Praying For An Answer

By Garth Andrews

Jesus encourages persistent prayer (Luke 11, 18). James advocates fervent prayer (James 5). Paul of course both models and instructs ceaseless relentless prayer (Ephesians 6:18, 1Thesalonian 5:17). Prayer is important both for life on earth as well as afterwards (Revelation 5:8 & 8:3-4). Unanswered prayer, though, really focuses the mind, considerably more so than answered prayer.

Praying For An Answer is neither a book on prayer nor a manual for praying. Its real objective is to encourage people troubled by the lack of answers to their prayers to consider some kind of scriptural diagnostics to ascertain the cause. It seeks to make the case that no prayer goes unanswered and provides some Biblical conditions that might be used in the diagnostics. It considers “men of like passion as we are”, ordinary people “who prayed earnestly” unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein (Acts 14:15 & James 517); and had their prayers answered.

Some of the conditions, identified by scripture as significant for answered prayer involve our approach to God, our attitude during the prayer, the integrity of our relationships, our response to scripture and of course how we behave subsequently.

Although belief is foundational and fundamental in prayer all too often it is either ignored or discarded resulting in our prayer not even leaving the starting block let alone being answered. For some people it is preferable to allow the answer to be a casualty of their failure to forgive rather than savoring the sweet success of God’s loving response. This further reduces, rather than increases, the likelihood of their prayer either being heard or answered. It takes so much more than a pretty pious posture to achieve even a modicum of success of an answer to our prayer.

The book encourages patience; to wait for the answer rather than prematurely declaring a prayer unanswered. All too often when we are praying we fail to realize that the conditions may have changed, the prayer may have already been answered or a change in tactics might be called for by the Holy Spirit; mainly because we fail to listen whether before, during or after the prayer.

And finally, ‘when you have done all to stand’, and all the diagnostics should prove absolutely useless, it is important that we recognize that God is attentively listening to the cries of, and faithfully rewarding, those who diligently seek him. So, simply pray.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Thomas Nelson
• Release date: Aug 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9781400325573

Garth Andrews

Garth worked extensively in Telecommunications before studying Theology, at the London School of Theology, graduating with a BA(Hon) and Diploma in Pastoral Studies. He later gained both a PGCE in Religious Education and MA in Theology & Education from Kings College, London. He subsequently became a secondary school teacher and Pastoral Leader. He currently teaches regular Bible Studies and preach the Word. His passion is to be ‘Challenging for a Change’.

Book preview

Introduction

P

rayer. What an amazing gift to humankind! It is such an exciting, rewarding and virtuous proposition.

In very basic terms prayer can be described as talking to God, yet it has so many different essences. Prayer can be verbal or nonverbal, singular or corporate in form. It can be an overt experience with others aware of our utterances, or a covert reaching out in the mind. While one prayer may be a monolith of our desires, another might be a simple but deep, agonising groan of petitions when we make a request to God or a search for solace. Recent research shows that prayer is by no means the preserve of people who formally subscribe to a faith: despite a decline in religious affiliation, over half the adults in the UK pray. Whichever manifestation it takes and whoever is praying, how precious is the idea that we as human beings can interact with the God of the universe! We can even do so in ways which are tailor-made for each situation. How can there be too many books on prayer?

So, to those who may still be wondering, Why another book on prayer? My reply is, can there ever be too many books on prayer? Before you answer stop, look around and listen. Check out the news and see the daily increasing numbers of wasteful and untimely deaths; feel the pain, experience the horror and the anger of their loved ones. Speak to your child about the conditions in their school and their challenging journeys to and from school. Listen to parents talk about their abject fear and crippling anxiety for their children, both inside and outside their homes. Speak to your distraught neighbours about the relentless and unbearable pressures they are under from their local authorities, which is finding more and more ways to make them poorer. Listen to their despair as they discuss their crippling loneliness because they have no one to speak to. Speak to the increasing number of people living in sickening fear of losing their jobs to the heartless new technology. Visit your local hospitals and speak to the patients, the staff and the carers about the daily, difficult, heart-breaking choices they must make. Ask about affordable housing and listen to the despondency, and look in the dark doorways, under the railway arches, the bridges and in the parks for the increasing number of homeless people. Visit the soup kitchens and the food banks then follow the grateful gathers home to their cold, bare floors, with their dark fears for the following day. Listen to the desperate cries of the incurable addicts, who has neither means nor source. Look into the eyes of a mother and see the terror and disappointment of losing her baby at birth and knowing she will never be a grandmother. Can there be too many books on prayer? When you have nowhere else to turn for comfort or direction, no one else willing to listen and no one else who can help, the choice is stark and very limited indeed—only God. So the answer must be an emphatic, unequivocal no!; for prayer is all they have.

Listen to the skier buried alone for days by that avalanche, and survived. Talk with the woman on a cruise who was saved from drowning after she had given up all hope. Walk with the soldier who thought they would not have survived the roadside bomb, nor walk again, yet actually did both. Sit for a brief moment on the children’s ward and feel the sigh of relief as parents are told they can actually take their children home. Sit beside the airline captain facing disaster and thinking she would never be able to land the plane safely, but did. Speak to the little girl on holiday who became trapped underwater and thought she would never see her dad again, but did. Speak to the young bartender who desperately struggled to find somewhere to hide when the crazed gunman terrorised the club where he worked. Listen to the man with the incurable disease for which they eventually found a cure. Walk behind the young lady and watch as the two cars collide with such ferocity inches behind her at the pedestrian crossing, showering her with broken glass. Speak to the tearful couple who have been trying unsuccessfully for years to have children yet eventually did. Talk to the fireman sitting beside his son on the terraces at the game, who had been trapped in the inferno and had given up all hope of being rescued. Pause for a moment and listen to the talented footballer whom the doctors had given only six months to live, but he was now in his third year. Everywhere there are the testimonies from people who are testifying and attributing their unexpected survival and often underserved success to prayer. People everywhere, from all walks of life, are expressing their gratitude and the sentiments of their personal experiences with prayer. "With human beings things are impossible; but with God all things are possible" (Matthew 19:26).

Can there ever be too many books on prayer?

The answer must be an emphatic, unequivocal no!

This is because the practice of prayer is inexhaustible, as it has taken so many forms which have led to such unique experiences in historical and biblical accounts. Therefore the question is redundant and superfluous because it assumes that all previous books on the topic have provided a comprehensive and exhaustive contribution, and now there is nothing further to explore. However, my proposition is that for such a topic which encompasses unlimited rich and diverse experiences, the more contributions there are, the better. I hope this book will add to the pool of literature available to people who vary considerably in their lives and in their encounters with prayer, but who have in common that they would still like to have their prayers answered. Consequently, an alternative question is, why not another book on prayer? More books on prayer, I say, to cater for the diversity among the many readers.

Amidst the diversity represented by those who pray, one statement about prayer is clear: there is no question about whether it should be taking place. Scripture implies that there ought to be a constant stream of communication between ourselves and God. That is, just the fact that Jesus said, When you pray… and how the existence of this expectation is highlighted by His encouragement regarding how to do so: Jesus’ teaching at that point is summarised by the learning objective that we are to "pray always and do not faint…" (Luke 18:1). Jesus’ commentary suggests that there is no question about whether we should pray. Furthermore not too long after Jesus made this statement, He chose to return to the subject of communication with God and spoke quite deeply upon it further. In this message Jesus left His disciples with a model for praying, which has set a precedent that His followers have referred to throughout the ages, known as the "Lord’s Prayer" (Matthew 6:9–13).

Since it is very clear that prayer is needed, I am convinced that, as was most likely the case with the discussion between Jesus and His disciples, any discourse relating to prayer mainly originates from one concern—the issue of unanswered prayer. The abysmal anxiety that one prayer which has not been answered is likely to generate will be more likely to lead to questions; and be more motivational for seeking God than the euphoria of a thousand answered prayers. Regardless of the analysis and any deductions which we might want to make regarding unanswered prayer, it is only God who can really be definitive about the reasons why, or even whether or not, a prayer has been answered. So, for those of us in this situation, where does it leave us? Does this mean that when we pray we are in a hit-and-miss situation, a sort of game of chance?

Could a more useful approach be to consider what some conditions are for answered prayer? Yes, it is productive to consider both what I should present and factors which prevent answered prayer. Additionally, if we believe in the existence of an all-benevolent, all-powerful Creator whom many readers will identify with as our Father in heaven, then we can trust that our relationship with the Father will take us from a negative position to a positive one. With God things always get better. This calls for another approach to our diagnosis and one which leads me to reflect upon what some of the conditions for answered prayer are. This is important because what we believe is bound to impact our commitment to our subsequent course of action.

Just like Jesus did, I base the main premise of the discussion in each chapter on the understanding that the place for prayer has been positively established. However, there are many factors about how we pray which we can develop in applying further rigour and vigour. This is why my emphatic no response to the question stated earlier as well as the overwhelming evidence that prayers are being answered are my motivating factors for this book. One very powerful and unforgettable example of answered prayer involves one of our daughters who started dating a young man who was not of the faith. My wife and I became very concerned when we noticed that she was not as active on the worship ministry team as she used to be. She moved out of our home and began to attend church less and less. Totally unlike her, she went on an unsupervised holiday with this young man, in pursuit of what she hoped was marriage. So my wife and I began to pray. We cried out to God and began listening for an answer. The story of Jesus cursing the fig tree (Mathew 21) was the basis of our prayer. Things became very dire at one point, but we persevered in our praying. We decided to fast for a week. Our prayer was specific. It was that God would remove this man from her, bring the right man into her life and that she would be married within eighteen months. At the end of the week the Lord spoke to us and told us, The fig tree is dead. Within days the relationship broke up. She met someone else, almost immediately, and was married within eighteen months. They are both happily married and fully integrated into a church where she continues to lead worship and provide marriage counselling to young people; in between having some very lovely children. Praise God.

Among the challenges which may have led you to this book, you may have found that prayer seems to be a paradox. On the one hand it appears to involve a mystical, mortal battle in a desperate game of dodging a myriad of obstacles and obstructions as we try to acquire the impossible. For instance the struggle of the person overwhelmed by the relentless demands of life who in the midst of it all is searching for peace; the parent who is worried about ongoing emotional struggles and growing pains of their children; the single person who, against their expectations for their own future, is still wistfully praying for a wife or husband. On the other hand, prayer seems to be simply a matter of asking and receiving, as various experiences attest.

God uses positive language as He reaches out to humankind. The language of love, that of salvation and redemption also, is positive in nature, as are all God’s desires for us. Consequently, we should choose to approach prayer with a sense of hope, by journeying through life with an encouraged mindset before God and using positive language in dealing with Him. Focussing mainly on the reasons why prayers are being answered, which is what this book does, rather than why they are not, testifies accurately of a positive relationship with a God whose intentions are likewise. This may also be approached as an opportunity to proactively make adjustments which lead to progress whenever an apparent anomaly to answered prayer is encountered.

Some questions arise from the process of making adjustments. Is there a discrete list of steps or imperatives that must be strictly followed for prayers to be answered? Is there some predetermined approach, some prescribed attitude and some very personalised actions to adopt, otherwise no answer? Is there some unique prescribed behaviour that we have to use in order to make God feel well disposed enough to answer? Perhaps there is some religious formula for a successful prayer? The chapters of this book are, at best, an attempt to answer these questions.

When experiencing the challenge of a prayer that seems to be unanswered, some basic reference points about prayer may be of encouragement. Every prayer, whether we realise it or not, starts with a number of propositions, and since a proposition is a statement that can be either true or false let us call them working propositions. Without getting too deeply logical or even theological, these propositions are: firstly, God exists; secondly, God hears prayers and thirdly, God answers prayers. Some readers might challenge whether these can be tested in an objective manner and with any degree of rigour. Nevertheless for the purpose of expecting answers to prayer they are both valid and viable as those who have had their prayers answered can testify, and necessary for those who need their prayers to be answered. I can hear questions from some readers. How valid are these propositions? On what are they predicated? Does God exist because our prayers are answered, or are our prayers answered because God exists? The level of debate required for any satisfactory response to these is beyond the scope of this book. Nevertheless suffice it to say that for those actively engaged in prayer, there is overwhelming evidence to satisfy all these propositions, and I hope that this book may facilitate more people in gaining an experiential knowledge of these spiritual realities for themselves.

The aim of this book is not to pretend to be a manual or, for that matter, provide a comprehensive set of gnostic insights into how to get answers to prayer. Its main objective is to encourage prayer whatever your circumstances might be. My other desire for this book is that it will lead to personal reflection regarding our own approach to interacting with God in prayer. The favourable conditions of clean heart and positive attitude which are compatible with prayers being answered are very telling when it comes to our spiritual development. Therefore I hope to highlight some invaluable, though not inexhaustible, considerations that could contribute to improved prayer moments with God. This is certainly my desire for myself as I seek both qualitative and quantitative growth in communion with God. Fittingly, I will leave this introduction with a hopeful prayer that we will see good results, and experience great joy in praying for an answer as we enter into this journey together.

CHAPTER 1

Prayers Cannot Go Unanswered

I

was privileged to be at the births of all my children, and although I was not directly at the births of all of my grandchildren, nevertheless I was also blessed that I could be at the hospital when most of them were being delivered. One thing that amazes me is how every new mother on the ward is able to recognise the cry of their newborn baby distinctly from all the other crying babies. Another impressive observation was how quickly they recognise the cry and the alacrity with which they attend to their child. Yet another detail which caught my attention is that the mothers do not fuss over other people’s babies, sometimes maybe just a passing glance. All their attention, all of their devotion is towards their baby. There is no question, no hesitation. This gets me to thinking about the love of our Father in heaven and what happens when we pray. If we as human beings with all our limitations and failures can behave in such admirable manner and with such commitment and praiseworthy duty and love, then how much our loving God and heavenly Father? Jesus puts it this way: "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" (Matthew 7:11).

How I arrived at the view that all prayers are answered is a result of both a fractional distillation as well as a synthesis of scriptures resulting from a number of personal challenges. Some answers we know even