Heath Lambert: The Christian life is the praying life, and as we think about the imperative that all Christians have to pray, which is not just an imperative, but is a true need. As human beings, we are in need and God has set it up so that many of our needs are met in response to our prayers. This truth is underlined in James 4:2 where it says, “you do not have because you do not ask”, and the statement is made very clearly there that there are some things you would have that you don’t have because you don’t ask. This is a text that teaches us God’s delight in meeting our needs when we ask for the things that we need. But as soon as we talked about the fact that God loves to answer our prayers and loves to give us things in response to prayer, we have to think about the problem of God answering our prayers with no, that is to say, we ask and ask for something and God says no to it. If we’re going to understand this text in James 4:2 correctly, we need to be honest that the text is not a guarantee that God will give us everything that we asked for; we do not have that promise in Scripture, that God will answer our prayers with a “yes”, regardless of what we’re asking for. This text teaches that there are some things that God would give us only in response to our request, but it doesn’t promise that every request gets a “yes”.
So, what do we say when we ask and ask and ask God for something but His response to that request is to not grant it. Well, as we answer that question, I want to remind us of two accounts in Scripture that help us to think through this matter. The first account that I would remind us of is Joshua’s prayer in Joshua 10. There, Joshua has taken the Israelites and he is going to fight against the villages that have declared war on the Gibeonites, the Gibeonites and Joshua made a treaty with the Israelites and so, once they came under attack, the Israelites needed to defend the Gibeonites and as they went up to fight, they were routing the villages that were attacking the Gibeonites, and they were killing them with the sword and God was sending rocks from the sky to crush Israel’s enemies. It was just a total destruction of the enemy. The destruction was so significant, and Joshua was so intent on not stopping the destruction, that he prayed and asked the Lord for a request that, we would just have to be honest and say, is an outlandish request. His request is recorded for us in Joshua 10 starting in verse 12 at said, “then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the sons of Israel and he said on the side of Israel, “Oh Sun, stand still at Gibeon and oh, moon in the Valley of Aijalon”. So the sun stood still, and the moon stopped until the nation avenge themselves of their enemies”.
This is a request from Joshua to the Lord that the sun would stop moving and God’s response to the request was, “okay, I will stop the sun”, and He did. So, the cosmos is interrupted so that God can answer the prayer, the outlandish prayer, of one of His servants. Joshua could have said, “Lord help us kill them quickly”. Joshua could have said, “Lord help them to be so scared that they never come back here”, and God would have, I take it, answered those requests. But Joshua’s request is extreme; it stopped the sun and God says, “okay”, and He stops the sun.
Now, that’s one account as we think about God’s answers to our prayers. Another account is a different servant of God, the Apostle Paul, who was one of the most significant Christian leaders, if not the most significant Christian leader in the history of the church after Jesus Christ Himself. The Apostle Paul, in response to seeing magnificent visions and being caught up into the heavens, was given a thorn in the flesh, the Bible says, “to keep him from becoming too proud” because of the incredible nature of the revelations that he had received. But this thorn was a problem. It was painful, it was a great burden for him to bear and he plead with the Lord that the thorn would be taken away. The account of this prayer is recorded for us in 2 Corinthians 12:7 and it says, “because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me to keep me from exalting myself concerning this. I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me and he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness. Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me”.
Now, this is a very different account than what we read in Joshua. The Apostle Paul makes a very reasonable request, “I am in pain, and Lord would you please take the pain away? Would you please remove the thorn”? And he doesn’t just ask the Lord, but he asks and asks and asks, three times he pleads with the Lord, would you do this reasonable thing? And God says, no.
Those are the two accounts. Joshua, outlandish request, “Lord, would you stop the sun and its course”, and God says, yes, Paul, “God, would you remove this pain from me”? And God says, no. What’s the difference?
Well, we know that it is not the difference of love. The difference between God’s “yes” to Joshua and God’s “no” to Paul is not that he loved Joshua and he did not Paul. God loved both men, the difference between God’s “yes” and God’s “no” to His children is not the difference of love, but it’s the difference of wisdom. The difference is God knows how to give us what we need. God knows how to give us what we need better than we know how to give ourselves what we need. This is the issue of trusting the Lord. If we can’t trust the Lord’s wisdom to give us a yes or a no, then really the person we are trusting is not the Lord, but ourselves; we’re not resting in the Lord’s wisdom, we are resting in our own wisdom.
So, the Bible is true, you don’t have because you don’t ask, there are some things that the Lord would give that he won’t give until we ask. That is not a guarantee that everything we asked for we will receive, and when we ask for something and God says, no, the message is not, “well, God doesn’t love, God doesn’t care, or He’s not bothered by my pain”. The answer is, “God knows more about what I need than I do, and I can trust what he’s doing more than I can trust my own ability to chart my own course for what is good and right”.
We think of that theologian Garth Brooks, who said, “sometimes, I thank God for unanswered prayers. Remember when you’re talking to the man upstairs and just because he doesn’t answer, doesn’t mean he don’t care. Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers”. Now, those are from the lips of a country, music singer, but it accurately reflects faith in the Living God to give us what we need even when it’s not what we want. When God’s answers to our prayers are no, they come from a God who loves us and knows what is good for us.
