Why Doesn’t God Answer my Prayers?

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Well, now your question’s answered. Our last one is, why doesn’t God answer my prayers? You’ll see and notice straight away that this is slightly different from the 3 previous questions, which have rather assumed that the questioner was outside everything and was by no means convinced, whereas this does seem to be the question of somebody who’s been convinced and has begun to try to live the Christian life and and therefore has naturally begun to pray. And then they’ve been very disappointed. They’ve listened to a number of sermons, they’ve read the gospels, and they see that right at the heart of the gospels are the most astonishing encouragements to pray, repeated again and again and again: Ask and you’ll receive, seek and you’ll find, knock and the door will be opened.

And they’ve also noticed the almost breathtaking promises of Jesus to answer the prayers of his people when they come to him. And so this sounds exciting, it sounds something that works, practical, every day, and so they begin to pray and they’re disappointed. And they come up to a Christian and friend and they say, why doesn’t God answer my prayers? Now in order to give some positive and helpful guidelines by way of an answer to this, and all I’ve tried to do on these Tuesdays is begin to share how I would answer it, I’d like you to turn to Matthew 6 which was read for us if you’ve got a New Testament anywhere near you. Uh, you don’t really need to because probably almost all of us know this part off by heart and I find here some very interesting reasons why prayer is not answered and in fact on 3 occasions Jesus says that it won’t be answered here for certain reasons.

First let’s look at the context and it’s awfully important in looking at anything in the Bible to see what the context is and the context is the Sermon on the Mount.

Who did Jesus speak to in the Sermon on the Mount? There are some Christians, I believe, who think that it’s so impractical that the Sermon on the Mount applies to the kingdom of God when Jesus comes in the future. I think that’s rather a counsel of despair, but at least it recognises that the standard is tremendously high. So let me say that I don’t think that the Sermon on the Mount is for every man. I don’t think Jesus honestly expected expected people to take the Sermon on the Mount and live by that in the power of their own natural resources.

So the Sermon on the Mount is for those who are members of the family who’ve entered the kingdom and in whom God by his Spirit is beginning to work. For example, it says that you’re just not to be anxious. Now with a falling pound you can’t be a businessman or a father without being anxious at the moment.

You have to have some mighty power in your life if you’re not going to be anxious about how you’re going to make ends meet and pay your bills and keep in business.

And the Sermon on the Mount assumes these mighty powers. It assumes that you’ve come to know a real God, a Father. It assumes that you’ve come to realise that he does answer prayer, that he does keep his promises. And therefore, because all these things are assumed, that you have become a real member of this family, And therefore Jesus can say, now you mustn’t be anxious.

Now it’s exactly the same in this matter of prayer. It’s assumed here that you’ve entered the family. I wonder if you turned on to Quarter to 8 last week. I’ve rather given up Quarter to 8, I’m afraid, but I thoroughly enjoyed last week the Archbishop of York speaking on prayer. In fact, I turned on for the second time because I really couldn’t believe that an archbishop could speak without any kind of parsonical voice at all.

It was absolutely natural, absolutely straightforward. It was a joy to listen to.

I think perhaps there was only one thing that I would like to have added. I wish that he’d started a chapter earlier. He took this theme of asking the Father, praying to the Father, but I would have liked a reminder that you can’t speak to the Father until you’re his son.

All the way through the New Testament this is taken as basic, axiomatic. Paul says that it’s when the Holy Spirit of God comes into my heart by the mighty miracle of the new birth that I find myself crying out, Abba, Father.

It’s when God puts his Spirit in me and changes me and makes me a new man that I start to say, Father, in the most personal, intimate way and I don’t start to talk like a real son of God until that miracle takes place.

Place. In other words, what this sermon is saying is that prayer is part of a relationship. It’s not something independent from a relationship.

Uh, some of you, when we put out the prices for our lunches, um, came to us to tell us what privileges you have in your canteen. I must say it was very mouthwatering to hear that there are a number of you who can have soup, roast pork, and applesauce chocolate soufflé, coffee, and a biscuit for 5p or something of the kind. I may have got it slightly wrong, but I gather that some of you have privileges rather like that. And, uh, well, I actually have been made the honorary member of one of the canteens near here, but, um, it’s a little embarrassing to walk in and put down my 5p and ask for my soup, roast pork, applesauce, chocolate soufflé, coffee, and a biscuit, because you see, I’m not really a member of that company. I’m not in, I’m out.

I can’t have the privileges of the canteen if I don’t work for that company. I can’t have the privileges of the kingdom of God if I’m not a member of the kingdom of God. I heard Malcolm Muggeridge say this most powerfully on tape this morning. I was speaking last night in Manchester and my host was quite determined that I should hear the talk that Malcolm Muggeridge had given in Manchester recently. So when we got back very late, we had it on the tape.

And I noticed that my hostess was beginning to look very sleepy as the tape started, so I said, well, it was a bit too late for me too. Could we have it over breakfast the next morning? That was this morning, and they were very relieved that I said that. So we had the tape with our cornflakes this morning. It was a very long tape.

I found myself looking at the tape and looking at my watch, wondering if I was going to catch the train from Manchester this morning in time to get here. But they said, you must listen till the end. So I was fastened there whether I liked it or not and I’m glad I did because at the end Malcolm Muggeridge said how only comparatively recently the new birth has meant so much to him, that he’s come to see the need for a person to be reborn if Christian realities are to be powerful in his life. Now that’s really the one thing I want to say this morning. If your prayers are not answered, if prayer really doesn’t mean very much to you, If you’re worried about the fact that you thought you were starting something worthwhile and good and it turns out not to be so worthwhile and not so good, then just make sure that you’ve started right.

Make sure you’re in the family.

However, you can be in the family and your prayers not be answered, and rather harshly in some ways and certainly very bluntly, Jesus gives us 3 illustrations and I think there may be time just to glance at the 3. Look at the first in verse 5 and he here gives us a little picture, rather grimly painted, of the prayer of the hypocrite. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrite, for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they’ve received their reward.

I’m not sure that this Pharisee is so common today as he was. You see, this was a culture where it was respectable to be religious. And I don’t think there are many young people today who want to put on a show of being religion— religious. There may be some, but the picture here is of somebody who wants others to see his religion. And so he stops, you see, at the street corner, and he actually prays on the corner because then the people in both streets will see him praying.

And so as they hurry home, you see, they say, isn’t Rabbi Isaacson a marvellous man of prayer? I saw him running for a bus and then he stopped Because it was 11 o’clock and he put on his prayer shawl and he prayed and lots of people saw it and Rabbi Isaacson went back and Jesus says very devastatingly, truly I say to you, Rabbi Isaacson, you’ve received your reward. You’ve got the answer you were looking for. That’s what you did it for.

Now you see the picture here goes a little bit more deep than the Pharisee. It comes right down to our door. What are we really trying to seek? Are we seeking the approval of men?

What do we want? Well, the only way to be safe is to go on to verse 6: When you pray, go into your room and shut the door. That’s very striking, by the way, from his kind of culture and society. Can’t have been many young people in Jesus’ day who had a bedroom to themselves, and yet he says, I want you to go into your room and shut the door. I want you to get privacy.

I don’t want anybody to know. I don’t want you even to put a sticker on the door, I’m praying in here. My prayer room.

And I want you to pray in secret. Isn’t that a remarkable thought, that there’s something here in the Christian life that is for nobody else, secret, all the doors shut, all the walls closed.

I put it like this, that no one actually does this who hasn’t got a real relationship with God and is not intent on pleasing his Father. To find time to pray, pray is the hardest thing in the world. It means I’ve got to get up earlier than the family, earlier even than the dog that wants to be taken for the walk, earlier than those people that ring me up, earlier than my children need breakfast, or I’ve got to find some other time in the day when I can in secret meet the Father. And only a person with a real relationship to God, truly determined to put God first, truly determined to be with him— I visit a lot of vicarages, I suppose, and manses and so on in, in preaching, and You notice whenever you go into a house where there are children that they obviously have the right to be everywhere. They rush in and out of every door and usually they come into where their father is in order to ask for something.

But sometimes a child will come into where father and mother are simply in order to be with them. Now that’s the picture I think that Jesus is giving us here. Do you want to be with me? Do you like my company? Are you willing to forget the charming company of all your friends for a moment and the busyness of the world?

Television programme, the wireless, everything else. Are you willing to be with me?

Yes Lord, I want to be with you. Some miracle has happened in my heart that I really do want to be with you. Oh well then your prayers will be answered.

Second illustration, look at verse 7. Our first was a picture of the prayer of the hypocrite, the second is the prayer of the heathen. In praying do not heap up empty prayers as the heathen, the Gentiles do. Now what’s the mark of heathen prayer? You say, don’t treat me like that, Mr. Lucas, I’m not a heathen.

Well, I hope I’m not either, but there’s a bit of a heathen in all of us, isn’t it? Look at the next phrase: they think they will be heard for their many words. Now what does that mean?

Well, you may remember we had one or two petitions at St. Helen’s, that we had a Festival of Light petition, it stood there on a table and you remember that some of you were asked to sign on it. And I suppose in the end that somebody went to 10 Downing Street with a great suitcase or trunk of these petitions with 4,300,221 signatures. And the message was quite simply this: Mr. Prime Minister, 4 million voters want this, so you’re under pressure to do something about it because you’re dependent upon the voters. Now that’s a very natural thing, but it would be absolutely absurd, wouldn’t it, for me to treat God like that, to put pressure on God and to suppose that because I have say many prayers like the heathen prayer wheel or prayer flag that goes on fluttering in the wind all the time. Because I can always bring these pressures to bear on God, he will do what I say.

And yet that is the heathen view of God, isn’t it? The heathen view of God is that as— just as industry needs capital and I need breath in my lungs and a teenager needs 11 meals a day, just as we need to be kept going, So God needs to be kept going, and so we better put on religious services and churchgoing and Bible readings and prayer. We better put all these things on. This is what the heathen thinks, you see. He says, don’t forget your offering to God because he needs to keep— you’ve got to keep him going.

That’s what he depends upon.

Now you meditate on that today as you go home tonight. You’ll be very surprised to find that there’s a bit of that feeling about God lurking in all of us.

That we’ve given to God’s cause and therefore in some sense God was dependent upon us and therefore when we come to him he should do something for us.

The greatest lesson that prayer is meant to teach is that I am completely dependent upon God. I sometimes say to myself, I’ve been a Christian for many years now but I still haven’t learned this as I ought to learn it. There is something within me that is always wanting to be independent and when I get independent I don’t pray. Because prayer is the sacrament of dependence.

If I think I can live today without the grace of God, then I won’t pray before I leave home. But if I know that I cannot live without God, then whatever happens, I will pray.

If I think I can do this piece of Christian service without prayer, then I will do it without prayer because prayer is a difficult thing and a time-consuming thing and a troublesome thing.

Prayer expresses my complete dependence and so what Jesus is saying here is, don’t be like the heathen who think they can put pressure on God. Your heavenly Father knows everything that you want, just come to him and say, Father, this day give me enough bread to get through to the end.

Now that’s the language of a child, not childishness but childlikeness. I depend upon you this day, just today, keep me.

That of course is very demanding. It means that as a child I put myself into his power. He can do with me what he wants, he can mould me, he can order me. I do hope you’ve got your picture of the Christian life right.

I meet so many Christians who seem to have got a picture of the Christian life rather like this, that they are sitting at a table and there is a sideboard full of blessings and they say, now God, will you please go and give me this, I need it, bring it please here.

And they’re always asking God and God is always apparently bringing them something more. As I understand the picture in the Bible, it is God who is sitting at the table and it is I whom, it is you, it is us who are standing all around him. And God says to you and he says to me, go and do that for me, go and fetch that piece of fruit for me, go and do that piece of service for me. And I scurry off and do it and in doing it I’m blessed.

So it’s not me putting pressure on God, it’s God ordering me and as, as his child I’m dependent upon him, I obey him and so he answers my prayers because I’m doing them in his cause and in his service.

Don’t be a hypocrite, don’t be a heathen. Then verse 14 and verse 15 which might be entitled, don’t be a humbug.

If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Now that’s a very interesting condition, isn’t it? Here he bluntly says that he will not answer prayer. Why won’t he answer this prayer? Because I ask him for something that I will not give to somebody else.

I’m suddenly convicted by coming to a Tuesday service that the most important thing in the whole of life and time and eternity is to be forgiven and I go to God and I ask to be forgiven.

Somebody comes to me and asks that they might be forgiven in some row that we’ve had and I refuse. I won’t let that long-standing sore be healed. Am I surprised then that the blessing of God doesn’t fall on me?

This is one of the greatest lessons in the New Testament, that all that God pours out on me, all that God gives to me is not only for my enjoyment but also to be shared.

I saw a very clever advertisement on the tube going up to Manchester yesterday. As a matter of fact, I don’t think it’s quite as clever as I thought it was cause I can’t remember what it was for, which spoils my illustration, but it’s for some kind of picnic ware I think.

And it says, aping a biblical phrase, give to others what you would that they would give to you. I suppose it has Christmas in mind.

But that’s a very searching condition for answered prayer. God gave me a very great blessing recently and then when I was rejoicing in it, somebody came and asked for a share in it and I wasn’t so keen on that.

But God made it very plain to me that if I wasn’t immediately willing to pass on that which I had received, then he wouldn’t bless me.

These conditions are pretty tough, aren’t they? I’m not to learn from the hypocrites, the religious leaders, on the one hand. I’m not to learn from the pagans on the other. I’m not to be insincere and ask for that which I’m not willing to pass on to others. In other words, this has got to be real.

It’s got to be a true relationship. Prayer is not a machine. It’s not like going and putting a coin in it. Nothing, the chocolate doesn’t fall so I start hammering the thing in a kind of bad temper and then call for the guard. Prayer is not like that, you can’t treat God like that.

Prayer is the most wonderful privilege in the world. It’s coming to our heavenly Father into whose family I’ve been introduced through Jesus Christ and through the miracle of the new birth. It’s coming to him in secret daily, daily to ask for what I need, daily to receive great blessings, knowing very well that everything I receive is in trust for passing on.

Then God will start to answer our prayers in a very big way. It would be wonderful if this should happen amongst the Christians in the city. We should find that revival was very quickly around the corner.

Let’s pray.

When you pray, say, Father, give us this day our daily bread. Heavenly Father, we pray that you will teach these lessons to our hearts and minds and consciences afresh this morning. If there is someone in this church, in this lunch hour, who is not a member of your family, may they see the wonder of this privilege and turn even this very moment in their hearts to Jesus Christ and ask for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Will you teach them to pray, Abba Father?

And for those of us who have known you, heavenly Father, for years, perhaps many years, teach us to become daily more dependent upon you and daily more willing to share the answers that you pour out upon us. We ask it through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.