What happens when the Bible tells you that you’ll get peace that surpasses your understanding when you pray, but when you pray you don’t get that peace — or it doesn’t last?
We can think it’s our lack of faith. People have certainly said and thought that. Worse, we’ve been led to believe it.
But what about the person who is racked with anxiety for grief or they have an anxiety disorder or there is anxiety for some other unknown reason? Do they ‘lack faith’ if God doesn’t answer their prayer for that peace?
NO! No, no, no. Arguably, as they endure, it’s the opposite.
Prayer doesn’t work by our clicking our fingers to get the job done.
God’s providence doesn’t work like that. We don’t wish it, then fish it.
Prosperity doctrine is one of the real weaknesses of a ‘name-it, claim-it’ theology these entitled days. It’s peddled by those who promise that all dreams come true; that, if you only PRAY enough and WISH enough and DO enough, you, through your will, can turn the will of God in your favour. It’s a nice idea. It makes us feel all-powerful to believe it.
But what about when it doesn’t work? When the prayer, the miracle you hope for, isn’t answered the way you hope?
Before you answer, consider how many prayers aren’t answered.
Consider before you answer that there’s at least one prayer of the apostle Paul’s that wasn’t answered.
2 Corinthians 12:8-10 details Paul’s prayer: “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take [the thorn in my flesh] away from me. But God said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”
God said no. Yes, that’s right. In God saying no, God was saying, “I’ve got something better for you, Paul... you don’t know what you’re praying for... I’ll give you something that will help you become more like my Son... the ability to ‘delight in weaknesses...’.”
It’s not exactly a palatable answer, is it? It won’t get people in mega-churches cheering in their seats, yelling out, “Amen!! Preach!!” It’s not going to sell books in this buy-now-pay-later culture.
The theory of being able to twist God’s arm is rooted in the privilege of a gospel that works for us, where everything’s about ‘God moving’ for our success, image, ‘favour’, and what we feel — in our humanity — is right. Sorry, but God doesn’t work like that.
God’s got something better. Rather than offer us something that wouldn’t grow us one iota, God’s got something infinitely better.
God wants to say something powerful to everyone, especially to those who do not conquer every time they click their fingers — which is every single one of us when we’re honest.
By doing this, God’s levelling the playing field. Those who pedal the success gospel, those who love to show how successful they are, are eventually brought low.
Go get a Bible. Open up to the book of Daniel. Chapter three. Verses 16-18 herald the kind of faith God is calling us to — a faith that simply relies on our obedience that leaves the results in God’s hands. A faith that refuses to attempt to manipulate God for our convenience — as if that doesn’t sound absurd.
Facing that fiery furnace, the three Hebrew men, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego all fully expected that God could/might deliver them. But in the same sentence, they accepted that “even if he doesn’t save us, we won’t change our minds.”
Believing God answers every prayer the way we desire is not only a bad theology, but it also represents an immature faith where the hope will end up disappointed. The opposite is praying and accepting whatever God’s response is, even to the extent that we might believe that God’s got growth in mind for us.
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