REVIEW
FLIP CHART: SOM’S KEY VERSE, GOAL, MOTTO
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness ….” (Mt. 6:33a).
The law sends us to Christ for justification; Christ sends us back to the law for sanctification.
FLIP CHART: Show new “Perfect Righteousness” chart explaining steps to coming to Christ (As a worm, mourning, meek, spiritual hunger/thirst with the result of legal righteousness). Explain: moral righteousness, immediate moral change at conversion, gradual change through life’s challenges and speeding up moral change via CCRC (Concentration, Choice, Reflection and Confession/Thanksgiving). Key verse, “By one sacrifice He has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb. 10:14).
FLIP CHART: John Stott’s outline of SOM.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened.Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 7:7-12)
OUTLINE FOR TODAY:
KEY QUESTIONS ABOUT PRAYER
I. Why Should We Pray? (Jesus Prayed, Relationship, Partnership)
II. Why Doesn’t God Answer Every Prayer? (Holy, Won’t Abdicate)
III. Why Does God Delay in Answering prayer?
A. Conflict, Opposition from Satanic Forces
B. He Loves to Hear Our Voice, Fellowship with Us
C. Humble us, The Answer is not Due to Our Merit
D. We’re not Ready to Receive the Mercy We Seek
E. We Need to Become More Deeply Unified with Object of Our Prayer
F. Must Work in Others First, Many Pieces to the Puzzle.
G. Answer Will Be More Prized, Sweeter When It Comes.
WHY DOES GOD DELAY IN ANSWERING PRAYER?
INTRODUCTION:
David Jeremiah: There is more discouragement about prayer than anything else in the Christian life.
J.C. Ryle: The thought steals into our heart, “It is no use to pray.”
Of course, the thing that most dampens enthusiasm to pray is when we don’t see an answer, when the answer is delayed, even though we have been persistent, maybe for years. How do we handle that?
We studied previously that our Father sometimes does not answer because we do not meet all the conditions of prayer (Pray in faith, in His name, according to His will etc), because he is holy and only responds to what is best for us and because He is not abdicating, turning the world over to us.
ILL: Howard Hendricks, the Dallas Theological Seminary professor said that he always thanked God for unanswered prayer. He noted that when he was young one of the women in his church said that were praying for him that he would one day marry her daughter and be her son-in-law.
The perfect father does not always give into his children’s request. He always reserves the right to do what is best for his child.
Nevertheless we all know that God’s seeming delay in acting for us often sucks the life out of faith and prayer. It makes us want to give up and all of us have wanted to give up from time to time.
The Psalmist wrote: Will the Lord walk off and leave us for good? Will he never smile again? Is his love worn threadbare? Has his salvation promise burned out? Has God forgotten his manners? Has he angrily stalked off and left us? “Just my luck,” I said. “The High God goes out of business just the moment I need him.” (Psalm 77:7-9, The Message)
TABLE DISCUSSION QUESTION: What would happen if God answered all of our prayers (prayers that are according to His will) on the first verbalization of a request? List the consequences. Write the reasons on the Flip Chart.
Do we only feel things are done on time if they are done when I think they should be done?
Some reasons why the answers to our prayers are delayed:
A. CONFLICT, OPPOSITION FROM SATANIC FORCES
At that time I, Daniel, mourned for three weeks. I ate no choice food; no meat or wine touched my lips; and I used no lotions at all until the three weeks were over. . . . . . (a heavenly being appeared) “Do not be afraid, Daniel. Since the first day that you set your mind to gain understanding and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard, and I have come in response to them. But the prince of the Persian kingdom resisted me twenty-one days. Then Michael, one of the chief princes, came to help me, because I was detained there with the king of Persia. . . . . For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. (Daniel 10:2-3, 12-13; Eph. 6:12).
ILL: Rees Howells praying in Wales for victory in WWW II. Elwin Palmer, a captain in the US forces said that he thought that he was winning the war until he read the story of Rees Howell and saw how he and his fellow believers were wrestling for hours in prayer for victory.
B. HE LOVES TO HEAR OUR VOICE, FELLOWSHIP WITH US
If our Father always answered immediately we would most certainly decrease the amount of time we spent in prayer.
FLIP CHART: Proverbs 15:8 says that the prayer of the upright is His delight.
“The Lord is near to all who call on Him . . . .” (Ps. 145:18
My heart has heard you say, “Come and talk with me.” And my heart responds, “Lord, I am coming.” (Psalm 27:8, NLT)
The Lord delights in those . . . put their hope in his unfailing love (Psalm 147:10).
C. TO HUMBLE US, SO THAT THE ANSWER IS NOT DUE TO OUR MERIT
It helps us see that we did not earn the answer. The answer was a gift of grace.
“We may too easily assume we merit some ready answer, or that he is at our beck and call like a butler, not as a sovereign Lord and loving Father.” (John Piper as quoted from Thomas Watson, Body of Divinity)
Our inherent sinful tendency is self-importance and pride, thinking that what we get we deserve. We may know that we are saved by grace but somehow we still continue on feeling we merit God’s blessings and in fact earn them.
D. WE ARE NOT READY TO RECEIVE THE MERCY WE SEEK
God denied Paul’s request to have the thorn removed and Paul said that he was learning to boast in his weakness, learning that when he was weak he was strong. If God had answered Paul’s prayer Paul might never have learned this vital truth.
God denied Paul totally but He also sometimes delays an answer because we are not ready to receive it. God still has to do a refining work in our lives.
“When through fiery thy pathway shall lie,
My grace all sufficient shall be thy supply.
The flames will not hurt thee, I only design
Thy dross to consume and they gold to refine”
E. WE NEED TO BECOME MORE DEEPLY UNITED WITH THE OBJECT OF OUR PRAYER
READING: He wants to interest his people in each other, and to cement their many hearts, as it were, into one. It is his great desire to bring all his people to care for each other and to love each other. Place before your mind the case of a great family. Suppose the father should not encourage his children to ask favors for each other. You say at once this would be very bad. Certainly a wise father would encourage that for the sake of strengthening the bands of mutual sympathy in his household. Some of the best families I ever knew have been remarkable for this. Each of the children were in the habit of asking favors not for himself, but for his brothers or sisters. You can easily see the value of this in a family. Surely its value cannot be less in Gods’ great family. It cannot be strange, therefore, that God should encourage his children to expect to be heard when they pray for their brethren and sisters. You can see how important it is that a father should encourage in his children the loving act of asking favors for each other, and should encourage them to do so for the very purpose of cultivating love in their hearts. (Charles Finney).
As we pray for others we begin to identify with them and then seek to reach out and help them. Sometimes we end up being the answer to our own prayers.
ILL: Both William Carey and Hudson Taylor said that they were called to be missionaries through praying “The Disciple’s Prayer,” what we often refer to as “The Lord’s Prayer” with much carefulness.
Delayed prayer is often God’s way to bring us to care deeply for others.
ILL: How many times have you prayed for a missionary project and then decided to make a contribution?
ILL: Praying through the “Barnabas Fund” booklet on the persecuted church has given me a much deeper concern, love and compassion for the children of God who are living in oppressive societies.
F. HE MUST WORK IN OTHERS FIRST. THERE ARE MANY PIECES TO THE PUZZLE
In the first year of Darius son of Ahasuerus (a Mede by descent), who was made ruler over the Babylonian kingdom- in the first year of his reign, I, Daniel, understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet, that the desolation of Jerusalem would last seventy years. So I turned to the Lord God and pleaded with him in prayer and petition, in fasting, and in sackcloth and ashes. (Daniel 9:1-3)
Daniel may have prayed for years for the restoration of Jerusalem but God was not going to answer until the timing is right.
Often answers to prayers are delayed because God is putting other pieces of the puzzle together. How often have we said of answered prayer, “The timing was perfect? The answer came just at the right time!”
G. THE ANSWER WILL BE MORE PRIZED, SWEETER WHEN IT COMES
We all know how delayed gratification enables us to appreciate much more the gratification from a gift.
Allan Bloom in his book The Closing of the American Mind called his generation in the 1980’s generation ‘flat-souled’ because of the instant gratification, especially in sexual relations etc. The beauty of sexual relations in marriage is destroyed or at least seriously damaged he said by the instant gratification that is encouraged in our society.
CONCLUSION:
Our Father has given us great prayer promises: Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know.” (Jer. 33:3) “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.” (Mt. 7:7)
Yet we can list many prayer requests that took a long time to be answered and many others that, though they seem to be God’s will, have yet to be answered. The few reasons given why God delays in answering prayer do not answer all of our questions or even completely comfort our hearts.
We must still fall back on one of the great statements of Scripture: For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8-9).
ILL: “If I had my way this war would never have been commenced; if I had been allowed my way this war would have been ended before this, but we find it still continues; and we must believe that He permits it for some wise purpose of his own, mysterious and unknown to us; and though with our limited understandings we may not be able to comprehend it, yet we cannot but believe, that He who made the world still governs it.” (Reportedly stated by A. Lincoln to a group of Quakers, Team of Rivals Doris Goodwin)
“Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of (civil) war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.” (Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address)
SO WHAT???
1. There are some prayers that God, because He is holy cannot answer, and others because He will not abdicate His kingly role to us, will not answer.
2. Delays in seeing answers to pray can and often do put dampers on our desire to pray.
3. There are numerous valid and beneficial reasons why our Father often delays in answering our prayers.
4. In the end, in spite of all good reasons why answers to prayer are delayed, we need to rest in the goodness of God and His wisdom for the delay or denial.