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Cold Shoulders

October 12, 2011 by Leave a Comment

But he did not answer her a word. And his disciples came and begged him, saying, “Send her away, for she is crying out after us.” (Matthew 15:23 ESV)

Those who pray wholeheartedly but don’t get answers from God may take comfort from the story of the Canaanite woman. Jesus heard her prayers alright. He knew the urgency of her request. There was no question about the authenticity of her supplication: she was genuine, earnest, intense, and most of all, she had faith.

So why didn’t she get a prompt answer to her prayers?

Honestly, I have no idea. I just know for a fact that there are times when God simply takes His time. Without explanations, without warning, He goes silent. Maybe it is a test of our character. Or maybe because the time is not right.

Whatever the reason, we must remember that it is in moments like these when our souls pass through the fire of God. We wonder why other people seem to get prompt answers to their prayers while we stagger at the silence of God. It just doesn’t make sense.

You could pound the doors of heaven all you want, you could plead that you are earnest and sincere. But sincerity is not the only basis why God answers prayers. In the high heavens, God makes up decisions about our prayers on the basis of His omniscience and sovereignty. It takes faith to feel secure in the fact that the God who holds everything in His hands has your best interests at heart.

The Canaanite woman got her answers after a severe test of faith and wills. Her undaunting faith in the kindness of God prevailed. She knew deep within her heart that God would never turn away anyone who comes to Him.

But enough of the ancient Canaanite woman who’s already had a happy ending. The more relevant question to chew on today is this: Does it seem like God is giving you the cold shoulders? Aren’t your prayers getting answered? Take comfort in the fact that God heard them alright. He could just be taking His time. He’s not deaf, you know.

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Impossible

October 10, 2011 by Leave a Comment

In the first year of Cyrus king of Persia, that the word of the Lord by the mouth of Jeremiah might be fulfilled, the Lord stirred up the spirit of Cyrus king of Persia, so that he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom and also put it in writing…

Do not doubt the power of God to do something miraculous even in the lives of those who do not believe. King Cyrus of Persia was a heathen king but that did not stop God from stirring him up to issue an edict that eventually favored the small nation of Israel.

Cyrus was the king of the most powerful nation on earth at that time. In comparison, Israel was just a little piece of land in the little known corner of the vast Persian empire. In the world of ancient international politics, Israel was expendable.

But God doesn’t forget. He remembers the old promises that He spoke to the ancestors of the small Jewish nation. He could influence a heathen king and cause him to make a political move to favor His chosen people. He can wriggle through international politics just so He could fulfill an old promise.

Are you stuck in a seemingly impossible situation today? Do not despair. The God that we serve is also the God of the universe and His rule extends over the hearts of unbelieving people. He can cause other people to look upon you with favor and grace. As Don Moen’s old song says, He can “make a way where there seems to be no way.”

Don’t be afraid to ask for the impossible. Our God is never daunted nor shocked with our difficulties. Ask and it shall be given to you. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened unto you [Matt. 7.7]. Such promise. Such wonderful, wonderful promise.

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Would My Tears Make a Difference When I Pray?

May 31, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much. –James 5: 16

Many people think that this verse means that if we only pray long enough, hard enough and often enough, God will grant our prayers. That if we are just intense and emotional, the heavens would answer us.

I once had a conversation with a college friend who said that God has this one weakness: the tears of a praying Christian. While that sounds like a comforting (and cute) idea, it is actually theologically wrong on all fronts. God doesn’t have a weakness and our tears have no bearing in the way He will answer or not answer our prayers. He is not your mother for crying out loud! He is not fooled with your incessant yapping. He doesn’t answer prayers on the basis of the tears we shed or the emotional weight we put into our supplications.

The verse we quoted above actually says something entirely different. If we go back to the originals, the KJV rendering “effectual fervent” came from a single Greek word where we get our English “energy.” It literally means “to be at work or to effect something.” Meaning, something that is being powered (by God, as the context suggests).

The word “avail” in that verse also means “strength and ability.”

Put these two words together and you get a clearer meaning for this verse. It now says, “The God-powered prayer of a righteous man is strong.” Bible commentator Clarke says that this verse signify “energetic supplication, a prayer that is suggested to the soul and wrought in it by Divine energy.”

One thing I’d like to say here: the driving force behind a prayer should not be your emotions or your own intensity but the power of God. It is God that fuels your prayer life, it is His strength that does it. I believe this is liberating to a certain extent. Some people have this mistaken notion that they should be praying hard enough to get God to answer their wishes. The problem with this mentality is that nobody actually knows how much is hard enough.

So, would your tears make a difference when you pray? The answer is a big NO. It’s not tears that move Him, it’s faith.

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What “Pray Without Ceasing” Means

May 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Pray without ceasing. (1 Thes. 5: 17)

Is this advice from Paul realistic? I mean, have you ever seen someone who is praying round the clock? I bet you haven’t, not even in monasteries.

A careful study of the original text of this verse tells us that it means to pray without leaving an interval or gap, without intermission. It is the same word Paul used when he said he was in “continual sorrow” for his fellow Jews who rejected Christ (Romans 9: 2). A point worth noting here: people in sorrow don’t have to be reeling with anguish all the time. They go about there normal routines just fine while they grieve in their hearts without having to break into tears every five minutes.

That is exactly the picture Paul used to convey the idea of praying all the time. You don’t have to be on your knees making supplications to God 24 hours a day. You just have to be in a continuous awareness of God’s presence in which you view everything in life in God’s light.

John 15 has a word for this. It’s called abiding. I love that word. Abiding is when your waking hours are permeated with the thoughts of Christ. All your reactions to normal things of every day life are colored by your unbroken communion with God. Your self talk is replaced with short prayers.

When we do this, few things come into sharp focus. One is that praying is not that hard. It doesn’t have to be flowery and verbose. It’s not reduced to complaining either but just a spontaneous communication with God with the intent of enjoying His presence for the sake of enjoying His presence.

Two, obeying God is easier. With your thought life filled with things that are holy, your predisposition is geared towards obedience. Let’s face it, the only reason we find it difficult to obey God is because we don’t give it much thought. The more you soak yourself with the idea of surrendering your whole being to Christ, the easier it is for you to turn it into action.

Three, sin is automatically displaced from its unique place in your thought life and default reactions. With the consciousness of Christ permeating your entire being, sin has no other recourse but to untangle you. The more you abide in Christ, the more you lose interest with sin. In short, sin dies a natural death in the life of a person whose entire being is soaked with the presence of Jesus. You don’t fight it, you don’t exhaust all your energies keeping it at bay. The power of the cross of Christ is enough to drive it away from you.

I believe that the real struggle among Christians is not really the struggle to fight off sin but the struggle to abide in Christ on a daily basis. And the reason we are losing our battle against sin is not for lack of faith but our fighting the wrong battle.

To put it plainly, our real struggle is to get up every morning and open the pages of the Bible, get on our knees and pray. And then to keep that holy fire of God’s presence burning in our hearts all day until we get to our knees again at night and refuel our empty tanks.

We lose to sin because instead of taking care of our devotions, we rush to the day, trying hard to keep our eyes closed whenever we are bombarded with images of sin and lust, trying very hard not to steal and talk back and harbor anger. We spend our energies trying to quiet down our internal urges, trying to keep ourselves in check.

What do we get out of that routine? Nothing too glorious. Just battle ragged soldiers on the brink of collapse staggering to church on Sunday mornings, looking for a spiritual fix that could get them through the next seven days. And what have we accomplished? Not much. In fact, I believe that the most you could get out of this grim routine is you kept yourself from embarrassing scandals and from the cold prison bars.

If we only have the sense to stop and think things over, we would realize that Christ has much better and glorious plans for us than to crawl through life. The curious thing is that the prescription for a better life is actually written out clearly for us a long, long time ago, back in the days of Joshua. You know what I mean.

“Do not let this Book of the Law depart from your mouth; meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do everything written in it. Then you will be prosperous and successful.” –Joshua 1: 8

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The Secret to Answered Prayers

March 7, 2011 by 4 Comments

Anyone can verbalize their problems to God and think they are praying. Effective prayer is when you remind God of His promises and you appropriate those promises into your life.

I know I’ve heard this many times before but just this morning, the Lord refreshed this in my heart like I was hearing it for the first time. Prayer, the preacher said, is not so much about giving God a blow by blow account of your problems. Rather, prayer is when you remind God of His promises and ask Him to fulfill those promises to your specific situations.

To some people, this is like splitting hairs over some technical definitions of prayer. It’s not. The truth is that how you approach your prayers actually spells the difference whether they’re going to be answered or not.

Jesus said that it will be done to you according to your faith (Matt. 9: 29). If you stop for a moment and consider that, it’s actually a very powerful promise. God will give us what we believe He will give us. When we recite our problems to Him, we are not coming to Him in faith. In effect, we are not believing Him to do something; we’re simply grumbling, and complaining, and telling Him how difficult life is.

Confessing His word back to him is totally different. When you have back pains, you don’t pray by telling God how much it hurts. You pray by claiming his promise. It’s like saying, “God, I’m really in pain right now but I’m not gonna dwell on that. I just would like to remind you that in Exodus 15: 26, you said that you are the God that heals me…”

That change in perspective doesn’t change the fact that you’re hurting. Yes, the pain could still be there; maybe it’s not gonna go away very soon. But by changing the way you look at the situation, you create an atmosphere in your life where miracles can happen. Instead of a whiny attitude, you stand in faith, believing God’s word more than your pain.

This is the interesting part. Where there is faith, there the hand of God can move freely. In fact, it seems like God is compelled to move in a miraculous way when somebody believes He will do it.

Question: Is your prayer more of a declaration of faith in God’s promises or a litany of your endless problems?

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