(upbeat music) - Well, happy Friday, everyone. Thanks for listening to the podcast. My name is Tony Reinke, and John Piper joins us today over the telephone. You know, Pastor John, we get a steady stream of emails from listeners who ask about unanswered prayers, like this one from a podcast listener named Luis.

Hello, Pastor John. In Philippians 419, I read this promise, that God will supply every need of mine according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. But I don't see God providing as his word says he would. My prayers go up, but it seems like God is silent, or he consistently answers me with an implied no.

This causes me to feel discouraged and ignored. How do I respond to this no from God when I pray for good things? - I think few things have caused me to search my soul and search the scriptures more than the fact that I have called upon the Lord to do things, which I think are in perfect accord with his will, according to scripture, and yet he has not, or not yet, seen fit to grant, or at least grant in the way that I asked or hoped for.

So I don't look upon the problem of unanswered prayer in a theoretical way, but in a very personal and sometimes gut-wrenching way. I don't claim to have a final answer. I hope someday to understand better and to have gone deeper with God in prayer so that I understand both from scripture and from experience how he deals with his children.

But he has taught me some things, and it might be helpful if I give two Bible passages for you to think about and see whether or not they take you deeper than I've gone into the mind and heart of God with regard to the way he answers his children when they ask him for things.

Now, one of the texts is Matthew 7, 7-11, and this I saw years and years ago, and so it's had a wonderful effect over the years. The other one is a brand new insight from Genesis 17, and it's right off my devotional front burner, so let me take these one at a time.

Here's what Jesus says in Matthew 7. "Ask, and it will be given you. "Seek, and you will find. "Knock, and it will be opened to you. "For everyone who asks receives, "and the one who seeks finds. "And to the one who knocks, it will be opened." And then he uses this analogy, which helps me so much.

"Or which of you, if his son asks him for bread, "would give him a stone? "Or if he asks for a fish, would give him a serpent? "If you who are evil know how to give good gifts "to your children, how much more will your Father, "who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?" That's an amazing analogy that draws us in to thinking about how we treat our children and how God treats his children.

And what's striking here is that God promises to give good things to his children when they ask. And it's striking because it doesn't say he gives them precisely what they ask for. And since he's comparing himself to our own parenting, we know that's the case. We don't give our children, especially when they're two or three years old, everything they ask for because they don't know all that is good for them.

I remember once my son Benjamin asked me for a cracker and I'm just totally eager to give him a cracker at snack time. And I reached for the box and I noticed they have mold on them. And so I tell him I can't give him a cracker because it has fuzz on it.

And he says, "I'll eat the fuzz." (laughs) But I wouldn't give it to him because I knew better than he that mold was not good for him. And so that day he got something that he didn't ask for and didn't want as much as he wanted a cracker, but deep down would have wanted more if he knew what was good for him.

And I think the words of Jesus point in this direction for us when dealing with unanswered prayer. Now, that may sound like a nice solution, but I know what some people are thinking, just like what I'm thinking, namely we ask glorious things of God, like the conversion of our family.

And we can't imagine how it could be bad for us, how it could be moldy to have God save our family. So I don't presume to say this is a quick fix. And yet I do think the principle laid there should be embraced even if the application of it to all situations is a little harder for us to grasp.

So that's the first help that God has given me in regard to how prayers are sometimes answered differently than we would ask. And here's the other one. And in a sense, this passage from Genesis 17, Genesis 17, 15 to 20 is an application in one way of what we've just seen in Matthew 7.

So here's the text. "And God said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her. And moreover, I will give you a son by her. I will bless her and she shall become nations. Kings of people shall come from her.' And then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, 'Shall a child be born to a man who's a hundred years old?

And Sarah, shall Sarah who is 90 years old, bear a child?' And Abraham said to God," now this is a prayer, "Abraham said to God, 'Oh, that Ishmael might live before you.'" In other words, God let Ishmael be the chosen seed. Verse 19, "And God said, 'No, but Sarah, your wife shall bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac.

And I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him.' And then he says, 'As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him and will make him fruitful and multiply him greatly. He shall father 12 princes and I will make him into a great nation.'" Now, Abraham had asked God in prayer that Ishmael would be the son of promise.

And God says explicitly, "No." Now he might've just left it at that and gone on and done to Ishmael whatever he was gonna do to Ishmael. But instead he takes pains to say, "I have heard you, I heard you. And that's what makes me do what I'm gonna do to Ishmael.

I have heard you. That's why I'm going to bless Ishmael the way I'm going to bless him. You have asked me to bless Ishmael and I'm not gonna do it the way you asked, but I am gonna do it. And I'm doing it because I heard you." Now, what should we learn from this about God's no to our prayers?

And here's the least I think we can learn. Even when God says no to the specific intention of our prayer, it does not mean there's no blessing in response to the prayer. In fact, I would go so far as to say, bringing in other texts, especially Matthew 7, when we pray with the right heart, we never, I mean never, pray in vain.

My colleague, Tom Steller, used to say, and I loved it, still love it, God never does nothing in answer to prayer. So these two passages, Matthew 7, Genesis 17, along with numerous others, have kept me for 60 years crying out to God even when it seems that the specific thing I'm asking for is not granted.

I really believe that God always gives good things to His children precisely because we ask Him and always because we ask Him. The blessings we receive may not be in the form of the things we ask, but they are owing to our prayers. They're owing to our prayers and they're good.

In fact, I think a day is coming, according to Revelation 8, verses one to five, when all the prayers that have ever been prayed by God's faithful people, which have for thousands of years served as a kind of pleasing incense and aroma in the censer before the throne of God, will be poured out on the earth in the consummation of history and bring about the consummation of history.

And it will be plain that not one expression of "Hallowed be thy name," and not one expression of "Thy kingdom come," or "Thy will be done on earth," not one of those prayers will have been prayed in vain. - Amen, thank you, Pastor John. That's such a profound truth.

And we have a whole episode on this text in Revelation 8, if you want more. See episode number 630 in the archive from about three years ago. But Tony, you ask, "How can I find episode 630 "from such a long time ago?" I'm glad you asked. Go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

And there you can explore all 1,200 of our episodes and search there for episode number 630. Just type it in. Or you can browse a full list of our most popular episodes, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own. And of course, to get new episodes delivered to you three times per week, subscribe to the Ask Pastor John podcast in your favorite podcast app.

Well, based on the inbox, our listeners are given to the sin of sulking when they don't get their own way. And if that's one of your struggles, you join many others. And next time, we're gonna talk about the fight against moping and how to make war on this urge to sulk.

We'll hear Pastor John share from his own lifelong struggles here. That's next time on Monday when we return. Until then, I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend, and we'll see you then. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)