When prayer doesn’t work

 

“Dad the wifi’s not working”

I used to get that a lot. When the internet is not working. My conclusion is not the internet doesn’t exist. I’ll try and work out what is wrong. Reset the device, reset the router, check the cables, ring the broadband company. One of those will fix it! Simples – well to me with a degree in electronics and computer systems, usually!

When prayer doesn’t work, it’s not quite so simple. I’ve seen a few sermons with 6 reasons why prayer isn’t working. And they are sometimes helpful and sometimes as bad as Zophar’s advice to Job. Zophar was one of Job’s comforters – they’d sat silently for 7 days weeping with Job and then took turns to try and explain what was going on and what Job needed to do. Zophar’s advice in Job 11 sounds like what most of us would say to someone. And yet God condemns it! Now people might say “If you had enough faith”, or “if you pray the right way”. Noooooooooooo!

 

The questions – Why are my prayers not working? – why does bad stuff happen? Those questions have no simple quick answers. We can ask in two ways – some questions are armchair questions and some are wheelchair questions. On Alpha people often ask about suffering – from an armchair, it’s more an intellectual exercise – and answers would talk about sovereignty, sin, free will and so on. But sometimes the questions are wheelchair questions – asked from the midst of pain and suffering and questioning. Why did my child die young? Why did the adoption fall through? Why doesn’t God heal me?

Job tackles why does God allow good people to suffer. It’s long and it’s hard to read – 42 chapters, because glib answers and soundbites won’t do.

 

There are a few times in Scripture when prayer doesn’t seem to work –

Think of David praying for his first son to live, Moses praying to be able to go into the Promised Land, Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Today let’s look at Jesus prayer in Mark 14:32-41

Gethsemane – oil press

Gethesemane means oil press. It was a place where olives where pressed to produce olive oil. Think about that. It takes a lot of pressure to squeeze olive oil. It was a place of pressure. That I think is somewhat symbolic! And olive oil is so wonderful. You might fry your chips in vegetable oil or lard, but olive oil had and still has so many uses – healing properties, lotion, cooking, lamp oil. It ws use in worship in the temple – the golden menorah burnt seven cups of oil every day. It was used for anointing kings and priests. Precious stuff. Jesus, the Christ – literally anointed one. The one who was about to suffer so much and become the everlasting light of the world, the healer of nations and anointed king of kings. Here he is praying in the oil press garden. Under such pressure right before the blessing.

So poignant.

Soul is overwhelmed

He takes the three closest disciples, the one’s he’s been training. It’s a last opportunity t train them to pray, but Jesus also wants his closest friends with him in his darkest hour.

There’s not a great record in Scripture of friends doing well being with people who are in their darkest hour. Job’s friends did well sitting silently with Job mourning for 7 days straight – but when they opened their mouths they were rubbish.

Peter, James & John didn’t do well here – falling asleep instead of praying for even an hour!

I’m not very good at being with those suffering either! Got a lot to learn.

 

Mark lets us know just how dark this evening was for Jesus “my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death” In Luke’s account Jesus’ swear had drops of blood in it. It called hematidrosis and is very rare – it can occur under extreme stress where some of the capillaries in the skin burst and blood comes out in sweat.

 

In this darkest of moments before Jesus’ arrest, kangaroo court trial and death for us, Jesus knows he’s got to pray, to pour out his soul to his heavenly Father.

Pray! Keep praying

When times are tough pray. And keep praying.

Abba Father, everything is possible for you.

That sentence  says so much about who God is – Abba – that intimate term for Father – like papa. There’s such a closeness Jesus has with the Father, that he won for us too. “By him we cry Abba, father”

Everything is possible for you – not only is God an intimate Father, but he is all powerful and all knowing too. He can literally do anything.

All loving, all powerful, all knowing – what theologians call theodicy – how can a God who is all loving, all powerful and all knowing, allow…

Can be all three in our darkest days?

If he was all loving, how could he allow…? If He was all powerful, how could he not intervene with…? If he is all knowing, how could he allow… to happen?

As an armchair question there are some fumbling not very quick answers we can give. As a wheelchair question it is much harder.

The holocaust where at least 5 million people were herded together and slaughtered is cited by many as evidence against the existence of God – man’s brutality and God’s disregard for his own people. Dr Robert Brenner did a study of survivors and found that the horror had little impact on the faith of many. In fact 5% abandoned atheism and began to believe in God as a result of their experiences – if you were to project that statistic onto the full numbers that's 177,000 coming to faith through the concentration camps – a huge revival. I read Corrie Ten Boom’s Hiding Place finally this week and was amazed at what God did in their lives in the midst of darkness.

So Bring your pain to Abba

Finding God in the hell of it – don’t give up, keep pushing in.

Jesus next phrase

Take this cup from me

The cup is about suffering – God take this cup from me. Heaven is silent. The answer is no. Jesus must go through it.

In When God doesn’t make sense, James Dobson talks about the adversity principle. Habitual welding is not advantageous to any species. An existence without challenge takes its toll – flabby zoo animals. Trees in rainforests that fall because their roots haven’t had to sink deep to get water.

We have got so used to ease and comfort and instant everything that we haven’t grown deep roots. The pandemic has caused an emotional and mental health crisis, because most haven’t grown up in the adversity principle that gives strength.

 

This kind of prayer is lament -more than half the Psalms are laments, but most modern worship songs and hymns leave little space for the expression of doubt and fear and pain.

We may need to learn how to wrestle and cry out to God, to beg him for another plan. Just five days before today’s text, Jesus had cried and mourned over Jerusalem while crowds around him partied and prayed. Honest lament can express vibrant faith like Jesus – embracing life’s hardships as well as joys and lifting everything to God in prayer.

Richard Foster says the Laments “give us permission to shake our first at God one moment and break into doxology the next.”

 

Jesus cries out to God and heaven is silent – he keeps crying out to God.

Coming back he finds the disciples asleep – can’t you even pray one hour?

 

Push through to “Yet not my will but your will be done”

When things are tough and heaven seems silent. We have to push through in prayer until we get to that place of “yet not my will but your will be done.”

Floyd McClung wrote the Father Heart of God – which was so lifechanging for me. He was at Spring Harvest when he got a call that his daughter Misha had lost consciousness during labour and may die. She had a condition with 86% mortality. Hearing his only daughter was in a coma, thousands of miles away, may not wake up, and would probably be brain damaged. What about the baby grandson? Pete Greig wrote that he disappeared for a long time and came back looking older, pale and drawn. When asked where he’d been – walking, wrestling with God, trying to pray. He told the story of Corrie Ten Booms prayer before dying about God having glory whether she lived or died. Floyd said “I’ve been begging God for my daughter’s life as any father would. I’ve been reminding him of unfulfilled promises over her future. But I know I also had to give her back to God. If it’s somehow going to bring God more glory to take Misha home…

He’d wrestled and wept until he could relinquish his will to the will of God.

In the end there was a miracle and Floyd sent a beautiful email to supporters to give glory to God for what was a triple miracle and to care for those still wrestling with their own unanswered prayers.

“Many people prayed and God intervened because of those prayers. But God doesn't always answer our prayers the way we want Him to… Every promise he speaks will come to pass if we obey him, but some of them are fulfilled in heaven not on earth… God spared Misha’s life for one reason above all others: It will bring Him more glory for her to be here longer.”

James Dobson writes about this developing a tough, well-fortified faith, where the why loses its scary significance. A better question becomes why does it matter? It’s not our responsibility to explain what God is doing with our lives He has not provided enough information for us to figure it out. Instead, we are asked to turn loose and let God be God. And that he writes is the secret to peace that transcends understanding.