Praying

Great coffee this morning! Got me to thinking about one of the dilemmas I had as a Christian – unanswered prayers. The Gospels are full of passages, sayings by Jesus, that says that all you gotta do is pray to God and he’ll answer. Sometimes I wondered if Jesus meant this only for his apostles. But, when I ask fellow Christians about prayer, they always recite one of those passages assuring me that I was right in my thinking.

I also noticed a pattern about praying. I would pray for something, God does not answer, and a fellow Christian would rationalize why my prayer wasn’t answered. For instance, I would pray for my son, Ben. I prayed that he might hear again. He never did. I prayed for his seizures to end. They never stopped. I prayed that he would be able to walk. He never walked. Each time I asked fellow Christians and my pastor why none of my prayers were answered. And each time they would say something like, “It’s not His will,” or “God has a another plan for him/me,” or “He’ll be in a better place (after he died).”

So, the pattern for me was, pray, ask someone why my prayer wasn’t answered, and have that person rationalize as to why my prayer wasn’t answered. Some would point out passages to me as to why my prayers might not be answered. But, if that were true, isn’t that the same as saying that Jesus lied when he said that God would answer our prayers. He didn’t attach any conditions in those prayer passages, except to believe – and that if your belief was even the size of a mustard seed, He would answer.

I’ll have to go along with my Christian friend who kept telling me, “God has his reasons and we don’t always know what his plan is for us.” All I know is that in the prayer passages, Jesus did not put any boundaries on what we can pray for. “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you: For every one that sketch receiveth; and he that seekers findeth…” Matthew 7.

Don’t get me wrong. I want to believe in God. But, to use rationalizations to try to explain away the fact that prayer did not work for me, does not change the evidence that prayer will ever work for me.

Coffee, anyone?