My American Eagle flight was extremely delayed Tuesday morning, meaning I’d miss my connection to LR. Every other connecting flight to Little Rock was full, so I took the direct route: Abilene to DFW to Chicago to Little Rock. Only way to get there. I waved as I flew over LR about 9:30 in the morning, knowing I’d return in about four hours. Yesterday it was much better. American Eagle cancelled my flight out of Little Rock for the infamous “mechanical difficulties,” but I did make a later connection. I have a feeling, after listening to the news this morning, that flying would be a bit more challenging today with all domestic flights on orange alert.
I was in Arkansas for two reasons: a meeting in Little Rock and a stress test in Searcy. (Yes, supply your favorite joke here.)
I had just a few minutes to run into the Heritage Center and see a few friends on the Harding campus. Didn’t even have time to make it over to the Bible building to see Ross and Monte if they were around. But what a joy to connect briefly with old friends: Liz, Mike, Rowan, Cecilia. Wish I’d had a lot more time.
Today and tomorrow I’m working on my message on “unanswered prayers.” It’s one of the great mysteries of our faith.
Mike,
I am beginning to think that prayer as God intends it, is one of the great mysteries of our faith.
O.K. Just tell us the stress test is for preventive maintenance\checkup reasons and not for pains in areas you shouldn’t have pain in.
I read recently that prayer is for us to get to know the mind of God. I’m not sure I like that statement, but it has answered some of my questions. I certainly don’t like the idea of a shopping list for God in praying. I am still mulling over this thought, though and will be anxious to hear what you have to say Sunday.
Albiet, I will have to hear about the Sunday sermon from someone else or get a tape. So share your thoughts here, please!
Hindsight has made me glad of some my unanswered prayers. Some of them are still a mystery to me, but I have learned to trust that God knows what He is doing even if I don’t get it.
My husband has to fly tomorrow to get home. Just a couple of commuter flights, but I have the feeling it’s not going to be a pleasant experience for him, or for many others who are planning to travel in the near future. God grant us all patience, eh?
Oh. I meant to say also that I do sometimes have to work on my attitude and remind myself that God knows what He’s doing when it comes to my prayers. I’m not at that point of having perfect peace about things like that without some work.
Mike, would have loved to have bought your lunch at Casa Brava, complete with their special guacamole dip and mexican dish of your choice, had I known you were going to be in Searcy. Would have had to eat AFTER the stress test though. What did you think of the campus facelift? Kids are starting to fill the void left throughout the summer and its a great time of the year. Next time you think you might be here a little longer, Underwood and I will buy lunch. Later brother.
Keith
“I have never considered any of my prayers “unanswered”. I have received at least three answers to my prayers…..yes, no, and wait. It is easy to see the affirmative answer, and the “no, my grace is sufficient for you” is a little harder to see. The “wait” answer always makes me smile. When I have decided the answer is “no” and much later the prayer is answered “yes”, there is always a lesson with it. God grants my requests when the time is right. That is not necessarily when I thought I needed it. I believe God answers all my prayers.
Mike,
You’re on the same track as Oswald Chambers this week. His “My Utmost For His Highest” is part of my daily devotional and quiet time with my LORD.
Beginning Sunday of this week, has been dedicated to Prayer. His thoughts can be a bit unsettling if we find ourselves too entrenched in a formula prayer life, but is most encouraging for those that are trying to enrich and grow in the prayer life.
Thank you for teaching on prayer! It will be a blessing, I’m sure!
Never unanswered, just a very frequent “NO”s in my life. I used to be so unsettled wondering why God wasn’t answering my prayers ALL THE TIME. But when I finally got it through my very stubborn brain that I am getting answers and they are coming in the form of NO, I felt an odd sense of being loved. Just like I have to lovingly say no to my kids and sometimes I have to firmly and with a sense of purpose say NO, God has to do that to me too. He ever fails to answer. But He loves me enough to say NO.
Just arrived in New York and yes it is chaos here. I did ok starting out this morning at a small regional airport. The security lines her are longer than I have ever seen…even in October 2001 when I was here 1 month after 9-11. Getting home tomorrow wil be a treat.
I’m not sure if “unanswered prayers” is the right phrase. Maybe it should be “perceived unanswered prayer.” God hears all prayers and I believed he answers all of them in his way, his time, his determination. I think it is up to us to open our eyes and listen with our hearts to see and hear God’s answer. That, in itself, takes great faith.y
The stress test was just for the privilege of turning 50. That, and to let my buddy, Dr. Blue, taunt me a bit with the treadmill.
I can only make assumptions with little or no evidence as to the value of unanswered prayers. Here they are:
1. God has my good in mind.
2. I do not control or define “good.”
3. God allows extreme amounts of freedom even to the point of my immediate detriment at times.
4. God can redeem anything.
5. Frustration, irritation, vulnerability, fear, complaint, questioning, mystery, waiting, waiting, w..a..i..t..i..n..g, and a whole host of other experiences which are unpleasant or in which I am not in control could possibly be good for me even if I do not agree.
6. God makes use of evil (though does not cause evil).
Yes, there is a lot of hope and faith and maybe even delusion in thses assumptions, but the alterantive is much, much worse.
“Don’t be afraid to ask the hardest questions tht rise up in your soul. But don’t expect answers. Expect rather to experience God.”
–Larry Crabb
My faith would be a lot stronger if only God would answer my unanswered prayers. Really, I’m not kidding.
“My faith would be a lot stronger if only God would answer my unanswered prayers. Really, I’m not kidding.” — David - I definitely hear you, but, maybe His answer is patience, or something other than what your Earthly spirit wants to hear right now?
Why did God allow my grandmother to endure 5 years of pain in a non-communicative state, an amputated leg due to infection, and an almost-financial family mess just to see it all through when she wanted to go to her heavenly home prior to all that? I don’t know - but I sincerely believe He did and does.
Is there such a thing as unanswered prayer, or is it unanswered in the way that I desire? Hope you will share from your lesson.
mike, I hope you can share this lesson on unanswered prayers in this blog, or somewhere. My 28 year old daughter died six months ago, after a year suffering greatly from metastatic breast cancer, it had spread to her bones. She died in great pain. I would appreciate some understanding of His silence. I have come to some conclusions, but when I feel I have found some light in this it just as quickly fades as I remember her pleas, fear and pain. Please help.
Ah, Sandy. There’s the honesty I’m looking for. I’m never fully satisfied when we say that all prayers are answered — just not the way we hoped.
I’m not denying that this has some truth, but it doesn’t seem to be a biblical way of answering it. Biblical writers aren’t ashamed to cry out about God’s absence, about his deaf ears, about his failure to respond to cries.
And yet . . . these are themselves prayers of trust. They are the words of people who have learned that the greatest goal in life isn’t to be happy or healed but to be reliant upon the loving God.
All right, I’ll try to put more of that here later.
I hold this comment — about your daughter’s illness and death — as a sacred trust. Thanks for bringing into this painful valley in your spiritual journey.
I’ve been in that valley. I don’t understand it; nor do I like it. But even as we walked through the valley of the shadow of death we felt this presence (most days) that would not leave us.
Shalom.
From Larry’s blog (which I’m including because of his request to pass it along):
Okay, I’m going to ask.
What you are about to read is a first. Could be a last!
I need to raise at least $100,000 by October 31, 2006 in order to pay the required acceptance fee to the State of Texas to receive our low-income, housing tax credit award, to keep our architects working on our City Walk @ Akard project and to pay down our food supply account at the North Texas Food Bank.
I have resisted the urge since beginning this blog to use it as a promotional fundraising tool for the work I attempt to accomplish.
Actually, I am not giving up on that standard as I make my unusual request.
Let me lay out my thinking.
Lots of people who visit here on a fairly regular basis express strong opinions that people of faith should really play the leading role in ministry and uplift to the poor in our nation. Others express slightly different views, but no one has said that people of faith should not be involved.
Then, there are lots of people who visit this space whose lives may or may not be shaped by faith. I can’t really tell. And, of course, everyone is welcome–we need everyone and every perspective here. Still, folks without faith care a great deal about the plight of the poor and underclass in our country, as well as around the world.
So, let’s all get down to business.
I need to raise $100,000.
Here’s how you can help me do it.
Stop reading.
Write me a check.
Or, if you prefer, reach into your wallet or purse and pull out a $1 or a $5 or a $10 or a $20 or a $50 or a $100 dollar bill and mail it to me right now.
I guarantee that every penny will go toward the fulfillment of our vision for City Walk @ Akard, our housing development in Downtown Dallas designed especially for low-income and homeless persons, and toward paying for food for low-income families.
I believe in the power of grassroots movements.
I don’t think we will be successful over the long haul if we don’t have that kind of involvement and “downward” engagement as we move forward into even larger, more costly and demanding efforts.
So, if you really care about the homeless and the poor in Dallas, send me a contribution.
It doesn’t matter where you live. We need national help to create a model that others can use, adapt and act off of. You can help us build it.
You may or may not care, but every penny given is tax deductible and you will receive a written record of your gift, if you include your address.
I want to see how serious the readers in this blog community are about the poor.
Make your checks payable to Central Dallas Ministries and mail them or your cash donations to:
Larry James’ Urban Daily, Central Dallas Ministries, P. O. Box 710385, Dallas, Texas 75371-0385.
Oh, and one more very important part of my very serious request:
Please forward this post to everyone you know who cares about poverty and real life solutions to its pain and challenge.
I’ll keep you posted on the progress.
By the way, you can read more about both projects by scrolling back in the blog archives or by doing a search of my blog for “Resource Center” and/or “City Walk @ Akard.”
Thanks for considering my direct request to join our team as a contributing partner. Such requests won’t be frequent. However, when I make one, you can know that it is serious and important.
My least favorite answer is the same one I always hated from my daddy… “Not now - maybe later”
I think prayers destroy faith. We loudly proclaim prayers are answered when someone is cured or rescued from harm and leave those who prayed those same unanswered prayers wondering WHY.
“Yes”, “No” and “Not yet” covers all the bases for keeping a lame God intact and reigning supreme in our consciousness. It let’s us sleep at night, I guess.
Thy kingdom come thy will be done translates to “Do what you want to and don’t mind us” Why pray this at all? I can see God waiting by for us to give him the green light to inact his will. Seems like more useless words for our sake only.
Maybe the God we have defined and pray to is a myth. Maybe we should address this before we do some serious scripture “smoke and mirrors” trying to make the square peg fit into the round hole.
Though I can think of examples where you are correct about prayers destroying faith (remember Ted Turner’s story?), having our young son die after two years of praying fervently for him to overcome his cancer did certainly make me rethink my faith, but it did not destroy it. It also made me rethink how and what I pray about. I think it has helped me to move away from treating God like Santa Claus and into thinking more about what God’s priorities would be.
Thanks reJoyce.
I think God answers our prayers “YES” more often than we think, but we forget that Satan is trying to sink our faith. Did you ever think that one of the ways he tries to do that is to intercept God’s answers to our prayers?
Look at the story in Daniel 10:2-14. Daniel fasted and prayed for THREE WEEKS. On the 24th day, an angel came to him in answer to his prayer! The angel says that he was “detained by the prince of the Persian kingdom” for…TWENTY-ONE days!!!
I just think that we forget there is a larger spiritual battle going on, and that NOTHING is sacred to Satan, even our prayers.
I am often struck by how often the spiritual masters of this and past centuries try to coax us out of the habit of asking God for things in prayer into the habit of seeking God in prayer instead.
I believe that we have special struggles with this in our society since we are prone to define ourselves and our life-quality in terms of being able to exercise our choices, get the things we want, and seeing our desires typically fulfilled as our daily lives take shape. This is not to say that the things we want may not be very good and proper, but just that — more than any other group of people in history — we have come to expect those things, almost as a right. This makes the problem an acute one for us. We are very quick to conclude that something is badly broken when we don’t see our wants fulfilled. We are habituated to do so. Yet God has probably not been socialized this way.
In Christian spiritual meditation it is almost universally considered an important mark of spiritual maturity when a person stops relying on anything God gives or does and rests in the mere presence of God himself, whatever shape that experience may take. I would like to reach that level of maturity some day. It would mean that any moment in which God is truly present is, by definition, the total answer to all prayer that is prayer.
If the spiritual masters are right, it helps explain why moments of great struggle and loss, of desert seasons and severe privation or grief, often yield the most profound spiritual growth. In those moments, without anything else to distract us, we discover how we and God are really doing together.
Yes, I believe some common perceptions about prayer can surely destroy faith. I still struggle with “faith to move a mountain” as the disciples could not cast out a certain demon…”faith as a mustard seed” in Mt. 17.
Praying “ineffectively” (my definition) was my worst nightmare when our first-born son died of cocaine intoxication, leaving a wife, two tiny girls and a son not yet born. I simply had to choose between unbelief and trust. I chose trust probably because I’m a stubborn soul.
Over the years, I began to understand what Jeff just pointed out that prayer is our privileged gateway to a relationship with the Almighty GOD, our Father, who desires a Father-child relationship with His own–a “right relationship” as Oswald Chambers says. Our struggles do make us stronger and if we, like those “desert fathers and mothers,” wait on the Lord, He will satisfy our souls. Wait on the Lord…I love that song we sing during Taize worship.
Blessings, Mike, as the Spirit leads you for Sunday’s sermon. I’m praying for you.
Well said, Jeff.
Thank you, Carolyn!
first time commenter here. i, too, am more than intrigued by your investigation of unanswered prayer. there are lots of pat answers out there, about 95% sound good and familiar but are functionally benign. in may i decided that god was not going to answer my prayers (three specifically, on the table for 30 years). it was a dark time. ten days later, i was back online, not with renewed vigor, but simply signing up for 30 more years of prayer. no explanation for it yet, other than there is nowhere else to go. i still do not know how to cope with a silent god (my experience), and i don’t get how ‘ask and ye shall receive’ works. but i am exploring it. my method: teaching a class on prayer using movie clips. weird.