When God Answers ‘No’ to Our Prayers

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | - Well, happy Friday, everyone.

00:00:05.320 | Thanks for listening to the podcast.

00:00:07.940 | My name is Tony Reinke,

00:00:08.960 | and John Piper joins us today over the telephone.

00:00:12.280 | You know, Pastor John, we get a steady stream of emails

00:00:14.620 | from listeners who ask about unanswered prayers,

00:00:18.080 | like this one from a podcast listener named Luis.

00:00:21.120 | Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:22.600 | In Philippians 419, I read this promise,

00:00:25.320 | that God will supply every need of mine

00:00:28.320 | according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.

00:00:32.640 | But I don't see God providing as his word says he would.

00:00:36.560 | My prayers go up, but it seems like God is silent,

00:00:40.200 | or he consistently answers me with an implied no.

00:00:44.560 | This causes me to feel discouraged and ignored.

00:00:47.880 | How do I respond to this no from God

00:00:51.080 | when I pray for good things?

00:00:52.760 | - I think few things have caused me to search my soul

00:00:58.080 | and search the scriptures more

00:01:01.040 | than the fact that I have called upon the Lord to do things,

00:01:06.040 | which I think are in perfect accord with his will,

00:01:10.440 | according to scripture,

00:01:12.600 | and yet he has not, or not yet, seen fit to grant,

00:01:17.600 | or at least grant in the way that I asked or hoped for.

00:01:21.680 | So I don't look upon the problem of unanswered prayer

00:01:24.960 | in a theoretical way, but in a very personal

00:01:28.240 | and sometimes gut-wrenching way.

00:01:33.000 | I don't claim to have a final answer.

00:01:36.800 | I hope someday to understand better

00:01:40.680 | and to have gone deeper with God in prayer

00:01:44.160 | so that I understand both from scripture and from experience

00:01:49.040 | how he deals with his children.

00:01:51.200 | But he has taught me some things,

00:01:54.200 | and it might be helpful if I give two Bible passages

00:01:59.200 | for you to think about and see whether or not

00:02:05.040 | they take you deeper than I've gone

00:02:08.920 | into the mind and heart of God

00:02:10.820 | with regard to the way he answers his children

00:02:14.160 | when they ask him for things.

00:02:16.560 | Now, one of the texts is Matthew 7, 7-11,

00:02:20.800 | and this I saw years and years ago,

00:02:23.080 | and so it's had a wonderful effect over the years.

00:02:25.040 | The other one is a brand new insight from Genesis 17,

00:02:28.480 | and it's right off my devotional front burner,

00:02:31.400 | so let me take these one at a time.

00:02:32.960 | Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 7.

00:02:35.440 | "Ask, and it will be given you.

00:02:38.840 | "Seek, and you will find.

00:02:40.320 | "Knock, and it will be opened to you.

00:02:42.380 | "For everyone who asks receives,

00:02:44.360 | "and the one who seeks finds.

00:02:46.040 | "And to the one who knocks, it will be opened."

00:02:49.960 | And then he uses this analogy, which helps me so much.

00:02:53.840 | "Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread,

00:02:57.380 | "would give him a stone?

00:02:59.640 | "Or if he asks for a fish, would give him a serpent?

00:03:03.100 | "If you who are evil know how to give good gifts

00:03:06.280 | "to your children, how much more will your Father,

00:03:11.280 | "who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?"

00:03:16.960 | That's an amazing analogy that draws us in

00:03:20.080 | to thinking about how we treat our children

00:03:21.800 | and how God treats his children.

00:03:23.240 | And what's striking here is that God promises

00:03:26.400 | to give good things to his children when they ask.

00:03:31.400 | And it's striking because it doesn't say

00:03:35.400 | he gives them precisely what they ask for.

00:03:39.080 | And since he's comparing himself to our own parenting,

00:03:44.080 | we know that's the case.

00:03:45.580 | We don't give our children,

00:03:47.200 | especially when they're two or three years old,

00:03:49.920 | everything they ask for because they don't know

00:03:53.440 | all that is good for them.

00:03:55.640 | I remember once my son Benjamin asked me for a cracker

00:03:58.800 | and I'm just totally eager to give him a cracker

00:04:01.800 | at snack time.

00:04:03.080 | And I reached for the box

00:04:04.480 | and I noticed they have mold on them.

00:04:06.600 | And so I tell him I can't give him a cracker

00:04:08.920 | because it has fuzz on it.

00:04:10.560 | And he says, "I'll eat the fuzz."

00:04:12.720 | (laughs)

00:04:13.920 | But I wouldn't give it to him because I knew better

00:04:18.780 | than he that mold was not good for him.

00:04:22.340 | And so that day he got something that he didn't ask for

00:04:26.060 | and didn't want as much as he wanted a cracker,

00:04:29.620 | but deep down would have wanted more

00:04:32.500 | if he knew what was good for him.

00:04:34.660 | And I think the words of Jesus point in this direction

00:04:38.820 | for us when dealing with unanswered prayer.

00:04:42.620 | Now, that may sound like a nice solution,

00:04:45.700 | but I know what some people are thinking,

00:04:49.180 | just like what I'm thinking,

00:04:50.420 | namely we ask glorious things of God,

00:04:54.960 | like the conversion of our family.

00:04:58.240 | And we can't imagine how it could be bad for us,

00:05:02.040 | how it could be moldy to have God save our family.

00:05:08.240 | So I don't presume to say this is a quick fix.

00:05:12.840 | And yet I do think the principle laid there

00:05:17.160 | should be embraced even if the application of it

00:05:20.040 | to all situations is a little harder for us to grasp.

00:05:23.760 | So that's the first help that God has given me

00:05:27.140 | in regard to how prayers are sometimes answered

00:05:30.800 | differently than we would ask.

00:05:32.840 | And here's the other one.

00:05:34.120 | And in a sense, this passage from Genesis 17,

00:05:38.520 | Genesis 17, 15 to 20 is an application in one way

00:05:43.520 | of what we've just seen in Matthew 7.

00:05:46.920 | So here's the text.

00:05:49.120 | "And God said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife,

00:05:54.120 | you shall not call her name Sarai,

00:05:57.160 | but Sarah shall be her name.

00:06:01.120 | I will bless her.

00:06:03.360 | And moreover, I will give you a son by her.

00:06:08.360 | I will bless her and she shall become nations.

00:06:13.640 | Kings of people shall come from her.'

00:06:16.880 | And then Abraham fell on his face and laughed

00:06:19.960 | and said to himself, 'Shall a child be born

00:06:22.600 | to a man who's a hundred years old?

00:06:24.400 | And Sarah, shall Sarah who is 90 years old,

00:06:28.400 | bear a child?'

00:06:29.560 | And Abraham said to God," now this is a prayer,

00:06:33.040 | "Abraham said to God, 'Oh, that Ishmael

00:06:37.320 | might live before you.'"

00:06:39.600 | In other words, God let Ishmael be the chosen seed.

00:06:43.520 | Verse 19, "And God said, 'No, but Sarah,

00:06:48.520 | your wife shall bear you a son

00:06:52.360 | and you shall call his name Isaac.

00:06:54.400 | And I will establish my covenant with him

00:06:57.160 | as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.'

00:07:01.600 | And then he says, 'As for Ishmael, I have heard you.

00:07:06.600 | Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful

00:07:12.720 | and multiply him greatly.

00:07:15.280 | He shall father 12 princes

00:07:17.800 | and I will make him into a great nation.'"

00:07:20.960 | Now, Abraham had asked God in prayer

00:07:26.760 | that Ishmael would be the son of promise.

00:07:31.640 | And God says explicitly, "No."

00:07:36.000 | Now he might've just left it at that

00:07:38.600 | and gone on and done to Ishmael

00:07:41.760 | whatever he was gonna do to Ishmael.

00:07:44.520 | But instead he takes pains to say,

00:07:48.800 | "I have heard you, I heard you.

00:07:53.640 | And that's what makes me do what I'm gonna do to Ishmael.

00:07:58.040 | I have heard you.

00:07:59.760 | That's why I'm going to bless Ishmael

00:08:01.760 | the way I'm going to bless him.

00:08:03.080 | You have asked me to bless Ishmael

00:08:06.640 | and I'm not gonna do it the way you asked,

00:08:08.680 | but I am gonna do it.

00:08:10.080 | And I'm doing it because I heard you."

00:08:13.800 | Now, what should we learn from this

00:08:17.080 | about God's no to our prayers?

00:08:19.920 | And here's the least I think we can learn.

00:08:23.880 | Even when God says no

00:08:26.320 | to the specific intention of our prayer,

00:08:31.440 | it does not mean there's no blessing

00:08:35.280 | in response to the prayer.

00:08:37.400 | In fact, I would go so far as to say,

00:08:42.200 | bringing in other texts, especially Matthew 7,

00:08:46.640 | when we pray with the right heart,

00:08:48.760 | we never, I mean never, pray in vain.

00:08:53.760 | My colleague, Tom Steller, used to say,

00:08:56.960 | and I loved it, still love it,

00:08:58.760 | God never does nothing in answer to prayer.

00:09:03.520 | So these two passages, Matthew 7, Genesis 17,

00:09:08.760 | along with numerous others,

00:09:10.800 | have kept me for 60 years crying out to God

00:09:17.400 | even when it seems that the specific thing

00:09:20.520 | I'm asking for is not granted.

00:09:24.320 | I really believe that God always gives good things

00:09:29.320 | to His children precisely because we ask Him

00:09:35.000 | and always because we ask Him.

00:09:38.480 | The blessings we receive may not be in the form

00:09:42.000 | of the things we ask, but they are owing to our prayers.

00:09:46.320 | They're owing to our prayers and they're good.

00:09:51.240 | In fact, I think a day is coming,

00:09:54.800 | according to Revelation 8, verses one to five,

00:09:58.800 | when all the prayers that have ever been prayed

00:10:02.520 | by God's faithful people,

00:10:04.520 | which have for thousands of years served

00:10:06.720 | as a kind of pleasing incense and aroma

00:10:09.640 | in the censer before the throne of God,

00:10:11.760 | will be poured out on the earth

00:10:15.640 | in the consummation of history

00:10:18.080 | and bring about the consummation of history.

00:10:21.560 | And it will be plain that not one expression

00:10:26.360 | of "Hallowed be thy name,"

00:10:29.960 | and not one expression of "Thy kingdom come,"

00:10:34.400 | or "Thy will be done on earth,"

00:10:36.120 | not one of those prayers will have been prayed in vain.

00:10:41.280 | - Amen, thank you, Pastor John.

00:10:43.040 | That's such a profound truth.

00:10:44.680 | And we have a whole episode on this text in Revelation 8,

00:10:48.680 | if you want more.

00:10:49.560 | See episode number 630 in the archive

00:10:52.880 | from about three years ago.

00:10:54.880 | But Tony, you ask, "How can I find episode 630

00:10:57.520 | "from such a long time ago?"

00:10:59.440 | I'm glad you asked.

00:11:00.320 | Go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:11:03.960 | And there you can explore all 1,200 of our episodes

00:11:06.360 | and search there for episode number 630.

00:11:09.240 | Just type it in.

00:11:10.520 | Or you can browse a full list of our most popular episodes,

00:11:12.960 | read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own.

00:11:16.320 | And of course, to get new episodes delivered to you

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00:11:19.080 | subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast

00:11:21.440 | in your favorite podcast app.

00:11:22.960 | Well, based on the inbox,

00:11:25.440 | our listeners are given to the sin of sulking

00:11:29.280 | when they don't get their own way.

00:11:31.440 | And if that's one of your struggles, you join many others.

00:11:35.040 | And next time, we're gonna talk about

00:11:36.400 | the fight against moping

00:11:38.440 | and how to make war on this urge to sulk.

00:11:41.800 | We'll hear Pastor John share

00:11:42.920 | from his own lifelong struggles here.

00:11:46.040 | That's next time on Monday when we return.

00:11:48.280 | Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:11:49.480 | Have a great weekend, and we'll see you then.

00:11:51.640 | (upbeat music)

00:11:54.240 | (upbeat music)

00:11:56.840 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

When God Answers ‘No’ to Our Prayers

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