Dearest family,
First of all, to all those who were there on Sunday, thank you for your great support of the barbecue after church that raised funds for the education of girls who are in the church plants in northern Togo. We desire the “girl-effect” to be effective in these contexts. $20 supports a child for a year’s schooling, covering their supplies and basic classroom needs. The good news is that we raised enough to educate 100 girls for the next school year. There are 100 others that we still want to support for the 2015-2016 school year. If you were not there on Sunday and would like to be part of this collaborative TAG effort then you can send your check (made payable to: The Antioch Group) for $20 or any amount. Mail to TAG at the church address. We are so excited about supporting this mission for the third year. Thank you to you all.
There was a lot of food on Sunday and nothing was left over except a few hot dogs that will be consumed at The Porch. There was also a lot of spiritual food in the preceding sermon. If you were in attendance you will know that it is not easily reduced to a short pastoral letter so I encourage you to download it and listen to it at your own pace. I ended the last message by asking if it was possible to close the gap between our asking and His answering; between our actual speaking and His assumed hearing; between our wanting and the waiting; between what we expect and what we experience; between what we are hoping for and what is actually happening? What bridged that gap between Abraham’s childlessness and the Pleiades and Orion? But it seems that he found a way to keep staring at stars. “Against all hope Abraham in hope believed.” (Rom. 4:18) Does that settle everything for us? We do not want to accept specious rationalizations as to why our asking is in the pending tray, if in fact it made it even that far. But is it not reasonable to at least ask about some possible explanations for the “gap” that might help close it somewhat? Can we look for some reasons?
By way of introduction I recounted how C.S. Lewis articulated his thoughts about asking, which he described as “the problem without an answer”. What ‘reasons’ would Lewis have been open to countenance? Several, I think, but with a proviso. In his typical self-effacing way he offered a throw-away line at the end of his essay on the efficacy of prayer, expressing his own weakness, but gently yet firmly warning about being too dogmatic about any area that we cannot fully fathom, or about legitimate tensions that we cannot resolve but have to keep taut in order to get the whole picture. Though a permissible discussion, there are not enough reasons to close the gap.
If a friend either refused to respond to our request, or denied it altogether, we would want to ask questions and seek reasons. We look for reasons for unanswered prayer to make sense of things, to make sense of relationship with God, in the same way that Lewis did, but with the same cautions. God is not threatened by this endeavor. “If God doth not grant your petitions it will put you to study a reason of that his dealing: and so you will come to search in your prayers and the carriage of your hearts therein to see whether you did pray amiss.” (Thomas Goodwin) James does confirm that we can ask “amiss.” (Jm. 4:3) Three hundred years later, another commentator, J. Oswald Sanders conducted “a post-mortem on unanswered prayer” and suggested that “behind every unanswered prayer is a reason, which we must discover for ourselves.” (‘Prayer: power unlimited’) Peter does advise us that there are things that “hinder our prayers” (1 Pet. 3:1-7) and I mentioned well over twenty scriptural reasons for unanswered asking that are accounted for by the reasons that God refuses to listen.
What should we make of this? I would affirm Goodwin’s encouragement to us to “study” and “search” in a way that is open to check one’s own heart and humbly seek to learn, especially things that are convicting and formative for personal growth in asking. Who knows but in that process we may discover some things that will influence an answer. However, though I agree with the thought that there is a reason for every unanswered prayer, I do not believe that they are all discoverable, or that we must discover them. The faith that we need to ask is the same faith that we need to be operative when an answer is not forthcoming. Reasons alone will never close the gap.
That said, I did give a descriptive presentation (not a prescriptive one) to point out some of the possible ways of ordering our understanding of unanswered asking, without it being an inflexible classification – the kind of systemization that I argued is neither desirable nor possible. These were:
Dismissals – asking that is unheard because of reasons that God gives, not unanswered. (Ask Heran in the office if you want a more detailed list of some scriptural examples.) We are referring here to asking that is not answered by God because He refuses to listen; He chooses not to hear.
Disqualifications – This refers to inappropriate asking. For example, God can take no responsibility or give any support to something asked which is non-sense or which contravenes God-given laws of nature, or which contradicts his own nature and character, His will and His word. We cannot ask for God’s blessing on something He has clearly said He cannot bless.
Delays – This is when the prayer room becomes a waiting room. There are delays of fulfillment that appear to us as unanswered asking, but the fact is they have been heard, and more than that “decreed.” (Daniel 9:25, 26, 27) Although we are not as assured as Daniel of the ‘decree’ being a done deal, we can be equally assured that we are heard, and equally sustained to wait. That being said, it is not easy, which is why we looked at the scriptural exhortations to be patient and to wait eagerly. I love the way that John Stott put it: “We are to wait neither so eagerly that we lose our patience, nor so patiently that we lose our expectations, but eagerly and patiently together.” (The Message of Romans) Delayed answers are assumed given the scriptural emphasis on importunity and ceaseless asking.
Deferrals - Some unanswered prayers are divinely willed deferrals. Our asking is necessary and timely as it is being ceaselessly expressed, but it is being ‘stored’ to be answered another day, or another time that may well be beyond our sojourn on earth. Stephen’s last breath was asking for something which was answered after his death. Denials – This is about taking ‘no’ for an answer. Unlike ‘dismissals’, asking which may be denied will likely be an appropriate desire, a legitimate request given present perceptions, a reasonable inquiry given current understanding. It is the apparent acceptability of what is asked for that makes the acceptance of a denial so difficult. Although it is true that delays are not denials, it is easy to understand why an interminable delay will be assumed to be a denial. Having said that, there are denials. Scripture presents us with some examples, and they were all experienced by stellar saints, (we looked at Moses, David and Paul) and at one who was the saintliest of all, Jesus. If denials were the membership qualification for this alumni group we would be less concerned about them!
Divine discretions – I called these “creative unanswers”! There is a saying that suggests that sometimes the answer to our asking is not rejected but redirected. Divine discretions do not deny the requests but apply their intentions and desires to different applications and outcomes. Of course, this still feels to us like a deprivation or a diversion. After our asking has pitched the way that things need to be, it is as if God says, “You are on the right track, but how about we do it like this not that?” Abraham’s prayer for Ishmael was answered in Isaac. What Moses asked for himself was to be fulfilled in Joshua. David’s prayers for the child who died revert to Solomon. David asked to build the Temple, but again, the answers were reserved for Solomon. Though the specific thing asked for was not delivered in the terms in which it was asked, nonetheless, this asking was not ‘unanswered’ but applied in a way that advanced God’s glory, fulfilling his renown more than answer to the original request would have done.
You could argue that as great as the problem of his suffering was for Job, it was the matter of unanswered asking that gave rise to so much of his tortured argumentation. The fact that this is the concern of possibly the earliest written text in scripture, suggests how foundational this matter is to the human soul. It is God himself who gives Satan an allowance to test Job, and surely his unanswered asking tested his faith. Peter argues that the suffering of our trials “have come so that your faith - of greater worth than gold… may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” (1 Pet. 1:7) The good news is that the glory of God remains the outcome of the testing of faith. The bad news is that we may have to wait till the parousia for this being validated and vindicated. Calvin conceded that circumstances may convince us that God has forsaken us, and confirmed that unanswered prayer sorely tests faith. His observation does not sound very comforting, that God may have us “to lie a long time in the mire before he gives us a taste of his sweetness.” The continuance of asking at such times, with eager patience, is the outworking of faith.
Psalm 56:8 records: “You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” Yet, like Job, we know how easy it is to give up and question the viability and veracity of asking. Why not just crumple the script of our asking and throw it in the ever-filling trashcan of unanswered prayer? The prelude to the Bible’s great chapter on heroes and heroines of faith is addressing those who stood their ground “in the face of suffering.” (Hebr. 10:32): “So do not throw away your confidence… have need of endurance… receive what is promised…. He who is coming will come and not delay.” (10:37) Of course, this sounds a bit rich given the fact that delay, denial, deprivation, diversion (whatever you want to call it) is characterizing the present problem. At least it affirms us, and we know that God himself is not unmindful that it really is a delay. So we have a choice. Though there is pain in what is experienced by us as unanswered, will we throw away our request into the trashcan, or will we trust our tears to the bottle? Avoiding the dismissals and disqualifications, bearing the delays and deferrals, accepting the denials, will we be discreet in trusting God’s discretions? What will our response be to unanswered asking? The trashcan or that bottle?
Pastorally yours,
Stuart