Matthew 26:36-46 (New International Version)
36Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, "Sit here while I go over there and pray." 37He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. 38Then he said to them, "My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me."
39Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, "My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will."
40Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. "Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?" he asked Peter. 41"Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak."
42He went away a second time and prayed, "My Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done."
43When he came back, he again found them sleeping, because their eyes were heavy. 44So he left them and went away once more and prayed the third time, saying the same thing.
45Then he returned to the disciples and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and resting? Look, the hour is near, and the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 46Rise, let us go! Here comes my betrayer!"
INTRODUCTION
Does God answer your prayers?
A businessman was late for an important meeting and couldn't find a parking space. As he frantically circled the block, the man got so desperate that he decided to pray.
Looking up toward heaven, (he pulled over first) he said, in the best churchy voice he could muster, " O Lord, takest pity on me a sinner. If thou findest me a parking space, verily whilst I go to church every Sunday for the resteth of my days, and verily whilst I also give up the evils of alcohol."
Miraculously and immediately, a parking space appeared.
The businessman looked up again and said, "Never mind. I found one."
So does God answer your prayers? When I was playing ice hockey in college, we used to pray before every game. At the beginning of the season, the prayers were always something along the line of, “Help us to win.” Halfway through the season, our prayers changed to something like, “God, help us to do our best.” And usually by the end of the season our pre-game prayers became something like, “God, just help us not to get hurt.” And you know what? We lost a lot of games. We often played below our capability. And judging from the number of stitches I got, we got hurt a lot. Does that mean God didn’t answer our prayers?
Today. We’re going to talk a little bit about unanswered prayers. Times when God doesn’t seem to answer our prayers quite the way we want Him to. May God’s Holy Spirit speak to your heart as we worship today.
Let us pray.
Sermon
Unanswered prayer or should I say, prayer that is not answered the way we want it to be answered is a problem of faith that we have all been confronted by. If you have been a follower of Jesus for more than 24 hours and have prayed at all, you have encountered this issue. The issue and problem of unanswered prayer. This is an issue because there are several places in scripture where it seems like God will give us whatever we ask for and you don’t have to be a Christian very long to find out that that simply isn’t true.
In the comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, Calvin goes to his mom and says, “Mom, can I have a flame thrower?” No she replies. “Mom, can I have a rocket launcher?” “No”, she replies. “Mom, can I have a couple of cookies?” “No”, she replies. “It’s too close to dinner.” Then in the last frame, Calvin says, “She’s on to me.”
I am going to start off this sermon with a pat answer to the problem of unanswered prayer. I do that because I think this pat answer has to be the background to any answers we come up with to this question of faith. But at the same time, I understand that this pat answer is totally inadequate to people who are looking for real answers. This answer does not satisfy. This answer feels like getting oatmeal for breakfast when you asked for bacon and eggs. This pat answer makes us feel unimportant and more like a cog in a great machine rather than the beloved child of God that we are. For after all, if God is indeed a personal God who is intensely involved in my personal welfare, then the answers to the difficult questions of faith should be personal, shouldn’t they? But this pat answer is not personal. The pat answer that I’m talking about is this: there is a much bigger picture than the one you can see and you are a part of it. It’s kind of like being a foot soldier in a very big war. You absolutely play a part. What you do as a soldier is important and contributes to the cause. But in a war, the general who runs the campaign wouldn’t exactly ask for your advice, would he? The difference here, of course, is that in a war, you understand what the bigger picture is. The bigger picture I am talking about, is one that you and I are incapable of getting within our vision. There are 6,800,000,000 people currently alive in the world and God is personally involved in the life of each and every one, trying to draw that person into the Kingdom of God. Now if you can get your head around that picture, you have a much bigger head than I do. We have to understand that our goals and what we want, are not necessarily in line with God’s goals. God’s goal is about the realization of His Kingdom, is it not? We pray for the coming of the Kingdom, do we not? On earth as it is in heaven?
Missionaries to the Philippines, Martin and Gracia Burnham, were kidnapped and held by terrorists for a year. Martin was killed during their rescue. In her book, In the Presence of My Enemies, Gracia writes:
“Sometimes I wonder, Why did Martin die when everyone was praying he wouldn't? Why does Scripture lead you to believe that if you pray a certain way, you'll get what you pray for? People all over the world were praying that we'd both get out alive, but we didn't.”
Her questions made her realize it isn't always easy to comprehend God's nature. She continues:
“I used to have this concept of what God is like, and how life's supposed to be because of that. But in the jungle, I learned I don't know as much about God as I thought I did. I don't have him in a theological box anymore. What I do know is that God is God—and I'm not. The world's in a mess because of sin, not God. Some awful things may happen to me, but God does what is right. And he makes good out of bad situations.”
That’s a snapshot from the bigger picture, I think. We want formulas, and guarantees, with instant results. We want to be able to explain the mysteries of the universe in a bumper sticker. When it comes to prayer, many of us would love to be able to tell God what to do at any given moment—and be assured that he will fulfill our bidding. However, it doesn't work that way. Prayer is not a work-order for God and the simple truth is that when it comes to prayer no matter what you read or hear, formulas and guarantees do not exist. Steps 1-2-3 Shazzam, you get what you want do not apply when it comes to prayer.
The smaller picture is that sometimes we experience a void when we pray and what we see and receive is either nothing or something not even close to what we asked for. You folks were all praying for a new pastor to show up a year before Tina and I walked through that door. And then low and behold, you get me. That’ll teach you. Next time you’ll be more specific about what kind of pastor you’re asking for.
Sometimes prayers get answered differently than we want.
Tony Campolo tells this story:
I was in a church in Oregon not too long ago, and I prayed for a man who had cancer. In the middle of the week, I got a telephone call from his wife. She said, "You prayed for my husband. He had cancer." I said, "Had?" Whoa, I thought, it's happened.
She said, "He died." I felt terrible.
She continued, "Don't feel bad. When he came into that church that Sunday he was filled with anger. He knew he was going to be dead in a short period of time, and he hated God. He was 58 years old, and he wanted to see his children and grandchildren grow up. He was angry that this all-powerful God didn't take away his sickness and heal him. He would lie in bed and curse God. The more his anger grew towards God, the more miserable he was to everybody around him. It was an awful thing to be in his presence. After you prayed for him, a peace had come over him and a joy had come into him. Tony, the last three days have been the best days of our lives. We've sung. We've laughed. We've read Scripture. We prayed. Oh, they've been wonderful days. And I called to thank you for laying your hands on him and praying for healing.
And then she said something incredibly profound. She said, "He wasn't cured, but he was healed."
Wouldn’t you say that’s the bigger picture?
Sometimes when we pray, we already know the answer and we’re just hoping God will change his mind. However much he may want to, I do not believe God will answer the prayer of the student s who prayed, "O God, please let Paris be the capital of England!"
C.S. Lewis wrote that though he had seen many striking answers to prayer and more than one that he thought miraculous. .” As the Christian life proceeds, they tend to be rarer.” Shouldn't faith become easier,” he writes, “ not harder, as a Christian progresses?” Yet, he perceived that answers to prayer became harder to find for the experienced Christian. Lewis points out one of the greatest examples of unanswered prayer and we find it in today’s scripture. Three times Jesus pled with God to take this cup from Him and three times God did not answer. "Does God then forsake just those who serve Him best?, he writes. I do not know why God did not answer Jesus request. All I do know is that God did not give Jesus any other way to do His will than to go to the cross and die and apparently Jesus knew that would be the case when he was praying. But still Jesus asked God to provide a different way. Instead of changing His mind, we read in Luke that God sent Jesus an angel, to strengthen him. Sometimes when we pray, we already know the answer even though we’re asking God to do something different.
Sometimes when we pray, we forget that God has expectations of us. Like the soldier who must do his duty and follow orders, the Christian is expected to follow through on certain aspects of their requests. You cannot pray for more money, go out and run up your charge cards and then expect God to honor your debts. You cannot pray for personal safety and then go play touch football on 495, expecting God to keep you from getting flattened by a semi. Jeanne Olsen took her daughter Kirsten, age 9, out for a mother-daughter breakfast. During their meal, Jeanne wisely or unwisely asked her daughter, "How do you think I could be a better mom?"
Kirsten thought for a moment. "Well, you do yell a lot. I know you've been praying about that, but it isn't really working yet."
Sometimes we are the answers to our own prayers.
Ultimately though, we will all have unanswered prayers that do not fall into any convenient categories. I think that prayer is God’s tool to change us into the kind of people he wants to inhabit His kingdom. If you stop and pray, that changes you. If life goes on, and there is never anything to remind you that you need God in this life, then there is a good chance that you will never approach God in prayer. Too often, we picture God simply as the caretaker of the afterlife when in reality, God is just as involved in this life as he is in the afterlife.
You are changed before prayer and after prayer. Something happens within you when your circumstances are such that you are in need or desperate and are compelled to kneel at God’s feet. It is almost always that when we are in that place, if not that position, that we change. We become more faithful, less independent of God, and more willing to voluntarily do our part in fulfilling God’s will and plan.
Maybe that is what the ultimate big picture really is. A picture of us kneeling at God’s feet with our head resting in his lap. A picture of a child supremely comforted by the security and presence of its Father, knowing that all is safe and secure in the parent’s loving hands. Maybe that’s what prayer really is all about. God does answer every prayer but it is only in the relationship of prayer, the relationship of a child with a loving parent, that unanswered prayers make any sense at all.
