Unanswered Prayers

“Why, God, do you turn a deaf ear?” Psalm 88:13; Message Bible

Have you been where the psalmist is?  Have you ever felt God didn’t hear your prayers?  Have you felt your prayers were hitting a brick wall or that God just isn’t answering?  Most all of us experience this feeling from time to time.  The problem isn’t with God.  The problem is with us.  There are many things to check out:

Unconfused sin.  God forgives when we confess and repent.

Asking for the wrong things: as a parent we don’t give our children things that would hurt them.

Looking for a different answer:  We expect God to answer the way we want rather than the way He knows best.

Not looking for the answer.  We fail to take the time to actively listen to God.

If you are in that mode now, test yourself.  Take responsibility for your own actions or inactions.  God is always listening and always answers.

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Promises

2Sa 7:25 “And now, LORD God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised,

God’s Word is full of promises for us.  They are there for us to claim.  We claim them by praying those promises to God.  We have problems in claiming those promises.  We don’t ask for the to be fulfilled in our life.  We don’t believe they are really for us.  We don’t believe we are deserving of them.  Actually, we, of ourselves, are not deserving of them but through Jesus and the love of God, they are there for all His children.  When we do ask for one of His promises to be fulfilled in our own life there are still things that might block the fulfillment besides lack of faith.  The major blockage is disobedience.  Have we used the promises we have already received from Him.   In addition to confessing our sin and receiving His forgiveness, we must forgive ourselves.  Many times we fail to call sin, sin.  Any disobedience and anything that separates us from our relationship with God is sin.  Among those is not walking in what we have already received and learned.  Before we can receive another promise, we must appropriate the ones we have received in our life.  What one of God’s promises are you wanting in your life today?  Confess your sins, receive forgiveness, ask for that promise and then, walk in the assurance of that promise.  God does not promise something He does not plan to give.  Confess, ask, receive, believe and walk.

 

Always With Us

Ge 28:16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep he thought, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it.”

How often are we totally unaware of the presence of our Lord.  Even though we read in scriptiure so many ways He says He is always with us, we seem to spend so much of our time unaware of Him.  We need to become continually aware of His presence with us.  I’ve mentioned this booklet before, “Practicing the Presence of God” about a monk named Brother Laurence.  It is now a free down-load e-book.  If you haven’t read it, I strongly recommend it.  It made a big impact on my life several decades ago.  If you have read it and are not practicing it, I recommend you read it again.  Not only should all we do be done to the glory of God, we should be doing everything knowing He is right here with us.  How might that change how we do things and our attitude in doing them.  It brings me great joy to carry on a conversation with my Lord throughout my day.  Sometimes I speak aloud and sometimes I just speak with Him in my mind.  Sometimes I just quietly know His presence with me.  It’s much like a marriage of many decades.  A husband and wife can sit in silence and still feel like they’re communicating love to each other.  Let’s choose today to practice the presence of God in our daily lives thus following the example of Jesus Who demonstrated the presence of the Father.

 

Listen and Obey

Isa 30:21 whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way walk in it.”

In our prayer group we discussed why people are afraid to pray and listen.  There are many reasons.  Some are afraid God will tell them to do something they can’t or don’t want to do.  This is a lack of trust.  God loves us more than any earthly parent could ever love their child.  He wants only the best for us.  Being afraid to hear His instructions to us and being afraid of walking with Him in obedience to His written word and His word to us through the quiet nudging of His Holy Spirit is caused by a lack of trust in His love for us.  We need not be afraid of being quiet after we have read His Word, the Holy Bible, or after we have prayed.  When God instructs us to do something, He enables us to do it.  Let’s be sure we spend at least as much time listening to God as we spend talking to Him.

 

Cry Aloud

Ps 3:4 To the LORD I cry aloud, and he answers me from his holy hill.

 

Have you ever been so tired or sick or frustrated or angry and you didn’t know what to do.  Perhaps you even wanted to quit.  The psalmist felt that way.  I really enjoy reading the psalms.  In this psalm he says he cries aloud to the Lord and the Lord answers him.  This is where we are to go when we are tired or discouraged or angry or sick or frustrated or worried.  We cry aloud to our Lord and listen and expect to hear the answer for us.  Many of us choose to vent to others or go to some drug or drink or other device.  These things might help temporarily but they don’t give us the answers we need.  Only God has the answers for us.  Next time you experience one of these feelings, get by yourself where no one can hear you and cry aloud to our Lord.  Then be quiet and listen.  It’s best to listen with pen and paper and write what comes into your calming mind.  You’d be surprised what you hear the Lord say to you when you give Him a chance.  Cry aloud to the Lord and He will answer you  from His holy hill.

 

Hiding from God

Ge 3:9 But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”,

Adam and Eve knew they were guilty of disobeying God and were hiding from Him.  Before we pass judgment on them, we must look at ourselves.  There are many ways we try to hide from God.  We rationalize our disobedience in many ways: it’s not really important, it’s only a white lie, we are too busy to study the Bible, we don’t have enough money to be a giver, we’re too tired to join with other believers in worship, etc. and etc.  All these “excuses” are just that.  They are excuses that cause us to hide from God.  We may be afraid to study His Word to us because we think it will require action from us.  We may be afraid if we obey His Word we will be too different from others.  We hide behind our excuses.  We hide behind our quick prayers by a lack of willingness to pause and listen to God’s response to our prayers.  We must take time to search ourselves and see where we are hiding from God.  We really deceive ourselves because God knows where we are and how we are.  When we hide from God we are really hiding truth from ourselves.  Let’s quit hiding and ask God to reveal the areas in us that need to come into His light.

 

Temples

1Co 3:16 Don’t you know that you yourselves are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit lives in you?

We think of temples only as buildings.  God says our body is His temple.  This is because His Holy Spirit lives in us so we become a temple, a holy place.  Since we are God’s temples we must be sure we keep the temple holy.  Some of us put graffiti on our temple walls.  The graffiti comes from unholy words coming out of our mouths from anger, despair or any other reason.  We must keep our mouths clean no matter what the emotion inside.  When we have an emotion that would tempt us to write graffiti on the walls of our temple, we must immediately go to prayer and ask God to help us guard our mouths.  That are other ways we defile our temples: gluttony, addiction to food, cigarettes, or alcohol, addiction to TV, sports, or any other thing which might dominate our time over our time with God.  How is your temple today?  I know mine needs some spring housecleaning.

 

Choose to Trust

2Co 4:1-18 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all.  So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.   For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

A little more on facing hard times.  When it seems everything is crashing in on us there are options.  We can say “Woe is me,” we can sink in depression, we can explode on others in anger or we might express our fear or anxiety in other ways.  God tells us to change our focus.  Our troubles come and go but He is with us throughout eternity.  Where do we choose to focus our eyes.  Where our eyes look, our mind and emotions follow.  I really enjoy reading the Old Testament book of Job.  Everyone around him told him he had every right to be discourage, to be sad, to be angry.  He chose to trust God.  Even though Job could not see the blessings God had for him on down the road, Job chose to trust in the unseen.  No matter what we must face during our walk in this life, all of it is temporary.  Our praises to God and our faith in Him along with our relationship to Him will last throughout eternity.  Who will you choose to trust: bad circumstances or God’s love?

 

Our Mouths

Ps 17:3 Though you probe my heart m  and examine me at night, though you test me,you will find nothing;  I have resolved that my mouth will not sin.

Ps 141:3 Set a guard over my mouth, O LORD; keep watch over the door of my lips.

Pr 4:24 Put away perversity from your mouth; keep corrupt talk far from your lips.

Pr 21:23 He who guards his mouth and his tongue keeps himself from calamity.

Mt 15:11 What goes into a man’s mouth does not make him ‘unclean,’but what comes out of his mouth, that is what makes him ‘unclean.’ ”

Several scripture verses because I want you to really understand the power of the mouth.  Sometime look up how many times the word “mouth” appears in scripture.  The majority of the time it deals with what comes out of the mouth—words that are spoken.  So many times our troubles are because of what has come out of our mouth.  We are so quick to complain, correct someone else, say words in anger and use words we shouldn’t.  God wants us to be quick to say thank you, to give praise to Him and appreciation to others, to accept the differences of others.  When we are experiencing bad times we must look back and review what has been coming out of our mouths.  We reap what we confess.

 

Equal Love

1Jn 3:18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth

How much time has someone told you they love you but with their actions they were saying the opposite?  We can confess love with words very easily.  Acting is love is another thing.  The only way we, as humans, can act in the love of truth, the love of God for others, and us is through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Truth.  The love God speaks of is not relegated to emotions.  Love is a verb, which takes action to display.  So often we hurt the ones we love the most by our self-centered actions.  We hold on to hurts we’ve perceived they caused us and do a tit for tat.  If he or she’s going to act that way, then I’m going to do the same.  This is not love.  We need to love our spouse, our children, our friends, our neighbors, and ourselves in the same way Christ loves us.  He loves us so much He never defended Himself when He took on our sins.  He has nothing but love, compassion and forgiveness for us.  Should we do less for each other?