Printer Friendly VersionOnce again this week I was asked a question I’ve been
asked perhaps hundreds of times. “Pastor, does it really do any good
to pray?” It was not a flippant question. It was a serious question
that came from a troubled and grieving heart.
“Does it really matter if I pray? Does God ever truly
act in response to my prayers? Can I really believe the God of the universe
listens to me?” Hasn’t that question troubled the mind of every
one of us at some point?
Oh, in a setting like this we could certainly pile up a lot
of evidence from our personal testimonies that indeed God does respond to
prayer. Many of us have stories from our own lives where the only answer is
that God must have intervened.
And yet we could also pile up a good bit of evidence that would
seem to say to us, “Sometimes it just doesn’t matter how long
or hard you pray, God doesn’t respond.”
The question is valid and it is real: “Does God really
hear my prayer?” The Bible has a rather resounding answer to that question.
But how do we take obvious connections the Bible presents to us between prayer
and God’s actions, and reconcile that with what we often experience?
Namely, that it’s often difficult for us to connect our prayers with
the direct action or intervention of God in our lives.
Well, I think this story from chapter 10 of Joshua can speak
meaningfully to us about these questions. We heard in the story how these
five Amorite kings were planning to march up to Gibeon and work them over
for joining in a treaty with Israel. That’s in fact what they did.
So the people of Gibeon pled their case with Joshua, “You’ve
got to come and help us, we are your servants by treaty, we’re now allies.”
There was really no decision to make. Joshua had to go.
So Israel made the long march uphill to the vicinity of Gibeon.
On the way the Lord spoke to Joshua and said, “Listen, you have nothing
to fear. I have already given this enemy into your hand.” Now that’s
a basis for confidence.
So after an all-night march, the Israelite army engaged the
armies of the Amorites in battle. And just as the Lord had promised they began
to defeat them and beat them back, forcing them into retreat.
And to top it off the writer says a hailstorm broke out and
beat down huge hailstones on the Amorites, and in fact more of them died from
getting beaned with hailstones than by the swords of the Israelites.
But during this battle one of the most amazing things in all
the Bible happened, as a result of Joshua’s prayer. See, Joshua had
learned the lesson well that when God gives you a mission you’d better
see it through. So in order to finish their job of driving back the Amorites,
Joshua prayed an incredible prayer.
He prayed to the Lord in the presence of all Israel that the
sun and moon would stand still in the sky until the nation had taken care
of her enemies. He prayed for time to stop. He asked the Lord to suspend the
laws of nature. And the writer of Joshua says with his mouth hanging open,
“It actually happened! The sun stopped in the middle of the sky and
delayed going down about a full day.”
Now admittedly, this stretches the limits for our modern minds.
Given what we understand about how the universe works, how could this possibly
happen? But once again, the Bible is more interested in “how”
than in “why.” We tend to get bogged down with the “hows”
of this kind of reported miracle, but the narrator of our story isn’t
primarily concerned with how it all happened. What amazes him is not the fact
that the sun stood still (or from our modern perspective that the earth stood
still). What amazes the writer of our story is that God, the sovereign God
of the universe listened to the prayer of a man!
How the sun stood still is not the point of this story. God’s
intervention is the point of this story. The message is that God will do amazing
and even miraculous things in order to accomplish His purposes. You see, this
amazing incident did not happen in a vacuum. Joshua didn’t wake up one
day and say, “I think I’ll find out if God answers prayer or not,
so Sun, stand still.” No, this entire episode was deeply rooted in a
covenant relationship God and Joshua shared.
This prayer was deeply rooted in the sacred promises God had
made to Israel and Israel had made to God. The command of God was very clear:
to go and take possession of the land God was giving them. And the promise
that went along with that command was equally clear: “I will give the
land and its people into your hands; I will be with you wherever you go.”
Joshua understands this is who God is and that’s why he
has the audacity to come before God and make such a senseless request. And
yet, God honored the prayer and granted the request.
The writer says, “There has never been a day like it before
or since” and you assume he’s talking about the sun standing still.
But he says instead, “A day when the Lord listened to a man. Surely
the Lord was fighting for Israel.”
This is the consistent witness of Scripture. God takes us very
seriously. God listens to us. And sometimes God even changes His mind as a
result of our prayers. It is amazing, isn’t it? It’s utterly amazing
that the God of the universe would listen to men and women who cry out to
Him in faith.
The lord listened to Moses. At a time when God was ready to
wipe out the children of Israel because of their disobedience, Moses interceded
on their behalf and pleaded with God for mercy, and God relented from wiping
them out.
In Psalm 91 the Lord says of His servant: “When he calls
to me, I will answer him.” Whoever heard of a God like that? It ought
to take our breath away to realize the God who is seated on high stoops down
and bends his ear to lips made of dust.
Now I don’t use the word ‘miracle’ lightly.
Unlike some people I know, I don’t call it a miracle when the front
parking space at Hy-Vee is open. Miracles are special and rare and we shouldn’t
use the word carelessly. I believe I have seen a few miracles, but they are
special and rare. This was clearly a miracle, a setting aside of the natural
order of things—a direct intervention of the hand of God.
But friends, I think this story means to impress us with the
miracle of prayer. Not so much the fact that the sun stood still, but the
fact that God takes us seriously and He listens to us when we cry out to Him.
Whether you choose to believe that or not to believe that makes
all the difference in the world for your spiritual health. It makes all the
difference in the world for the hope and peace you experience in a difficult
world.
But you may say, “Well I want to believe that. I really
do want to believe God hears me and responds to me when I pray, but there
have too many times when God seems to have gone silent.
Or “There was one critical time when I didn’t hear
God answer. What about that? Where is this God who listens in those times?”
Fair question. I think there’s an answer in this text. You see, the
miracle of prayer is rooted in the promises God has already made. Joshua knew
what God had promised. Joshua knew clearly what God was committed to do. And
it was out of that understanding of and submission to God’s plan and
will that he made this unbelievable request. Joshua saw a direct answer to
his prayer in part because he prayed squarely within the bounds of God’s
revealed will. This is a hard lesson for us. But it seems to me that so often
when we pray, we make requests of God that come from the arena of our will
and our understanding of what is good and right.
It seems absolutely good and right to us that a loved one should
be delivered from cancer. How could God not be for that? But that is a judgment
of things from a human perspective. Our physical lives are obviously a high
priority to us. We don’t really know anything else, so we want to hold
onto what we know. But has God promised us, anywhere in His Word, the deliverance
of every believer from every physical calamity in this world?
No. In fact, Jesus promised us just the opposite. “In
this world,” He said, “you will have tribulation.” Now it’s
right for us to express our earnest desire to God. But our constant task as
His children is to learn to live in total surrender to His will.
I’m going out on a bit of a limb here, but here’s
what I believe. If we feel God is not answering our prayers, if we feel God
is not listening to us, it’s probably because we have lost sight of
His will and all we can see is our will. When we lose sight of His mission,
His ultimate purpose in the world, that’s when it’s easy to begin
to doubt the miracle of prayer. God does listen to us and He does intervene
in our lives, but His intervention is always for the purpose of accomplishing
His ultimate will.
A few days ago I took my little boys to the store with me. We
went into the Super Target, and if you’ve been there you know Super
Target has stuff boys need. Being the experienced father I am, I explained
our mission very clearly to the boys before we went into the store. I told
them, “We are going in there for this one purpose and this one purpose
only.”
And, being the experienced father that I am, I knew my little
speech would have absolutely no impact on the outcome. You know what happened,
don’t you? The three of us went marching through the store on a mission.
But along the way we began to pass some other things that looked very attractive
and very necessary to the boys. And so right there in the middle of Super
Target, the boys started offering up their prayers.
“Oh, Dad can’t we please get this? We need to have
this. Our lives won’t complete without this. Everybody we know gets
to have this; surely you don’t want us to be deprived?”
Now what they were asking for seemed totally reasonable to them.
In their limited understanding of reality, there was no good reason why my
granting their request would not be a good thing.
But you see, their “prayers” were outside of the mission. Even
though what they wanted was technically within the means of the father, what
they wanted was outside of the will and purpose of the father.
You see the connection, don’t you? We offer up so many
prayers to God. But how many of our prayers really come out of the covenant
promise God has made to us?
How much time have we really spent getting to know the heartbeat
of God so that we ask in accordance with His will? On the other hand, how
many of our prayers are nothing more than pious expressions of our own selfish
will?
This circles back around to the message a few weeks ago, “Whose
side is God on?” Do I pray trying to get God on my side, or do I pray
out of a desire to get my life aligned with what God is doing?
Am I determined to have Him do what I want when I want it, or
am I willing to submit myself to His sovereignty and His plan?
Folks, when we pray, God listens to us. We are in a serious
and real dialogue with the God of the universe. But we need to remember we
do not serve a God who just sits in heaven, casually deciding whether or not
to dispense goodies to His children. We serve a God with a mission. We serve
a God who has invited us into a covenant relationship as He leads us toward
the perfect rule and reign of Christ over all things.
His purpose is to redeem all things for His glory. So the miracle
of prayer is that God is and will be absolutely faithful to His promise. As
we learn to pray inside the mission and will of God, we will discover amazing
things happening in this world as a result of our prayers. But as long as
we insist on praying out of our own will and mission, we will be frustrated
and doubtful in our praying.
It is utterly amazing. When you pray, God turns His ear toward
you. When you pray, God hears you and He responds to your prayer. Without
exception, He responds to your prayer. If you’re having trouble seeing
that, perhaps the critical question is, “Am I really praying with an
attitude of surrender to His plan? Am I praying within an increasing understanding
of His will and purpose in this world? Or, do I just want what I want? And
if God doesn’t come through on my terms I’m going to be mad at
Him?”
Does the Lord listen to you? The Bible makes that answer very clear. Yes, He does. Perhaps the real question is, “Do you listen to Him?”
