Most Christians kind of have the idea that God is the primary obstacle to answered prayer. We think that if we could just figure out how to convince God to let loose of the answer we would receive the help we need. So we cry, or threaten or promise or attempt to bargain in the hope that we will somehow hit on the right strategy for getting God to move on our behalf.
But the Bible teaches something completely different about prayer. The Bible teaches that God wants to answer our prayers. It is His desire to give us what we ask for in prayer. Here’s one of my favorite scriptures:
Matthew 7:7 Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you:
Ask and it shall be given you. Shall be given you… Shall be given… Shall be given you. This is Jesus talking and he doesn’t say, "might be given you" or "it’s probable that it will be given you," or even "if you’ve pleased God it will be given you" or "if God’s in a good mood it will be given you." He says ask and it shall be given you. He doesn’t leave himself an out. If I was his lawyer I would have advised him to add some small print here, maybe a footnote or a loophole of some kind, but he doesn’t do that. In fact if he were to do that it would be impossible for us to get our prayers answered. He has to provide certainty. He can’t equivocate. Any ambiguity on his part will be grounds for doubting on our part. And when we doubt we can be certain of not receiving from God.
So Jesus is making clear to us that, for His part, God will give us what we ask for, when we ask. He repeats it again for emphasis in the next verse:
8 For every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.
God’s
response is certain. He will say yes to our prayer. Jesus continues by
explaining why we can be certain about God’s answer:
9
Or what man is there of you, whom if his son ask bread, will he give
him a stone? 10 Or if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent? 11 If
ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to
them that ask him?
You can be more certain of God answering your prayer than you would be that a father would give his sone bread when asked.
Much more that any earthly father would desire to help and bless and
give to his children your heavenly father desires to help and bless and
give to you.
One last point,. Jesus says:
"… how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things…"
He
didn’t say good spirituals. He said things. God knows that we need
things. He created a whole universe of things and He doesn’t think that
things are bad. God likes things.
According to Jesus then, when we ask God for things, we can be absolutely certain that His answer will be yes.
Wait a second Greg. Just wait a second. What you’re saying can’t
be so. You’re obviously missing it somewhere because millions of
Christians all over the world ask God for things and don’t receive them.
Well, I guess Jesus must have been lying about it then. Or maybe
the Bible really isn’t the Word of God. Or maybe it is the Word of God
but doesn’t accurately reflect what Jesus said. Or maybe when Jesus
used words they didn’t mean what the rest of us mean when we use those
same words.
No! Jesus isn’t a liar. The Bible is the Word of God. It does
accurately reflect what Jesus said and the words mean what they mean.
Why then don’t Christians receive what they ask for when they pray?
Because it’s not just up to God. We have a part to play in receiving
the answer. We can fail to receive what we asked for, even after God
says yes to our prayer, if we don’t do our part.
What’s our part? What do we have to do to receive answers to prayer? More on that later.
I like the spirit of your post; I like that you’re encouraging people to pray expectantly.
I fear, however, that you might be making promises that God never made. Specifically when you talk about God giving us “good things.” My preferred translation says “gifts” rather than “things,” but regardless of the translation, I think it might be erroneous to assume that he meant material “things,” especially when you go on to say “God knows we need things…God likes things.”
Didn’t Jesus instruct his disciples to leave their “things” when he sent them out? Didn’t Jesus tell the rich man to give up his “things,” and the man went away sad because “he was very rich” (which means, because he “liked his things too much”). I don’t think God cares at all about whether or not we have a new Hummer, or a Nintendo Wii, or the latest iPod.
As for the verses in Matthew 7 about God giving us what we ask for. You almost touch on this when you talk about us doing “our part,” but I don’t think it’s anything we do as much as it is the way we are supposed to think.
For example, there was a time when I didn’t believe Psalm 37:4, “Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
You see, this is another promise about what God will provide. But there’s a vital qualifier in there: we must “delight in the LORD.” And I think if we do that, then our “desires” will be for the things God desires. So the real promise is more like “If you delight in me, I will give you what I want you to have.” And because we love and trust God, and because we delight in him, we will want what he wants for us.
And I don’t think God wants us to have things. Look at any of the disciples, any of the prophets, or the life of Jesus, and it’s pretty clear that God places little value on the things of this world. Instead, he wants us to store up our treasures in heaven. (Jesus said that, too.)
So , again, I appreciate the spirit of your post. But I think it could be misleading, making people believe God wants them to have a lot of nice stuff. And then when they don’t get it, they’ll think “I must be doing something wrong since I’m not getting the stuff that God wants to give me.” And the truth is, God wants us to love and serve him. God wants us to long for Him, not a bunch of worldly things.
Feel free to respond on my blog: http://www.tylercharles.blogspot.com
Thanks Tyler for the very polite way in which you disagree. Now let me see if I can defend my position.
Does God like things? Does God not want us to like things? Most Christians kind of have the idea that things are bad, but where does this idea come from? My contention is that this idea does not come from the Bible. This idea that things are bad does not originate with Jesus teaching and a closer look at the scriptures you cite will reveal that. Where does this idea, that things are bad, come from?
I don’t really have the time to get into it in detail right now so let me just give the short version. The Bible is a Jewish book written almost entirely by Jews. Jesus is a jew. The apostles were Jews. The apostle Paul was a Jew. The Jews have never believed that things are bad, they believe that things are good. Why? Because God created things and after creating them God said they were good.
But it’s pretty clear that Christians have traditionally believed that “things” are bad. So if this idea is not a Biblical idea, where did it come from?
You have to know a little about the history of Christianity to answer this question. Christianity started out as an exclusively jewish religion. Then it began to spread to the non-jewish world, to the culturally Greek world. Eventually the number of non-jewish, i.e. Greek, Roman, etc. Christians greatly outnumbered the Jewish Christians. As the culturally Greek Christians came to dominate the Church they began translating Bible teaching through the lens of their Greek culture. So that the first Christian theologians, people like Origen and Augustine were not only committed Christians but also committed Greek philosophers. They believed that Greek philosophy was a source of truth just as they believed that the Bible was a source of truth. They then tried to reconcile Greek philosophy with the Bible.
Even to this day many Christians argue that Greek philosophy is a source of truth and that the Bible needs to be reconciled with this truth. That was in fact the point of Pope Benedict’s supposedly controversial speech at Regensburg University which made the news at the end of 2006. You can read the speech here: http://www.zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=94748
So what does that have to do with “things”? Well, one of the basic assumptions of Greek philosophy is that the material world, i.e. “things” are inherently evil. This idea is the actual basis for many of the early church fights about the nature of God, the nature of Christ etc. You see it was very hard for the Greek Christians to accept that God could have become a real, material, physical, man. How could that which is good become that which is evil, i.e. material, they asked?
Anyway… so we’re left with this question: Did this traditional Christian notion that things are bad originate in the jewish written Bible or is it the result of the influence of Greek philosophy on Christian theology? I think the answer is pretty clear.
If you’ll go back and look at the scriptures you cite you’ll see that you are reading this notion of the evil of things into those scriptures. For example you say that Jesus instructed his disciples to leave their things when he sent them out. I assume you are referring to this scripture:
(Luke 9:3) 3 And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece.
But there is another part to this story at the end of the Gospel of Luke.
(Luke 22:35) 35 And he said unto them, When I sent you without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye any thing? And they said, Nothing.
You cite Ps. 37:4 and suggest that it means God will change our hearts so that we delight in the things he delights in. That’s a common Christian interpretation of that verse, but it ignores the context of the verse. The verse above it says you shall dwell in the land and be fed. Clearly material things. Verse 11, in the NASB translation reads this way:
(Psalms 37:11) 11 But the humble will inherit the land, And will delight themselves in abundant prosperity.
Again talking about material things. The whole Psalm is a promise to those who serve God that God will bless them materially and cause them to prosper.
I’ve got some legal beagle work to attend to so that is the best I can do right now.
Greg Marquez
goyomarquez@earthlink.net
I pray that You, God, will mend my relationship with Jess. I pray that You help us understand one another better and love one another more fully and completely.
Amen
This post made me think about my hbansud and son’s relationship.I will be sharing this one!Blessings,April