THE QUESTION OF UNANSWERED PRAYER AND THE ADDICTED WHO FEEL DEJECTED ARE THE OBJECT OF THIS STUDY.
THE DEFINITION OF FAITH: CONFIDENCE IN THE INTEGRITY OF GOD!
We believe in a transcendent God, all-powerful, yet personable. But, so much about life cannot be understood rationally, especially unanswered prayer. Can we talk?
I’m not certain that prayer is as complex as we tend to think.
Perhaps God is NOT as complex as we believe.
Faith has sharp edges! “The Word of God is […] sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing …”
“GOD AIN’T HEAVY, SIN IS!”
I have listened over the years to so many heart cries. I have had many of my own. I visited crying fields often when I was a child.
Desperation prayer is the irrepressible cry of the heart. But, here’s the deal: prayer must be IN TRUTH! And this is where most of us miss the mark — the mark of truthfulness with God and with the self. I could end this study right here, but some things need to be talked about and this is one of those things.
Why is it that God doesn’t seem to care about all the suffering in the world … all the injustices? So many Christians cannot help but think God has abandoned them, or doesn’t like them anymore, or that they just cannot please a perfect God. Some have abandoned God, because prayer seemingly has not worked for them.
Answered prayer certainly increases faith and preserves faith. Likewise, unanswered prayer has the opposite effect.
We all, as believers, have experienced doubt. We have all questioned God’s dealing with evil and suffering. We struggle with unanswered prayer. We all have questions regarding our wonderful creator, because: “My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isaiah 55:8).
Crying hearts of believers and unbelievers echo in the valleys of life, where many times, God is the last hope for an abused heart, a troubled soul in desperation mode, a person trapped in the snares of addiction, of life seeming without hope, and countless other circumstances. Listen to these pleas of the heart:
“Please throw me a rope, God, please.”
“I’m drowning in this sin.”
“I’m in this addiction, this hurt, this rejection, this loneliness, this despair, God doesn’t like me, God doesn’t care.”
“Where’s the rope? Wave your magic wand, Lord! I’m rubbing the genie-lamp, grant my wishes!”
From these words we can read the despair, and the resentment. Perhaps millions of rejected people have thought and said: “life is the pits and then you die.” Life can pull us in many unexpected directions.
Where does the believing and unbelieving heart go for answers when God seemingly doesn’t answer or care? There are many more heart-felt pleas, many more forsaken voices that have and still do on a daily, nightly bases, question life. I want to continue with more questions and comments:
“What about those people whose prayers always seem to be answered, why is that?”
“What about the people who never pray, but everything comes their way?”
“Where is justice? How come so many people are so lucky?”
“What about all the times I have prayed for God to help me? I have cried my heart out begging God to help me, but He never has. Why? Why doesn’t He care?”
“I love what I do, it makes me happy, but I do not like who I am!”
“I do not want to be this way!”
“I hate who I am, but I just can’t help it, I am who I am! So, why doesn’t God change me?”
“My pain becomes worse in the silence of the night and I feel so lonely and life is so unfair.”
“WHERE IS GOD?”
“Where is God when we need Him? “
“I sometimes feel like I can never qualify for answered prayer, and I fully admit my disqualification. This burden of qualification, is another burden. How do I qualify?”
“Life without answered prayer is a life of gloom — a feeling of hopelessness, despair and abandonment, so I just quit praying. What’s the use? I need to hear from God!”
“When it comes to unanswered prayer, I am perhaps the most dejected, reluctant person I know.”
“I struggle with disillusionment and seem always on the verge of walking away from my faith.”
“Why must I plead with God?”
“Why isn’t God listening?”
“Why doesn’t He see me, my crying heart, and give me the comfort and assurance I seek?”
“Why doesn’t God kiss the hurt and make it well?”
These are valid questions and valid comments. They deserve answers. They have substance. Most people on the planet that pray have experienced these feelings.
WHEN WE PRAY
Prayer is very important to us because we all need to know that God really exists and cares. When we pray to God, we need the assurance or reassurance now and then, now and again, that God is listening and still loves us in spite of ourselves.
In our desperation prayers, we place ourselves in a position of vulnerability before God.
Consider the following three questions:
Are we carrying our faith?
Is our faith carrying us?
Is God heavy?
These three questions can be haunting. But the honest answers may hold the Truth we deny to ourselves.
Prayer is conversing with God. It is meditation — thinking with God!
Prayer must be lived as a part of living with God!
THEREFORE, we cannot live apart from God (without a proper relationship), no matter how we justify it. We need to be in a proper relationship.
Having said this, however, I must add, when prayer is unanswered, it does not necessarily mean we are living apart from God.
When we cry (literally) for God to answer our prayer, to help us with life, or against the power of our flesh, it is then He whispers.
In the hush of silence, God can be heard.
To answer our legitimate prayers, God must see into our soul-thinking. The true desire of our heart is what God sees. What do you see? Maybe the question should be what do you think you see in your heart? Are you being truthful with yourself? Are you being truthful with God? Are you obedient, or living in sin? What does God’s Word have to say about your lifestyle? Who controls your thinking, God or you? God or your fleshly desires? Do you give in to your immorality by justifying it?
“Those who worship God, must worship Him in TRUTH.”
Let’s revisit God our Savior:
Jesus Christ is who He claimed to be — the Son of God — the Savior of the world. He either is or He isn’t! How do you see Christ?
God is a God of Justice and Mercy, or He isn’t. How do you see God?
God cannot help us if we are living against Him, if we live in sin, if we live in untruth. We are not destined to live apart from God, that is our choice.
So, be honest, are you living WITH God or against God? Are you living to satisfy your addiction? There are many fleshly appetites: drugs, alcohol, chocolate, soda, tobacco, eating, gambling, sex, lying, etc.
Addiction is a mental thing, with a fleshly appetite. Think about that for a moment. Read that a second time.
Are you judging others because they are different? Do you gossip and/or ridicule? Do you talk behind a person’s back?
Perhaps the sin we are in is because we like the sin we are in, even if we hate who we are.
So, maybe we should STOP the sin that has always beset us. And can we? Sure we can! HOW, you ask? “Tell me how and I will do it,” you say.
Are you being honest with yourself? Oh, stop promising God you’re going to quit this time, IF He will help you. Promising God on a condition of His help is not a commitment. It is an excuse doomed to failure! Why? Because your promise is based on a condition, which is really a way out of your commitment — a convenient excuse for planned failure. Yes, planned failure. There is no commitment to stop, when there is a condition. You are not being honest with yourself, nor God.
There must be NO CONDITIONS! Decide for yourself, I AM QUITTING this addiction or this pattern of wrong-thinking (whatever the case may be), and then do it. “I have quit!”
The power of the Holy Spirit is in us as a result of our faith in Christ. Salvation. Therefore, we can STOP! There is no excuse, no justification!
Perhaps Satan has deceived and is deceiving us with humanistic philosophy.
How is it we listen to Satan and believe his lies so easily, but we do not listen to God and believe God’s Truths?
When we live our life our way, we have taken the power away from God the Holy Spirit and neither His voice nor His answer can be heard. Perhaps this is why certain prayers go “unheard” and “unanswered.”
Look at yourself first. Are you in line with God’s Word? Are you listening to Him or listening to the world (and conforming to the world instead of conforming to Him)?
The answer to these questions may very well hold the reasons why your prayer isn’t heard or answered. God is waiting for you to do your part and get in line with Him and His Word.
His action, His strength awaits our true repentance.
When we finally recognize our own addiction, our own weaknesses in the flesh, who would you say actually turned on the light? Who caused us to recognize them? Was that not God? When we hate who we are, who caused us to hate who we are?
When we refuse to stop doing the thing that corrupts our relationship with God, we must pay the consequences. Unanswered prayer is a terrible price to pay, for sure, but the highest price to pay is if God must end our earthly life, rather than allow us to sin more and more, over and over, until death do us part … and it inevitably will.
God is not the God we think He should be! Satan is not who we think he is. Addiction is not a place of escape, it is a place of slavery to the addiction. But in addiction, you will not like the person you are, or the one you have become.
Ever wonder where the term “chain smoker” came from? It means more than lighting the next cigarette from the current one, it also means “chained to smoking.” This is why chain smokers find it nearly impossible to unchain their addiction from nicotine.
When you stop the sin-pleasures, in genuine repentance, God will raise you out of the sin you are in by HIS power from on high — the Holy Spirit. Whatever your addiction, you cannot stop doing it until you truly decide to stop doing it.
Does God control your life? Are you on the throne? (If you are, get off!) Give control back to God BY NOT TAKING ANOTHER DRINK; NOT ONE MORE SHOT IN THE ARM; NOT ONE MORE HOMOSEXUAL ACT; Not one more piece of chocolate; Not one more cigarette.
WELL?
We are corrupt! According to Scripture, our deeds and our attempts to please God outside of His Word are as “filthy rags!” Our thinking is corrupt. Our prayers are corrupt. That’s why Christ died! We need to be washed in the blood of the Cross.
Living in habitual sin is a choice.
We must get out of our own way and give our life (back) to our Heavenly Father. Do we not long for His Arms around us? Well then, STOP being who you are and doing what you are doing, and God will make you what He wants you to be.
You may be His ambassador to those who have the same problem you did.
Do you really want to help other people? Do it! But, first you must never take the next drink, or smoke the next cigarette, or ______ ______ _____.
“Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Do you realize that no other religion utters these words?
Do you realize that this utterance is honoring Father God? Do you realize that you are His child? We cannot live in sin and honor God at the same time!
We cannot live in sin and respect Father God.
“God is a Spirit and we must worship Him in spirit and in truth.”
Every fleshly addiction is a perversion against God (because the addiction takes the place of God in your life). Every sin is ultimately against God.
If we as believers can say “Our Father,” then we must live a life that reflects that belief, otherwise we are not truthful with ourselves and God. Not only is God our Father, but He is our Savior. He is very close! He is IN US, and He knows the Truth from the inside.
God is sovereignty and Justice; God is Love and Mercy! Who are you? Until we are TRUTHFUL with ourselves and God, until we stop living lies, making our bed in corruption, God cannot help us, God cannot answer our prayer, and God cannot change who we are. Sin is a result of our past. GOD IS A RESULT OF YOUR PAST, TOO!
God hears every prayer of complete truthful repentance. Until we stop justifying our behavior, excusing ourselves, blaming our childhood, blaming God, blaming Dad or Mom, and ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS AND THOUGHT PATTERNS, we must pay a horrible price.
God will let us pay our prices, without His help. And whether he lets us pay the price or come alongside us and help us … is entirely up to us.
We cannot ignore God’s Mandates and be happy.
Want to be happy and at peace with Father God and yourself? STOP whatever it is that you need to stop. You know what it is. God knows what it is. It is time to “put away childish things,” and addictions and sin issues that are pure self-indulgence.
Our heart cry is the result of the convicting ministry of the Holy Spirit.
Our justification of immorality is our rejection of the Holy Spirit. God has not rejected us … we have rejected God.
What a terrible thing to do.
God will not sleep in the bed we sleep in. How arrogant of us to believe He will. How can we do abominable acts of sensual pleasure with God watching? You say: I am a believer, but you are not ashamed to do your addiction right in front of God? Are you really so deceived as to believe such an atrocity?
God will always love us — for always and always, but we will pay our own prices living apart from Godly control.
Faith has sharp edges! “The Word of God is sharper than a two-edged sword, piercing …” the heart of men living in untruth.
Yes! Our enemy is our flesh, the world, and Satan. And he is capable of ruling over us with deceit and counterfeit truth. Only the power of God can overcome the power of Satan in our lives.
Two more thoughts:
I believe even the hard-hearted of the world retain a desire to communicate with God.
I believe the atheist finds more doubt in his disbelief in God, than his doubts in a God, but denies his own viewpoint. God is faithful!
God is where we left Him! Come home, my son. Come home my daughter. Come back to me and I will heal your heart and fill your void. Turn around and come home right now. Get up. Move toward me. Take my hand and let’s walk together. Don’t look back. Do not doubt. I am with you and I will not forsake you. Come!
Amen, and amen. Come LORD JESUS, I believe you died for me. I believe you took my place on that cross. I believe you paid my penalty, for all my sins. I’m so glad you died for me. I’m so glad you love me that much, I’m not worthy, but you were. I love you Jesus!