Hello? Is Anyone There?

A Pastoral Reflection on the Struggle with "Unanswered" Prayer

Roger Philip Abbott

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781625640147
  9781498222099
• eBook ISBN:
  9781630876258
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Ministry

According to the Bible, the God of Christianity has a reputation for answering prayer. However, many Christians have been sometimes severely tempted to think they have been sold short as they have found themselves in some crisis and have cried out to God in all sincerity, and found that he has been "out." From years of pastoral experience in addressing crises, and after having to face crises in his own experience, Roger Abbott attempts to help Christians who are struggling with what seem to be very real instances of God not answering their heartfelt prayers. There are many books about prayer, but there are not many that attempt to face the huge struggles with prayer that pray-ers can face. This book, while refusing to shirk those struggles and the debilitating emotional impact they can have, also attempts to navigate those emotional struggles with the use of a practical theology. Some Christians think, other Christians pray. Hello? Is Anyone There? combines a passion for thoughtful theology and a passion for prayer, out of a passion for a relationship with God in Christ.

1

Is There Really a Problem?

I have said that unanswered prayer can be a problem. But is that strictly accurate? Is there really a problem?

Some, usually in the more conservative Christian communities, think that there is no such thing as unanswered prayer, and may see even raising the issue as somewhat mischievous. “The problem is not God’s but ours!” they tell us with their Bibles wide open before them; we just don’t know, through our ignorance, how to discern or interpret God’s answer (which, clearly, they feel they do!). Indeed, Jesus spoke of people who, “seeing they do not see, and hearing they do not hear, nor do they understand” (Matt 13:13). That is, the answer is there, but some just never understand it. It would seem, therefore, that if there is a problem it must lie with us not hearing God’s speech, with our ignorance or with our immature impatience. Therefore, we are perverse to even think of raising the matter.

When writing this book I took the opportunity of asking some friends the question, “Do you believe there is such a thing as unanswered prayer?” I recall one response was, “No.” This person thought that all prayer is answered. He said, “If I asked you a question, you would at least answer it in your head, even though you might not verbalize it to me.” I thought for a moment, then I responded, “But an answer in the head is no answer to me, in the sense in which we understand conversation to take place.” In the discussion that followed we both agreed that it depends on how you define “answer.”

One can come at an understanding of “answer” solely from a theological perspective. The difficulty then is that we can try to play God, or we can try to defend God; either way, playing God or defending God is very dangerous when humans are attempting it! Defining an answer from God’s perspective is not straightforward for us in strict theological terms. It would require delving into the eternal decrees, into divine omniscience and wisdom, even into the “secret things” that are not for us (Deut 29:29). Defending God over unanswered prayer is not necessary, since God can well defend himself. But, given the language Scripture (God) uses in revelation to us, I think “answer” can be defined pretty well. In Jesus’ teaching on prayer to his disciples (Luke 11:9–13), he states, “And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you . . . For everyone who asks receives.” He then illustrates the point with the unthinkable possibility of a father, upon being asked by his son for a fish, giving the son a serpent instead. In other words, an answer is a normal, morally consistent response to a genuine question or request. So, praying that involves petition is about us asking a question, or asking for something, and an answer is God’s direct response to that question or request in a form that is morally consistent with God’s revealed nature. This pattern is what makes communication what it is. Therefore, silence, unless it is obviously telling—which it can be, as we shall see in due course—is not an answer.

Systematic theologian Wayne Grudem insists, “We must begin by recognizing that as long as God is God and we are his creatures, there must be some unanswered prayer.” The reason for this, he says, is that God “keeps hidden his own wise plans for the future.” Thus, the Jews prayed for centuries that the Messiah would soon come, and for centuries he didn’t. In similar fashion Christian martyrs pray that Jesus will soon come again (Rev 6:10), yet despite the passing of centuries of suffering saints, Jesus hasn’t. Yet, for so many of the cases of unanswered prayer Grudem refers to, they actually were answered, albeit following delays, or in ways unexpected. But, at least, as a systematic theologian, he is bold enough to insist that unanswered prayer must be a fact of life before God.1 Since it is with the benefit of hindsight we can now judge that those scriptural examples of prayer were, in fact, answered, perhaps we should define what we mean by “unanswered” a little more narrowly. By “unanswered” prayer we mean prayer that does not receive an answer within the petitioner’s expectations or comprehension, for this would be the criterion that a pray-er would judge an “answer” by.

As a practical theologian, my preference is to start where the problem is—in Christian and pastoral experience. At this level, which is the level pastoral care must certainly never shirk, I suggest unanswered prayer represents a real and serious problem—theologically at very least, but also experientially, challenging bland and binary interpretations of Scripture.

Where the problem lies is, perhaps, where many of us feel it most acutely, namely “on the ground.” What happens on the ground doesn’t always equate with the theology we are exhorted to be encouraged and inspired by in thin sermons or books. If that sounds to some ears like unbelief then I refuse to be repentant, though unbelief is the last thing I would wish to encourage! I do not equate my observation with unbelief or weak faith. I do not raise this issue out of a pique of angst, as if I am someone with a spiritual grudge or chip on his shoulder, aroused by a particular longing I have had in my life, which has in turn been expressed in prayer, yet never fulfilled. I am not one who regards God to be one’s personal genie! Rather, I trust I can write with a pastoral heart, as one who wants to wrestle, both theologically and practically, with a phenomenon that is real and, at times, exceedingly distressing and confusing, in many a Christian’s heart—unanswered prayer.

To put it bluntly: why are there times—at points, many times—when God does not answer our prayers, given the weight of encouragement God’s word gives us to pray—and how should we cope with this? It is not wrong to ask these questions. Indeed, it would be a case of burying our heads in the sand if we did not ask them. These are serious questions to raise with a God who invites us to relate to him by faith, that is, by trust, and to take his word and promise as these stand—to even stake our lives now and ever after on what he has said. It is in endeavoring to exercise such trust that many Christians have asked God for things in prayer—not trivia now, not “Christmas lists,” but serious things—for example, the pastor of a church in the Philippines I offered pastoral care to in 2011. There, more than thirty church members sought shelter in his church building, each one no doubt praying desperately for safekeeping as the flood waters rose rapidly; yet each one perished in that building where they sought shelter. I think too of those parents praying for the healing of some child who is suffering terribly; of prayers for the salvation of a family member you cannot imagine living without eternally; of prayers for wisdom to make a right decision in a heartbreaking choice; of prayers asking for some answers from the Lord when for months he has been silent at a time in your life when you have never prayed so much. The list of contexts is almost endless!

Now, I am sure that experiences similar to mine and those of my daughter, referred to in the Introduction, as well as those Filipinos in their flooding church, could be confirmed by countless other Christians all over the world: people who are trying to wrestle in prayer, but who are also wrestling over unanswered prayer in regard to matters that are breaking their hearts daily. Recently I was conducting interviews among Christians in Haiti, concerning their experience of a catastrophic earthquake back in January 2010. I heard tales of Christians who had gathered together in a church building for a prayer meeting—communing with God—when suddenly the building collapsed on them, killing them all.

Not least is unanswered prayer problematic because it seems to undermine one of the most profound truths at the very heart of Christian theology. That truth is that the Christian God is a God who hears prayer, and this is a significant aspect of his character, one that makes this God famously attractive (Ps 65:2) and worth knowing. In this respect, “hearing” is the same as “answering.” God’s fame is not that he benignly hears our cries, but that he answers them too. Scripture reinforces this in different ways.

Jesus, the Son of God—God in human flesh—drew upon the most powerfully illustrative forms of human relationship to stress this very principle (Luke 11:1–13). One of his disciples asked him to teach them how to pray. They had observed him in prayer and presumably had become challenged by what they had observed, and they asked Jesus for help, so they too could experience such quality prayer in their own lives. It is clear from the direction Jesus’ teaching took on this point that he was concerned to assure the disciples that praying was good because God hears it, God answers. Thus, he appealed to the concept of friendship as the relational bond that will always guarantee God’s ear for our prayers. Jesus told of the friendship between the two neighbors. The neighbors’ friendship ensured the one neighbor got up at midnight to help out his fellow neighbor, who had awakened him for some bread for a late visitor. So, too, the friendship between God and the Christian should be the assurance for prayer. Because there is friendship, Christians can feel compelled to ask, seek, and knock, and on each account be assured there will be a successful hearing and answer. The friendship is the guarantee. Then, to ensure there can be no doubt on this, Jesus draws upon the most powerful form of human relational friendship—that between a parent and child: “What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” At the back of this, of course, is the idea that such parental deceit is nigh unthinkable in anything but very dysfunctional relations. So, it is even more poignant that Jesus could compare, not contrast, such a basic assumption between evil human beings and what Christians can assume to be true of God in relation to their prayers: “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”2

Now, one accepts that, as in all relations, there are relevant contexts and conditions to be taken into account. However, generally speaking, the emphasis in these statements of Scripture is to assure Christians that God does hear and answer prayer.

This emphasis is only furthered by other statements from Jesus regarding prayer, albeit that these may well require even more careful reference to context. For example, “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24); and, “Whatever you ask in my name, this will I do, that my Father may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name, I will do it” (John 14:13); and again, “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the father in my name, he will give it to you. . . . Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:23–24). Whatever contextual nuances need to be taken into account with interpreting these texts, they do serve to heighten the conviction that God hears prayer...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Is There Really a Problem?
• Chapter 2: One Thing Is Clear
• Chapter 3: God, Father Christmas, and Prayer
• Chapter 4: Struggling with Prayer
• Chapter 5: Heartbreaking Prayer
• Chapter 6: Lament
• Chapter 7: Engaging with God
• Chapter 8: Trust Me!
• Chapter 9: Delays and Providence
• Chapter 10: Providence, Drama, and Mystery
• Chapter 11: Prayer to a Mysterious God
• Chapter 12: Omniscience and Omnipotence
• Chapter 13: Knowing the Answerer
• Chapter 14: Privileged for Accessible Grace
• Chapter 15: A Prayer that Cannot Go Unanswered!
• Chapter 16: The Final Answer—“Trust Me!”
• Bibliography