Posted on 05/19/2015 3:08:20 PM PDT by metmom
CONTRARY TO POPULAR OPINION, the cultivation of a psychology of uncritical belief is not an unqualified good, and if carried too far it may be a positive evil. The whole world has been booby-trapped by the devil, and the deadliest trap of all is the religious one. Error never looks so innocent as when it is found in the sanctuary.
One field where harmless-looking but deadly traps appear in great profusion is the field of prayer. There are more sweet notions about prayer than could be contained in a large book, all of them wrong and all highly injurious to the souls of men.
I think of one such false notion that is found often in pleasant places consorting smilingly with other notions of unquestionable orthodoxy. It is that God always answers prayer.
This error appears among the saints as a kind of all-purpose philosophic therapy to prevent any disappointed Christian from suffering too great a shock when it becomes evident to him that his prayer expectations are not being fulfilled. It is explained that God always answers prayer, either by saying Yes or by saying No, or by substituting something else for the desired favor.
Now, it would be hard to invent a neater trick than this to save face for the petitioner whose requests have been rejected for non-obedience. Thus when a prayer is not answered he has but to smile brightly and explain, "God said No." It is all so very comfortable. His wobbly faith is saved from confusion and his conscience is permitted to lie undisturbed. But I wonder if it is honest.
To receive an answer to prayer as the Bible uses the term and as Christians have understood it historically, two elements must be present: (1) A clear-cut request made to God for a specific favor. (2) A clear-cut granting of that favor by God in answer to the request. There must be no semantic twisting, no changing of labels, no altering of the map during the journey to help the embarrassed tourist to find himself.
When we go to God with a request that He modify the existing situation for us, that is, that He answer prayer, there are two conditions that we must meet: (1) We must pray in the will of God and (2) we must be on what old-fashioned Christians often call "praying ground"; that is, we must be living lives pleasing to God.
It is futile to beg God to act contrary to His revealed purposes. To pray with confidence the petitioner must be certain that his request falls within the broad will of God for His people.
The second condition is also vitally important. God has not placed Himself under obligation to honor the requests of worldly, carnal or disobedient Christians. He hears and answers the prayers only of those who walk in His way. "Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God. And whatsoever we ask, we receive of him, because we keep his commandments, and do those things that are pleasing in his sight . . . . If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (I John 3:21, 22; John 15:7).
God wants us to pray and He wants to answer our prayers, but He makes our use of prayer as a privilege to commingle with His use of prayer as a discipline. To receive answers to prayer we must meet God's terms. If we neglect His commandments our petitions will not be honored. He will alter situations only at the request of obedient and humble souls.
The God-always-answers-prayer sophistry leaves the praying man without discipline. By the exercise of this bit of smooth casuistry he ignores the necessity to live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world, and actually takes God's flat refusal to answer his prayer as the very answer itself. Of course such a man will not grow in holiness; he will never learn how to wrestle and wait; he will never know correction; he will not hear the voice of God calling him forward; he will never arrive at the place where he is morally and spiritually fit to have his prayers answered. His wrong philosophy has ruined him.
That is why I turn aside to expose the bit of bad theology upon which his bad philosophy is founded. The man who accepts it never knows where he stands; he never knows whether or not he has true faith, for if his request is not granted he avoids the implication by the simple dodge of declaring that God switched the whole thing around and gave him something else. He will not allow himself to shoot at a target, so he cannot tell how good or how bad a marksman he is.
Of certain persons James says plainly: "Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts." From that brief sentence we may learn that God refuses some requests because they who make them are not morally worthy to receive the answer. But this means nothing to the one who has been seduced into the belief that God always answers prayer. When such a man asks and receives not he passes his hand over the hat and comes up with the answer in some other form. One thing he clings to with great tenacity: God never turns anyone away, but invariably grants every request.
The truth is that God always answers the prayer that accords with His will as revealed in the Scriptures, provided the one who prays is obedient and trustful. Further than this we dare not go.
Tozer ping
His answers are; Yes, No, and Wait.
Yes, no and wait are the answers I get....
HOSEA 14:8
“O Israel, stay away from idols! I am the one who answers your prayers and cares for you. I am like a tree that is always green; all your fruit comes from me.”
I’m just posting the series and this is what came next.
He does bring up some good points, however.
Good enough for me to do some serious introspection.
And yet there are times in the OT that God said He would not hear Israel’s prayers because of sin, so there is precedent.
Tozer is not saying God refuses to answer prayer for no reason. It is because of deliberate, unresolved sin in someone’s life.
I can’t imagine that if someone who is a Christian is living with deliberate, unresolved sin, and asking for things contrary to God’s will, that He will answer that.
I suppose a refusal to answer could be taken as a *no*.
My parents answered my every request....MANY, MANY, MANY times the answer was NO....Ruined a lot of my planned good times, but probably saved me from jail and death.
Yes, God answers every prayer....I pray that my 98 year old mother doesn't die....Nope is the answer.....We almost always ask the wrong questions and try to have things done as we would like....seldom happens.
When we decide that we can protest against God's intended plan and provide our own conception of what redemption is...we run into more than serious problems.
Agreed. He does answer prayer, it’s just sometimes we don’t receive the answer we want...
I pray for His will. I think He has a sense of humor because sometimes I get what I want, say like patience and then I’m given an opportunity to practice it.
Yep, GOD always answers prayers. Now you may not like what HIS answer is, but HE does answer prayers. The problem that I see, is that when someone prays, that person thinks that GOD will answer “YES” to his prayer. Hey fellas, “NO” is also an answer.
There has been a lot of preaching lately that we can ask God anything, and being a good heavenly Father, he’ll give it to us which fosters the health, wealth, and prosperity doctrine.
And that doesn’t accept a *No* from God, to the detriment of some people’s faith.
He has our best interests in mind, and knows way better than we, what is good for us and what we can handle.
I don’t think he’s going to give money, for example, to someone who is wasteful or irresponsible with it.
I know people who are in debt who keep praying for more money, thinking that will solve their problems and when I see how they spend the money they don’t have already, I don’t blame God for not giving them more.
We just had a deacon in our church die of a lung disease. He was a faithful man of God, very involved with children’s ministry, and had led many kids to Christ.
People prayed earnestly that he would either be healed or survive long enough to get a lung transplant. Neither happened and he died yesterday. He leaves behind a wife if 34 years and 4 grown lids.
Now...my question is : why didn’t God answer the many prayers lifted on behalf of this man? It makes absolutely no sense to me.
somehow I don’t like the tone of this article...
Beats me.
I have that question about way too many people in my life.
For all the health, wealth, and prosperity teaching out there, and all their claims of all these miracles they claim to have witnessed and have testimony of, I simply don’t see it in the people around me, even those who hold to that doctrine.
And they’re always explaining away why it doesn’t happen, or just never mentioning it again.
Better minds than mine have wrestled with those questions and have never come to an answer, and I doubt I’ll be the one to figure out the answer.
Far as I know, Job was never told what happened to him, they why of it all. We’re privy to that now, but there’s no indication that he ever found out.
Interestingly, two of the more vocal proponents of the name it and claim it crowd at our church have serious, debilitating, life threatening conditions, that they are praying for and *believing* for.
Sometimes I can’t help but wonder if God is trying to make a point that most of them continue to miss.
I understand.
For the most part, Tozer is great and I have found his stuff very challenging, but every once in a while he comes up with something that doesn’t sit quite right with me.
“It makes absolutely no sense to me.”
It doesn’t to us. And somehow we need to be satisfied with that. (See Job).
There was a husband/wife church youth leaders and their baby that were killed here (Washington State) when a huge chunk of concrete from a bridge landed square on their truck as they were driving by, killing them all instantly. One second later and it would have crashed to the ground behind them.
Their pastor said “What is there to try to understand? There is no understanding. But God is Good. All the time.”
There is a gal in our church that our pastor used in a sermon. She has had a rough go of it, and numerous set-backs in life, and now is carrying for her invalid children.
I forget how the sermon all went, but not that she had given up in praying for relief, but that she somehow figured that this was her lot in life, and that she was to be faithful in it. And that her “justice” or relief (or whatever) would not be found on this side of death.
I’m not sure I have that kind of faith. And I think that is the point - it is about faith, in the absence of things not seen.
It could be that those of us who are faithful in the midst of trials that we have no understanding of, will receive our recompense on the other side.
Not only is God good, but He's also just, and justice will be done.
Romans 8:18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
When I was wrestling with God over something and thinking that it just seemed so pointless, He gently reminded me that *Nothing I do is pointless.* (In those words)
That comes back to me frequently when I start on the questioning...... again.....
Yes, I was familiar with the story as I live n
in the area. That one made no sense either.
I’m getting really frustrated with life. The adage “God is good” is starring to lose any significance for me. If He is so good, why doesn’t He do something?
Of course, it could very well be that God is good, and I’m the one that’s no good.
Those people who were healed by Christ and Peter and the 11, would undoubtedly entered in to kingdom and have gone on living, had the Messianic Kingdom been established, but Israel rejected Christ as Messiah. So what happened to those who had been healed? They all died, of course. It wasn't because Christ, or Peter and the 11 had failed that those they healed did not remain alive and well; it was because the kingdom was refused and "this present evil age" settled upon the world. This "present evil age" that God is using to declare reconciliation to man by the finished work of Christ. While this earth is presently evil, death and suffering go on. But God has promised us His grace and our salvation through His Son. He hasn't promised us health, or wealth, or riches, those are things of this world. What He has given us is in heaven. Where we are blessed with all SPIRITUAL BLESSINGS in heavenly places.
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