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I will never forget. It was my final year at the Moody Bible Institute. Founder's Week was upon us, and the topic of the week was prayer. We had many incredible speakers to look forward to and I was excited because I have always had many questions about the topic. As tradition has it the then president of Moody, Joseph M Stowell III, spoke at the first session that Monday night. His text: James 5:16.
The prayer of a righteous man avails much.
He titled his message "The Muchness of Prayer." While he was able to get us all excited about the fact of how God listens to and answers our prayers, he left me very depressed on another point.
...a righteous man...
Righteous??? Definitely not a description of me! In fact, I am quite the opposite. Yes, I know through salvation I am positionally made righteous before God through the imputed righteousness of Christ. But to know it and to own it are two different things. And I have no idea how or when I will ever own it in my life. But here is why I struggle with that thought the most.
...avails much.
If I am made righteous by the imputed righteousness of Christ, then why do my prayers avail so little? I have prayed for numerous things and almost never seen them answered; positively or negatively. But when I have certain friends pray for me or something I know about, I do see God answer it. There is one friend in particular that I have asked to pray for things, and I know she does, and I see God answer her prayers almost immediately. So what is the problem here? This is when my thought returns to the first part.
...a righteous man...
So I must ask the question of what the problem might be. A couple possibilities come to mind. First; a problem of unconfessed sin that is hindering my relationship with God, and second; faith.
Unconfessed Sin
While we may have found forgiveness from sin at a fundamental level in the salvation experience, we still are bound to bodies of flesh that are bent toward sinning. Our spirits are renewed day by day, but our bodies of flesh are still in need of that final redemption, and as a result we still sin. The sins committed after the salvation experience can hinder our relationship with God. They do not cause us to loose salvation because our salvation is not dependant upon us but God, but they do get in the way of our ability to have close fellowship with him. So positionally I may be righteous before God thanks to the imputed righteousness of Christ, but experientially my sin is getting in the way of my fellowship and thus my prayers could be rendered ineffective. Perhaps the A.C.T.S. acronym for prayer is so helpful in this regard. First we show adoration; praise and worship towards God in prayer. Then we confess sin, even praying that God would reveal to us sin that we may not be aware of. Then after expressing thanksgiving for his work in our lives can we make our requests, our supplications made known to God, and thus the prayer of the righteous man will avail much.
Faith
Here is the second concern. Do I have faith that my prayers are not just being heard, but answered? Are my prayers specific, or am I being so general that even when God does answer, the answers are unrecognizable? We have the right and privilege to go before the throne of Grace BOLDLY. So let us do that, let us pray believing God will answer. And if we still struggle with faith, then maybe we should pray as the man in Mark 9:24 expressed; “I believe, help my unbelief!”
5 comments:
I sympathize with your situation because I too have been in a period of seemingly unanswered prayer for many years now. I am a Moody alum and I recall being moved by that very same message that Stowell preached at Founder’s Week. But I think Stowell’s message only highlighted the benefits of prayer. He did not address (nor did he intend to) the subject of unanswered prayer.
Here is my concern with your post. To suggest that there are only two possibilities as to why your prayers are "going unanswered" is a bit simplistic and presupposes that you fully understand God's intentions.
While a lack of faith and unconfessed sin certainly can hinder your prayers, there is more to this than meets the eye. Sometimes “righteous” and “faithful” people will pray persistently and never really know why their prayers are going answered.
Job is a prime example of a person who did nothing wrong and had faith in God, yet received the "silent treatment" for years. The point of the book of Job is to illustrate the mystery of God's sovereignty. Sometimes there are just not rational explanations as to why God does what He does.
As God’s adopted children, we understand that He wants us to receive all of the rights and privileges thereof, to include answered prayer. We see this throughout Scripture. One example is in Mark 11:24 where Jesus says- “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours.” The caveat, however, is that He does not tell us when we will receive it. There is a mystery of God's providence that we will never in this lifetime fully understand. And so we are encouraged in Scripture to be persistent in prayer (Luke 18), but our hope lies not in our ability to rationalize what God is doing, but in the mystery of His sovereign grace. We could go an entire lifetime without receiving answers to our prayers, but we must be content in Him for who He is- not in what He does for us.
Thanks for the note. I guess I was a bit simplistic as I sought to delve into the issue of unanswered prayer. As I was writing my focus was solely on the passage in James alone.
It is true that we may not receive an answer or we may have simply missed the answer because our own desires blind us. However, I am not convinced this is the norm. I also feel that faith/belief in God's hearing our prayers and having a good conscience before God is important. So yes, the topic is much more complex than I alluded to in the post, but at least it can get people thinking...
A theological thought here.....perhaps the James 5 text is not a good text to place as the controlling text of prayer.
Prayer seems to take on many diverse forms with many diverse purposes.
If prayer was only about asking God for stuff, then I wouldn't do it....in fact, there were several years when I just didn't pray. It took a theological shift (amongst other things) in order to get to a point where I began to pray again, but this time with a different focus. I now think of prayer as most simply: being with God. The point is not to change the world, or even myself (though that may and certainly is a result). But the point is that my expectation can't be to just rattle off a to-do list for God.
"ASSSS-PHALT" Joe Stowell.
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