Jeanne Olsen, a mother of five from Illinois, took her daughter Kirsten, age 9, out for a mother-daughter breakfast. During their meal, Jeanne courageously 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." (Mother’s Unanswered Prayer for Self-Improvement, Citation: Kevin A. Miller, Wheaton, Illinois)
Why doesn’t prayer seem to “really work” sometimes? How is it we can sincerely ask God to help us and still our prayers seem to go unanswered?
Today is the last message in our Prayer Can Change Your Life series. We’ve looked at the Four Purposes of Prayer and the Five Conditions for Answered Prayer. Last week we looked at How to Pray About Your Problems. Today we are going to focus on our Attitudes in prayer. Maybe you’ve sincerely tried to pray but you are still not getting any answers to your prayers. Could it be that you are approaching God with the wrong attitude about prayer.
Rick Warren once again provides the outline for our message on prayer today. He says that there are Four Attitudes We Need to Get Our Prayers Answered.
1. You Must be Willing to Let God Answer IN HIS OWN TIME
I want answers to my prayers right away, don’t you? After all, I think that what I’m praying about it is important and God should answer it right away. But it’s not always in our best interest for God to answer our prayers right away. There used to be a Farm Fresh grocery store right behind my house. I think God moved it to save my life. The reason I think this is because every time I would get an urge for ice cream or for some other junk food all I had to do was to walk next door to get what I wanted. If He hadn’t intervened I would be a very “well rounded” person by now.
It’s not always in our best interest for God to give us what we want right when we want it. Sometimes he delays answering our prayers for our own good. Imagine your five-year old son says, ”Dad, can I use the chain saw?” I’m sure you would tell him, “When you get a little older, son.” God often delays answering our prayers because we are not mature enough yet to get what we are asking for.
Being willing to wait for something you want or even need, is a sign of maturity. Not being willing to wait is a sign of immaturity. Might this be why there has been a delay in answering your prayers?
This wasn’t the reason Zechariah and Elizabeth’s answer was delayed. In verses 6 and 9 we see that they were upright and blameless and kept faithfully serving God despite their disgrace and disappointment in not having a child.
Like them, maybe you’ve met the five conditions for answered prayer and you still haven’t received your answer. Actually this may be the very reason why your answer hasn’t come yet? I can imagine you are thinking, “You mean if I am right with God and faithfully serving Him that this could cause a delay in my prayer being answered?”
As strange as it may seem, yes! God’s delays are not God’s denials! He wanted someone He could trust to not deny Him when there prayers weren’t being answered right away. He wanted to answer Zechariah and Elizabeth’s prayers in a miraculous way instead. This meant that their answer would not arrive right away.
Cable television tycoon Ted Turner has often been quoted as being critical of fundamentalist Christianity. Turner made some very revealing remarks at a banquet in Orlando, Fla., in 1990, where he was given an award by the American Humanist Association for his work on behalf of the environment. 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. (John Hamby in "Persistent Prayer" at www.sermoncentral.com. Citation: Spokesman-Review, May 1, 1990. www.christianglobe.com.)
We have all considered giving up on prayer at one time or another. We get discouraged and quit praying because deep down we wonder if prayer really makes any difference. But, when we give up on God we become useless to Him to do more than we have asked for. In Zechariah and Elizabeth’s case, God wanted to do something greater than they had asked for. He trusted them because they didn’t give up on Him when their prayers seemed to be going unanswered.
Have you given up on God because He seems to have not heard or not answered your prayers? Or, are you still faithfully serving Him despite the delay in getting what you have been praying about? Can God trust you to not deny Him when the answers to your prayers are delayed?
Zechariah couldn’t believe the angel. He doubted what he was hearing. Even good Christians have doubts at times! Why did he doubt the angel? Because they were “well along” in years. They knew that it would take a miracle now for them to have a child! We tend to doubt God too when the answer to our prayers requires a miracle. “Pastor, I’ve tried and prayed but my marriage is a wreck. Can I get a divorce?” When I share what God says about divorce and that He can do a miracle in the marriage I often hear, “That’s impossible!” In other word, “I can’t believe that will actually happen for me.” So I encourage the person to act in faith, “But that is God’s answer and it will happen if you will trust God and let Him answer your prayer in His time.”
Rick Warren suggests that we should keep praying until one of three things happens: (1) You get answer. (2) You get the assurance that you are going to get answer. God will encourage you as he encouraged Zechariah, “God has heard your prayer.” In other words, “His answer is on the way.” God hears our prayers when we pray them; but He answers them in His time.” (3) You keep praying until God says that it is not his will for you. When you are sure His answer is “No!” and you are at peace with that answer, you can stop praying.
2. You Must be Willing to Let God Answer IN HIS OWN WAY
God tells us that His ways are not our ways. His ways are bigger and better! There was one clerk in the large candy store who always had people waiting in line, even when the other clerks were standing around with nothing to do. The manager finally asked her why she was so popular with customers.
"It’s easy," she responded. "The other clerks always scoop more than a pound of candy and then start taking away. I always scoop less than a pound and then add to it." (Brad Zockell, Youth Pastor’s Clipboard as in Preaching magazine M/A 1996) God always scoops more than we expect when He answers our prayers too!
Zechariah and Elizabeth wanted children. So, when things were not going their way they prayed for God to intervene. They wanted what everyone else wanted and most were getting. But God wanted to give them someone special – a unique son for a unique purpose. John the Baptist was a prophet, whose cousin would be Jesus Himself, and John would have the unique role of pointing everyone to Jesus. God delayed their answer because He had a much better answer in mind.
Our problem is that all we want is what everyone else is getting. We are content to settle for less than what God wants to give us. Golfer Arnold Palmer once played a series of exhibition matches in Saudi Arabia. The king was so impressed that he proposed to give Palmer a gift. Palmer said, “It really isn’t necessary, Your Highness. I’m honored to have been invited." "I would be deeply upset," replied the king, "if you would not allow me to give you a gift." Palmer thought for a moment and said, "All right. How about a golf club? That would be a beautiful memento of my visit to your country." The next day the title to a golf club with thousands of acres, trees, lakes and a clubhouse was delivered to Palmer’s hotel. The moral of this story is: In the presence of a King, don’t ask for small gifts! (Brennan Manning, Lion and Lamb: The Relentless Tenderness of Jesus (Baker, 1986); cited in Leadership Weekly newsletter)
God’s word encourages us to ask God for His best in Ephesians 2:20 which says, “God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us.”
But, the better answer is often the delayed answer since either we or our circumstances need to be made right first. For example, I was stationed at Fort Gordon, Georgia at the same time Sheila was working with the USO there. We probably were in the same room at the same time on occasion; but it wasn’t until I went to work at the Nuclear Plant in Aiken, South Carolina five years later that we met. Had we met five years earlier it would have been the wrong time. God worked it all out in His Time and in His Way!
3. You Must be Willing to Let God Answer IN HIS OWN POWER
Have you ever tried to help God out when the answer to your prayer has been delayed? The classic Biblical example of this is Abraham and Sarah. God promised that a great nation would come into the world through them, but then years went by without a son being born. When it appeared that they would soon not be able to have children, they took matters into their own hands and had a son (Ishmael) through their servant Hagar. As we now know, this was not God’s plan.
I think of young people who get married too soon and live to regret it. Our “solutions” are almost always the wrong solutions. We need to wait for God’s solutions even if they require a miracle, as it did for Abraham and Sarah!
Why does God wait until it is too late, until it requires a miracle? Why do our circumstances often get worse before He answers? It is because we tend not to give Him the credit for answering our prayers until all of our capabilities have been exhausted. When He answers our prayers in a way that can only be explained by His acting on our behalf, everyone, believers and non-believers alike, know that He was the One who answered our prayer and He answered it by His power.
We see this clearly in the example of the raising Lazarus from the dead. Jesus used his loyal and blameless friends, Mary and Martha, to reveal His power to everyone. He knew He could use them because He knew they would not deny Him; even though their “prayer” seemed to be going unanswered. Jesus let Lazarus die to show everyone He had the power over the grave! If your prayer has not been answered, don’t give up or act too soon to solve it yourself. Instead, trust God and wait on Him! God wants to reveal His power through your situation to you and to someone close to you who needs to know that your God is for real!
A little old lady came out every morning on the steps of her front porch, raised her arms to the sky and shouted, "Praise the Lord!" One day an atheist moved into the house next door. Over time, he became irritated at the little old lady. So every morning he would step out onto his front porch and yell after her, "There is no Lord!" Time passed with the two of them carrying on this way every day. Then one morning in the middle of winter, the little old lady stepped onto her front porch and shouted, "Praise the Lord! Lord, I have no food and I am starving. Please provide for me, oh Lord!" The next morning, she stepped onto her porch and there were two huge bags of groceries sitting there. "Praise the Lord!" she cried out. "He has provided groceries for me!" The atheist jumped out of the hedges and shouted, "There is no Lord. I bought those groceries!" The old lady threw her arms into the air and shouted, "Praise the Lord! He has provided me with groceries and He made the devil pay for them!" (Sermon Central) God really does act miraculously on our behalf in answer to our prayers – in His Own Time, in His Own Way and in His Own Power so everyone will know that He is God and that He can answer their prayers too.
4. You Must be Willing to Let God Answer FOR HIS OWN PURPOSE
It is not unusual for Christians to hear a challenging word from God, to then to take a step of faith and to trust God, and then to experience more difficult life situations than ever before. During these times we can get very discouraged for it seems that our very obedience is the reason for our difficulties, and in a way, it is. Why? Because God has a higher purpose!
God was looking for parents whom He could trust to bring John the Baptist into the world. Zechariah and Elizabeth demonstrated their trustworthiness for they did not turn against God or stop serving Him when things weren’t going their way. A great example of this is God’s servant Job. In Job 1:21-22 we read, “Job fell to the ground in worship and said: The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing.” In 2:9-10, “His wife said to him, "Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!" He replied, "You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" We have a choice when things are not going our way too. We can lose faith and turn from God, or we can totally trust Him. Someone has said, “Sometimes a roadblock is not a dead end, but a detour to a new road in life.” When we let God answer our prayers for His purposes we will probably experience a roadblock but this is not the end of the road. It is only a change in direction leading us to God’s new destination in our life, one of greater service and usefulness to Him.
As an individual, do you want to be used by God for His purposes? Are you willing to let God have His way with your life circumstances? As a church, do we want to be used by God for His Purposes? Do we want our prayers answered our way, or do we want something bigger and better that God has planned for us? Zechariah and Elizabeth waited a long time and suffered disgrace and discouragement, but when their prayer was answered it was their son who would be the one to point the world to our Savior. Do we want to be used to point the world to Jesus? Are we willing to let God answer this prayer in His Own Time, in His Own Way, and in His Own Power for His Own Purposes? This is not the easy road in life, for we will have to grow up in our faith and we will have to accept His plan over our own. Do we really want this?
Father, even as we bow in prayer before you now we wonder how you will answer our prayers. We want to be your faithful servants that you can use to point others to Jesus. We want to be your people that you can trust to use for your purposes. As we pray we acknowledge that for us to be available to you we must trust that you will answer our prayers in a way that is best for us and most useful to you. Father, change us into the people and into the church that you want us to be. Help us to grow in our faith and to mature in our relationships with you. Bring glory to yourself and a witness to your Son, Jesus in the way that you answer our prayers today. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen.
