are also some warnings that we have to be very careful how we approach God. For example, Ecclesiastes 5 says guard yourselves, guard your steps when you go near to the house of God. And it says draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they are doing evil.”
Don’t just go and start talking, Chan exhorted. Come silently, come slowly, be careful.
“As I look at the way the disciples prayed back then and as I look at the way Jesus taught us to pray, I realize it’s a lot different from what I was taught. Prayer to them was really different, they asked for things that were different from what I typically asked for.”
Seeing the disconnect between his – and much of the modern church’s – prayers and the prayers of the early church 2,000 years ago, Chan began to earnestly study prayer again for the past few years.
Upon examination of the Lord’s Prayer, he discovered two things: he never really thought about what was being said and Jesus’ requests were markedly different from his own.
“Think about these phrases now that we’ve been saying for years that maybe we didn’t mean,” Chan implored. “We used to say ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We’re asking for our daily provision.”
“Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I’m set up. And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions.”
He also looked at the phrase “lead me not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
“Haven’t you prayed that at times in your life when you were actually still were holding on to some temptation? Maybe you weren’t even ready to let go of all of your sin and yet you’re saying it. It’s like your words weren’t matching up to your heart.”
And the one statement that scared him the most: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
“We’re saying ‘God forgive me in the same way as I have forgiven others,’” Chan explained. “That scares me because I know I’ve prayed that while being angry at other people. I know I’ve prayed that prayer while I was still unforgiving. And so now when I’m telling God forgive me in the same way as I forgive other people, see, we need to be warned about this kind of stuff.”
“We shouldn’t just be making these vows to God and saying things we don’t understand,” the former Cornerstone Community Church pastor stressed. “See when you pray, is your desire the same desire as God’s? Are you after this kingdom are you after this mission or are you after your own kingdom?”
So often, he noted, Christians pray “my kingdom come, my will be done.”
“We have to check ourselves and ask am I concerned about the things of God?”
Chan admitted to making a lot of mistakes in prayer as well. A lot of times in church, prayer became a “transition thing” used between praise and sermon, or an ending for a service, not a congregation of people coming before the presence of God.
But the beautiful thing was that God was a God of grace, the preacher emphasized. “He heard all those prayers I prayed in ignorance and He [forgave] me.”
Chan is excited about the idea of Christians learning to pray the right way and making it a way of life rather than a ritual.
“What if you got together with a group of people and you knew that this group of people they all loved God, they all feared Him and they really were living for God’s kingdom and His mission?” he posed.
“And imagine if you came collectively with people ... you all pray together and say our Father you’ve seen our lives, you know that we care about your kingdom we want your kingdom here, we want you to change us, we want you to change the people around us. Can you imagine praying with that type of unity?”
“God is looking for people like that,” the senior pastor encouraged, people who are “committed to Him because He wants to strengthen them and answer their prayers.”
“He’s longing to show off His power but maybe we haven’t seen His power because we haven’t been praying for the things that He wanted us to pray for.”
If Christians began to pray for the things that God cared about, the church would begin to see the supernatural just like the apostles did, Chan believes.
“Isn’t there a beauty as you hear that ‘what if,’ and then to see Him answer your prayers? It wouldn’t be a chore, it would be what you live for,” he said.
Pastor Saeed Abedini is a native Iranian. In 2005 he moved to the United States and four years ago he became an American citizen. He never severed ties to his homeland and in 2012 he returned to build an orphanage. The Iranians accused him of setting up Christian house churches and sentenced him to eight years in prison.
He has now spent two years there. Radical Muslims in the prison have threatened to kill him and he has been beaten up several times. How is Pastor Saeed responding?
Last week, a Christian organization released a letter from Pastor Saeed to his daughter for her birthday. After wishing her happy birthday and telling her how much he wants to see her, he wrote the following:
I know that you question why you have prayed so many times for my return and yet I am not home yet... The answer to the why is who. Who is in control? Lord Jesus Christ is in control...
God is in control of the whole world and everything that is happening in it is for His good purpose, for His glory, and will be worked out for our good...
...my dear beloved daughter Rebekka Grace, I pray God will bring me back home soon. But if not, we will still sing together ...’Hallelujah,’ either separated by prison walls or together at home.
So, let Daddy hear you sing a loud ‘Hallelujah’ that I can hear all the way here in the prison!
Kisses and Blessings,
Daddy
John Stonestreet challenges us to ask how our faith would hold up if we were put into prison. How would you handle the separation from your family?
What if you were one of those prisoners of ISIS? Would you be able to see your beheading as part of God’s wonderful plan for you?
________
Adapted from "Pastor Saeed’s Test of Faith, and Ours: For God’s Glory," John Stonestreet, BreakPoint Commentary, September 30, 2014,
When God says “no” it can be even more marvelous than when He says “yes.”
The apostle Paul, in Acts 16, begins his second missionary journey, carefully planning to revisit the cities in his first missionary journey and then go on to western Asia to preach the Gospel.
His plans were good. God had given the church the Great Commission and had told the disciples to wait in Jerusalem until the power of the Holy Spirit came upon them. God wanted the Great Commission to be led by the Holy Spirit, which He gave to believers preceding Jesus’ instruction in Acts 1:8: “ ... you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”
Paul was being obedient to those commands. This second missionary journey started well.
Paul and Silas headed north out of Antioch of Syria and visited Paul’s hometown of Tarsus. They then went on to Derbe, Lystra, Iconium and Antioch of Pisidia where they had been on first missionary journey. They delivered the decision from the Jerusalem conference found in Acts 15 and greatly encouraged the churches.
Paul’s plan was to turn west at Antioch of Pisidia and evangelize the area known today as Asia Minor. However, they were led by God to go toward Asia to the north all the way to Mysia in modern-day Turkey. In a bewildering way, God forbad them to preach the Gospel in Asia and when they came to Mysia, on the border of Bithynia, they were forbidden to go into Bithynia to preach.
Why did God say “no” to their plan to preach in Asia and Bithynia? Were there no needs for the Gospel there? Were they not included in the Great Commission?
The reason is clear. God had a better plan -- a perfect plan -- one that would reach Europe and the West, and all of Asia and Bithynia.
Bypassing Bithynia they came to Troas and on to Neapolis where Paul would go into Macedonia. In Philippi they met Lydia and others worshipping down by the river and led Lydia and her companions to faith in Christ.
Several decades later, Pliny the Younger, governor of Bithynia, wrote to Emperor Trajan in A.D. 112 that Christianity had spread to the cities, villages and rural areas of Bithynia. That letter is the first pagan account of the spread of Christianity.
How did this all happen? Lydia was from Thyatira in Asia. It was not a great city but it was the center of trade guilds for workers in various industries, including linens, garments, dye, wool, leather, pottery and bronze. It was famous for its dyeing facilities and purple cloth. Those products from Thyatira saturated Asia.
Lydia was probably one of the founding members of the church in Thyatira, and from there the Gospel spread through the sales force that went out from Thyatira. God used a traveling saleswoman from an apparently insignificant town to spread the Gospel to the areas where Paul had been forbidden to go. Amazing! The Gospel spread in Asia and on to Bithynia through Lydia.
Later Paul would be led back to Asia and he reported that “All the inhabitants of the province of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the Word of the Lord” (Acts 19:10). He shared in the preaching in Asia and Bithynia but only after God had introduced the Gospel through Lydia.
God had better plans for Paul. Paul was obedient, but God gave him a new call as he was aggressively following God’s will. Paul’s obedience took the Gospel to Europe and the West. Because of that, we heard the Gospel. Each step of Paul’s journey was led by God.
It is His desire to lead each of us in our witness. God did not give us the Great Commission and then leave us alone to determine how to do it. His method was to have disciples who walk so closely to Him that they can walk in obedience to His presence and guidance.
Obedience is preparation to each of us to hear God’s call. God gives vision to those who are obedient. Too often we make our plans and ask God to bless them. God desires to lead us to accomplish His plans which are infinitely better.
As contemporary author Francis Chan noted, “The church becomes irrelevant when it becomes purely a human creation. We are not all we were made to be when everything in our lives and churches can be explained apart from the work and presence of the Spirit of God.”
The real issue is whether we live in such close relationship with God that we can follow His plan. No attack of Satan can defeat us if we begin each day by surrendering it to God and walk through the day aware of His leadership and power. God desires to join each of us every moment of our ministry and life. Our obedience makes it possible for Him to lead us every step of our journey. When God says “no” to our plans, it is always because He has a better plan!
Remember the old joke about the guy who angrily brought his new chainsaw back to the hardware store for a replacement? He stormed through the door and flung his purchase onto the front counter. It lay there, bent and beat up, much of the paint chipped off and the teeth at all angles.
"I've been using this thing all day," he sputtered to the first face within shouting range, "and I haven't even cut a handful of firewood!"
The sales clerk, trying hard to remain cooperative, assured the man he'd be glad to take a look at it and do what he could. The saw was a mangled mess, all right. And trying to see if it might start in this condition seemed a foolish waste of time. But not knowing where else to begin, he took a chance and yanked hard one time on the ripcord. Sure enough, after several uncertain seconds of tired gasps and coughs, the motor somehow rattled its way to full throttle.
The red-faced customer suddenly went white, backing up two full steps from the counter in stunned confusion. "So that's what that string was for!"
From a prayer perspective, here's the point: Before concluding that it doesn't "work," you need to ask yourself how you've been trying to use it. I have frequently heard people despair that their prayer wasn't answered. Perhaps someone they loved was sick, and they prayed asking God for healing. But instead of getting better, the person died. They had asked for one thing, but they had gotten another. Therefore, their prayer didn't "work."
Don't misunderstand. God does answer prayer. I know it from experience. Besides that, Scripture is full of instances where God's people prayed and he responded exactly as they had asked.
However, having our requests granted is not the primary goal of prayer. Prayer is not simply the process of giving God our wish list. Many times we ask for things that seem to be what we need, but later recognize that had we gotten them, they would have been far from our best interests.
Neither is prayer a way to alert God to our needs. God knows our needs even better than we do and he needs no formal reminders about where we are and what we're up against. Prayer is in no way a squeaky wheel designed to manipulate God into remembering us.
One of the most primary purposes of prayer is to spend time in conversation with our Father. And when this is our goal, we can pray at all times guaranteed that it will be rewarded.
Before I accepted the presidency of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, I spent a great deal of time flying across America to lead church growth conferences. Like many frequent travelers, I got into the habit of always bringing home a small gift for my two girls who were still at home at the time.
It happened almost without fail. As soon as my car would enter the driveway, they would run from the house and greet me with tender address. "Hi, Daddy. What did you bring us?"
After one particularly long and exhausting trip, I arrived home to be greeted by the same predictable welcome: "What did you bring us, Daddy? What did you bring us?"
But for some reason this time, I just wasn't in the mood for giving presents. Instead, I gave my girls a short but strong lecture. I explained how hard it was to be apart from them and how tired I was every time I came home. I tried to help them imagine what it would feel like for them to be away from home for days at a time. Just once, I expounded, it would mean so much to me if I knew they were simply glad to have Daddy home -- not just to have a gift. I gave them a guilt trip.
The following weekend I returned home after being out of town again, having forgotten my lecture from the past weekend. As usual, my girls ran to meet me in the driveway -- only this time, my youngest daughter leaped into my arms, gave me a big hug, and said in the sweetest voice, "I love you, Daddy. I'm so glad you're home."
My heart melted within me. With her next breath, of course, she asked, "Now ... what did you bring me?" Well, it was a start, but my daughter's behavior made me realize that my own prayers to my heavenly Father often began like that -- with little more than requests, requests, requests. I'm sure that my words often sounded just like my girls' childish refrain: "What did you bring me, Daddy?"
When I finally comprehended the fact that prayer permits me to come into the presence of my Father, to express my love for him, to thank him for his constant provision and give him the honor he is due, I discovered a new passion for prayer.
Communicating with him is reward enough. And if that is the purpose, there is no such thing as unanswered prayer.
_______________
Adapted from "The Prayer of Jesus" by Ken Hemphill. Copyright 2001.
*
Two young boys were spending the night at their grandparents. At bedtime, the two boys knelt beside their beds to say their prayers when the youngest one began praying at the top of his lungs.
"For my birthday, I PRAY FOR A NEW BICYCLE... I PRAY FOR A NEW NINTENDO,
I PRAY FOR A NEW VCR."
His older brother leaned over and said, "Why are you shouting your prayers? God isn't hard of hearing."
His little brother replied, "No, but Grandma is."
[Holwick: prayers, especially public ones, can be very manipulative. Are we praying to humans or our Divine Father?]
Just type the word “prayer” into an internet search engine as I did the other day and you’ll find almost 100 million different articles, sites, books, and periodicals on prayer! Prayer is surely one of the most important of our Christian disciplines. Indeed, we are exhorted to pray “without ceasing” in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians “for this is God’s will” for us (1 Thessalonians 5:17-18b).
And yet if we’re honest, prayer is one of the most difficult disciplines of the Christian life. We all struggle with prayer -- not only with what to pray and how often to pray -- but also with whether or not we believe that prayer makes any difference. Phillip Yancey’s book PRAYER: DOES IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE? attempts to address many of these questions about prayer. Why does God seem silent so much of the time to our prayers? Why does God seem to answer prayers so inconsistently? And when God does answer our prayers, why do we so often receive a resounding “no” for the answer?(1)
If these questions aren’t difficult enough, Jesus’s own bold statements about prayer make us all the more confused. After all, wasn’t it Jesus who proclaimed, “I say to you, ask, and it shall be given to you; seek and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened to you. For everyone who asks, receives; and the one who seeks, finds; and the one who knocks, it shall be opened.” Likewise, Jesus promises that like our earthly fathers, God longs to give us what is good in response to the asking, seeking, and knocking of prayer (Matthew 7:7-11).
Luke’s gospel narrative makes explicit what Matthew’s gospel keeps implicit about God’s ultimate answer to prayer. In the parallel passage found in Luke 11:11-13, Jesus tells his disciples, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?” You see, according to Jesus, the goal of all prayer is to have more of the Holy Spirit at work in our lives. The Holy Spirit is the ultimate “good gift” that God gives in response to our asking, seeking, and knocking.
So, too, prayer is about our relationship with God. The more we grow in our relationship with God, the more we’ll want of God. Hence, God promises to give us more of the Holy Spirit -- in and through all the circumstances of life -- as the deepest answer to our prayers.
The Bible speaks of the Holy Spirit as the “comforter,” the one who comes alongside of us (John 14:16, 26). This is the same Spirit the apostle Paul tells us “intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words,” and “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Romans 8:26b-27). Therefore, when we face difficulties, when our prayers seemingly go unanswered, we have the promise that we don’t ever face life’s difficult circumstances alone, but God longs to come near to us and to come alongside us with the comforting presence of God’s Spirit. M. Craig Barnes former pastor of the National Presbyterian Church adds, “Sometimes life gets overwhelming, and we realize we could use a little help. So we pray for our health to get better, for our marriage to work out, for success in our work that has taken a turn for the worse. There is nothing wrong in praying for these things, but they are not what our salvation is about. Don’t expect Jesus to save us by teaching us to depend on the things we are afraid of losing! He loves us too much to let our health, marriage, or work become the savior of our lives. He will abandon every crusade that searches for salvation from anything or anyone other than God. So he delays, he watches as we race down dead-end streets, he lets our mission du jour crash and burn. To receive Jesus as Savior means recognizing him as our only help. Not our only help for getting what we want. But our only true help.”(2)
God’s promise to be present with us through the power of the Holy Spirit is God’s eternal answer to all our prayers. It is God’s “yes” even if God answers our specific requests with “no.” Ultimately, as we grow in Christian discipleship, God wants us to find comfort, not in dependence on the things of this world, but in God’s presence with us and alongside us through the Holy Spirit.
Through the power and presence of the Spirit, God longs to be the very answer to our prayers. As we are filled with the Holy Spirit more and more, may our prayers reflect Christ’s own priorities: Ask, and the Holy Spirit will be given to you. Seek, and you will find the Holy Spirit with you. Knock, and the door of God’s kingdom will be opened to you. For how much more will our heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit, to those who ask?
________
1. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2006.
2. M. Craig Barnes, WHEN GOD INTERRUPTS (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 124-125.
________
Copyright © 2008 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.
Sermon in Daniel series, #9. Daniel 10:4-14
THE OTHER SIDE OF PRAYER
========================
I. An old prophet nears his end.
A. Charlton Heston passes on.
B. Daniel was old too.
II. Daniel feels kind of lowly.
A. Putting it in the right order.
B. Why the long face?
C. Persistence gets an answer.
III. What angels look like.
A. The experience was not just in his mind.
B. The angel's description is very detailed.
C. When you pray to God, what do you visualize?
IV. The unseen obstacles.
A. Even a clear vision of God can exist with frustrated prayer.
B. Nations can have angels, too.
C. We don't know all that shapes us.
V. The Force is with us.
A. If you feel overwhelmed, turn to God.
B. Albatrosses serve a purpose.
Many Christians today are praying the wrong way, all too often focused on themselves than on the mission of God, influential preacher and bestselling author Francis Chan lamented.
It is no wonder that many prayers are ineffective and left unanswered when the subject matter is limited to a list of to do’s and selfish desires, he explained.
“James 4 says a lot of times you’ll ask and you don’t receive because what you’re asking for you’re asking to spend on your own passions and no one warned me about that,” Chan said.
Challenging believers to examine the early church and return to the concept of church described in the Bible, the former megachurch pastor wants to help Christians rethink how they do church.
“I thought you could just ask for anything, say anything ... you know He’s like a big genie up there,” Chan said. “[But] you got to be careful what you say.”
When Chan was first taught how to pray, people advised him to just say whatever came to his mind.
“And so I did,” he remembered. “I would just start opening my mouth and talk to God about whatever and there’s some truth to that but I noticed in the Bible there are also some warnings that we have to be very careful how we approach God. For example, Ecclesiastes 5 says guard yourselves, guard your steps when you go near to the house of God. And it says draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they are doing evil.”
Don’t just go and start talking, Chan exhorted. Come silently, come slowly, be careful.
“As I look at the way the disciples prayed back then and as I look at the way Jesus taught us to pray, I realize it’s a lot different from what I was taught. Prayer to them was really different, they asked for things that were different from what I typically asked for.”
Seeing the disconnect between his – and much of the modern church’s – prayers and the prayers of the early church 2,000 years ago, Chan began to earnestly study prayer again for the past few years.
Upon examination of the Lord’s Prayer, he discovered two things: he never really thought about what was being said and Jesus’ requests were markedly different from his own.
“Think about these phrases now that we’ve been saying for years that maybe we didn’t mean,” Chan implored. “We used to say ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We’re asking for our daily provision.”
“Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I’m set up. And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions.”
He also looked at the phrase “lead me not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
“Haven’t you prayed that at times in your life when you were actually still were holding on to some temptation? Maybe you weren’t even ready to let go of all of your sin and yet you’re saying it. It’s like your words weren’t matching up to your heart.”
And the one statement that scared him the most: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
“We’re saying ‘God forgive me in the same way as I have forgiven others,’” Chan explained. “That scares me because I know I’ve prayed that while being angry at other people. I know I’ve prayed that prayer while I was still unforgiving. And so now when I’m telling God forgive me in the same way as I forgive other people, see, we need to be warned about this kind of stuff.”
“We shouldn’t just be making these vows to God and saying things we don’t understand,” the former Cornerstone Community Church pastor stressed. “See when you pray, is your desire the same desire as God’s? Are you after this kingdom are you after this mission or are you after your own kingdom?”
So often, he noted, Christians pray “my kingdom come, my will be done.”
“We have to check ourselves and ask am I concerned about the things of God?”
Chan admitted to making a lot of mistakes in prayer as well. A lot of times in church, prayer became a “transition thing” used between praise and sermon, or an ending for a service, not a congregation of people coming before the presence of God.
But the beautiful thing was that God was a God of grace, the preacher emphasized. “He heard all those prayers I prayed in ignorance and He [forgave] me.”
Chan is excited about the idea of Christians learning to pray the right way and making it a way of life rather than a ritual.
“What if you got together with a group of people and you knew that this group of people they all loved God, they all feared Him and they really were living for God’s kingdom and His mission?” he posed.
“And imagine if you came collectively with people ... you all pray together and say our Father you’ve seen our lives, you know that we care about your kingdom we want your kingdom here, we want you to change us, we want you to change the people around us. Can you imagine praying with that type of unity?”
“God is looking for people like that,” the senior pastor encouraged, people who are “committed to Him because He wants to strengthen them and answer their prayers.”
“He’s longing to show off His power but maybe we haven’t seen His power because we haven’t been praying for the things that He wanted us to pray for.”
If Christians began to pray for the things that God cared about, the church would begin to see the supernatural just like the apostles did, Chan believes.
“Isn’t there a beauty as you hear that ‘what if,’ and then to see Him answer your prayers? It wouldn’t be a chore, it would be what you live for,” he said.
Confiding in a co-worker, I told her about a problem in our office, and my fear that I would lose my job. She was concerned and said she would pray for me. I know she keeps a list of the ten people she believes need her prayers the most, so I asked if she had room for me on her list.
'“Oh yes,” she replied. “Three of the people have died.”
________
Kate Gordon in Reader's Digest; secondary source: Sermon Fodder
*
Boy is kidnapped for 7 years, is molested by man whom he calls dad, escapes around 1981 with recently kidnapped boy. Classmate tells him she is glad their prayers where answered by God. He objects, saying his prayers were never answered, and he had to escape on his own.
Sermon in Book of James series, #3. James 1:5-8
MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
==================
I. Stupid decisions.
II. What is wisdom?
A. Much of the Old Testament focuses on this issue. (Proverbs)
B. God is the source of wisdom.
III. Asking for it.
A. One obvious problem: ASKING doesn't always produce GETTING.
B. James says you must know the One we are asking help from.
C. Problem: it still doesn't work.
IV. We must ask in faith.
A. We must believe God is hearing and can answer.
B. We must believe God's way is best.
V. When faith falls short.
A. There are reasons why God may not answer our prayers.
B. Lack of faith hindered Jesus' ability to do miracles. Mark 6:4-6
C. Don't go back and forth like the waves.
VI. When we need a little help to believe.
A. Story of man with demon-possessed son. Mark 9:21
B. Is he a double-minded person?
Pastor Saeed Abedini is a native Iranian. In 2005 he moved to the United States and four years ago he became an American citizen. He never severed ties to his homeland and in 2012 he returned to build an orphanage. The Iranians accused him of setting up Christian house churches and sentenced him to eight years in prison.
He has now spent two years there. Radical Muslims in the prison have threatened to kill him and he has been beaten up several times. How is Pastor Saeed responding?
Last week, a Christian organization released a letter from Pastor Saeed to his daughter for her birthday. After wishing her happy birthday and telling her how much he wants to see her, he wrote the following:
I know that you question why you have prayed so many times for my return and yet I am not home yet... The answer to the why is who. Who is in control? Lord Jesus Christ is in control...
God is in control of the whole world and everything that is happening in it is for His good purpose, for His glory, and will be worked out for our good...
...my dear beloved daughter Rebekka Grace, I pray God will bring me back home soon. But if not, we will still sing together ...’Hallelujah,’ either separated by prison walls or together at home.
So, let Daddy hear you sing a loud ‘Hallelujah’ that I can hear all the way here in the prison!
Kisses and Blessings,
Daddy
John Stonestreet challenges us to ask how our faith would hold up if we were put into prison. How would you handle the separation from your family?
What if you were one of those prisoners of ISIS? Would you be able to see your beheading as part of God’s wonderful plan for you?
________
Adapted from "Pastor Saeed’s Test of Faith, and Ours: For God’s Glory," John Stonestreet, BreakPoint Commentary, September 30, 2014,
Sermon in Book of James series, #3. James 1:5-8
MAKE UP YOUR MIND!
==================
I. Stupid decisions.
II. What is wisdom?
A. Much of the Old Testament focuses on this issue. (Proverbs)
B. God is the source of wisdom.
III. Asking for it.
A. One obvious problem: ASKING doesn't always produce GETTING.
B. James says you must know the One we are asking help from.
C. Problem: it still doesn't work.
IV. We must ask in faith.
A. We must believe God is hearing and can answer.
B. We must believe God's way is best.
V. When faith falls short.
A. There are reasons why God may not answer our prayers.
B. Lack of faith hindered Jesus' ability to do miracles. Mark 6:4-6
C. Don't go back and forth like the waves.
VI. When we need a little help to believe.
A. Story of man with demon-possessed son. Mark 9:21
B. Is he a double-minded person?
Many Christians today are praying the wrong way, all too often focused on themselves than on the mission of God, influential preacher and bestselling author Francis Chan lamented.
It is no wonder that many prayers are ineffective and left unanswered when the subject matter is limited to a list of to do’s and selfish desires, he explained.
“James 4 says a lot of times you’ll ask and you don’t receive because what you’re asking for you’re asking to spend on your own passions and no one warned me about that,” Chan said.
Challenging believers to examine the early church and return to the concept of church described in the Bible, the former megachurch pastor wants to help Christians rethink how they do church.
“I thought you could just ask for anything, say anything ... you know He’s like a big genie up there,” Chan said. “[But] you got to be careful what you say.”
When Chan was first taught how to pray, people advised him to just say whatever came to his mind.
“And so I did,” he remembered. “I would just start opening my mouth and talk to God about whatever and there’s some truth to that but I noticed in the Bible there are also some warnings that we have to be very careful how we approach God. For example, Ecclesiastes 5 says guard yourselves, guard your steps when you go near to the house of God. And it says draw near to listen rather than to offer the sacrifice of fools who do not know that they are doing evil.”
Don’t just go and start talking, Chan exhorted. Come silently, come slowly, be careful.
“As I look at the way the disciples prayed back then and as I look at the way Jesus taught us to pray, I realize it’s a lot different from what I was taught. Prayer to them was really different, they asked for things that were different from what I typically asked for.”
Seeing the disconnect between his – and much of the modern church’s – prayers and the prayers of the early church 2,000 years ago, Chan began to earnestly study prayer again for the past few years.
Upon examination of the Lord’s Prayer, he discovered two things: he never really thought about what was being said and Jesus’ requests were markedly different from his own.
“Think about these phrases now that we’ve been saying for years that maybe we didn’t mean,” Chan implored. “We used to say ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ We’re asking for our daily provision.”
“Truth is, I think, if God just gave us our daily bread, many of us would be angry. That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to give me enough to sustain me for today? What about tomorrow or next year or 10, 20, 30 years from now? I want to know that I’m set up. And yet Jesus says just pray for your daily provisions.”
He also looked at the phrase “lead me not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”
“Haven’t you prayed that at times in your life when you were actually still were holding on to some temptation? Maybe you weren’t even ready to let go of all of your sin and yet you’re saying it. It’s like your words weren’t matching up to your heart.”
And the one statement that scared him the most: “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
“We’re saying ‘God forgive me in the same way as I have forgiven others,’” Chan explained. “That scares me because I know I’ve prayed that while being angry at other people. I know I’ve prayed that prayer while I was still unforgiving. And so now when I’m telling God forgive me in the same way as I forgive other people, see, we need to be warned about this kind of stuff.”
“We shouldn’t just be making these vows to God and saying things we don’t understand,” the former Cornerstone Community Church pastor stressed. “See when you pray, is your desire the same desire as God’s? Are you after this kingdom are you after this mission or are you after your own kingdom?”
So often, he noted, Christians pray “my kingdom come, my will be done.”
“We have to check ourselves and ask am I concerned about the things of God?”
Chan admitted to making a lot of mistakes in prayer as well. A lot of times in church, prayer became a “transition thing” used between praise and sermon, or an ending for a service, not a congregation of people coming before the presence of God.
But the beautiful thing was that God was a God of grace, the preacher emphasized. “He heard all those prayers I prayed in ignorance and He [forgave] me.”
Chan is excited about the idea of Christians learning to pray the right way and making it a way of life rather than a ritual.
“What if you got together with a group of people and you knew that this group of people they all loved God, they all feared Him and they really were living for God’s kingdom and His mission?” he posed.
“And imagine if you came collectively with people ... you all pray together and say our Father you’ve seen our lives, you know that we care about your kingdom we want your kingdom here, we want you to change us, we want you to change the people around us. Can you imagine praying with that type of unity?”
“God is looking for people like that,” the senior pastor encouraged, people who are “committed to Him because He wants to strengthen them and answer their prayers.”
“He’s longing to show off His power but maybe we haven’t seen His power because we haven’t been praying for the things that He wanted us to pray for.”
If Christians began to pray for the things that God cared about, the church would begin to see the supernatural just like the apostles did, Chan believes.
“Isn’t there a beauty as you hear that ‘what if,’ and then to see Him answer your prayers? It wouldn’t be a chore, it would be what you live for,” he said.
This story, my story, changed my view of success.
Allan and Helen Christopherson married June 4, 1960, in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, Canada. With only an eighth-grade education, Allan supported his young family cleaning beer storage tanks at Molson’s brewery. His salary package included only one benefit -- free beer. As with many at the plant, alcoholism was the trajectory of his career.
Then one weekend evening in 1967 my parents hired a babysitter and drove their black 1958 VW Beetle to the Orpheum Theatre. For $1.20, and by a “fluke,” they watched the movie “The Restless Ones,” produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association.
The plot soon captured their attention, and they were engrossed in the human struggle flickering before them. Then they experienced a far more personal internal struggle.
In a final scene Billy Graham’s preaching emanated from a car radio, and my dad clasped my mom’s hand as they wrestled with the conviction of the living Christ.
The film soon reached its conclusion, and a middle-aged man, in suit and tie, strolled center stage. If anyone wished to respond to Christ, he said, they could come pray with him. He patiently waited. No one came.
But God wasn’t finished.
In the comfort of their car outside the Orpheum, Allan and Helen surrendered their past, present and future to Jesus Christ. Immediately God led Allan through faith steps: quitting his job at Molson’s, learning a new trade (welding) and eventually meeting a quiet and intense man God would use to change our family.
His name was Jack Conner, and he would help my dad, the beer-barrel-cleaner-turned-welder, see his place in God’s mission in Canada. That movie screening of The Restless Ones and my dad’s friendship with and discipleship under Jack Conner are two reasons my sister and I have a heart for missions.
Pastor Conner expected barbers and carpenters and schoolteachers and accountants and welders to carry the Good News. Soon, new churches were dotting the maps of towns, villages and native reservations.
Fast-forward 35 years. My father was invited to be on an interdenominational leadership team to host a Franklin Graham Crusade in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.
This is the crescendo.
The chairman of the initiative made some introductory comments and then made a request: “I would like us to spend our first few moments celebrating what God has already done through the ministry of the Grahams. Would two or three of you in this room want to come to the microphone and share?”
My dad’s heart began to race. He sensed God saying, “Share your story.” Yet his flesh said, “You’re just a welder.” Before he knew it, he stood and was speaking about that day in 1967 and “The Restless Ones” at the Orpheum Theatre, about a skipped altar call and an encounter with Christ in a VW Beetle. He told about the church they’d found and those two small children who were now spending their lives starting new churches in Toronto and across Chile. “I do not know how many hundreds of lives are now in the Kingdom because my wife and I went to the movies that day,” he added.
Silence filled the room. Then an elderly man slowly made his way straight to my dad. Tears streaming, he stammered: “Hello Allan, my name is Tom Dice. I am a retired family counselor in the area. I want you to know something, Allan. God asked me to bring that movie to Prince Albert. I rallied my friends and colleagues, and we really expected great things to happen. Night after night we played the movie and night after night I stood before the audience and asked them to respond to Christ. Night after night I went home very disappointed. Until this day, to my knowledge, nobody ever responded. I thought my project was a failure. I wondered if I had heard God right in the first place. But I did hear Him, Allan. Now I see that it wasn’t a failure.” He embraced my dad and said, “Now I see. Praise Jesus, now I see.”
Pastors, I hope you also see that you serve a God whose Gospel bears fruit, even if you can’t see it. I stand as evidence of this.
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