Teach Us To Pray | Unanswered Prayers | Psalm 22:1-2 | Coleton Segars

We are in a series right now called Teach Us to Pray.

And we've been going through the Lord's Prayer and what Jesus says about prayer.

When he's asked from the disciples, hey, would you teach us to pray?

He answers and he gives a response.

And so we looked at the Lord's Prayer and what Jesus said about prayer.

And today I wanted to talk about unanswered prayer.

And so just before we begin, this might be heavier than like other messages about God's love, although I think that's also like that's something that should be preached and stuff like that.

But talking about unanswered prayer and the challenges of that, if you ever walk through unanswered prayer, um it doesn't feel light and fluffy, it feels devastating sometimes.

And um, and so we're gonna be talking about unanswered prayer today.

And so I want to begin with the text that is really just a launching point for the sermon.

But uh, this is from Psalm 22, and it's also uh similar words that Jesus cried out from the cross, but this is what Psalm 22 says.

The psalmist writes, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me?

So far from my cries of anguish.

My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.

This is the word of the Lord.

As a pastor, I've had the uh honor and the privilege of officiating um the wedding of both of my sisters, and um it's been a real gift to be able to do that.

Uh my oldest sister got married first and married this incredible man named Chase.

Uh, he was a police officer and just was just the best.

He was just a great dude.

I did his wedding, and then a year later, we are celebrating Christmas together as a family, and they let us know that their new son is gonna be born early February of uh just a couple months away.

And uh so we're looking forward to early February.

And then February 9th, I get a text from my dad uh that says, Hey, Chase has been shot in the line of duty, and um it's not looking good.

And it was I like I remember like everything about that moment of time, right?

Like uh I had just Teddy was two at the time, and so I just put him down for a nap.

I'm in the bedroom, sitting in this chair, reading this text, and began praying.

Um I was just like, I remember what I prayed.

I was like, God, please, please don't do this.

Like they just got married.

Like that boy that's gonna be born to them in a couple of days.

Like, that boy needs to meet his dad.

Like he's gonna need a father.

My son needs his father.

And I can't imagine not being a father to my son.

Let this man meet his kid.

Like yeah, I just please, you can do anything.

Please don't do this.

And then the very next text I get from my dad is he's gone.

He didn't make it.

He died four days before his son was born.

And a year before I was doing their wedding, and then a year later, almost to the you know, to the day I'm doing his funeral, and it was just brutal.

Like that whole experience was uh I mean, I was the brother-in-law to this incredible man.

Uh, my sister and uh my nephew now, I mean, they've walked through literal hell, like walking through um what life has been like in the midst of that loss and that tragedy.

But unanswered prayer, like asking God, do not let this happen.

You can do everything.

I've seen the mountains, I've seen the Grand Canyon, I've seen the stuff, the ocean, it's incredible.

You can do anything.

Please don't do this.

He's got bullets in his body, fine.

Like you've saved people before, you brought people back from the dead.

I need you to do work in this moment.

And unanswered prayer is just devastating.

And to me, when I experience unanswered prayer, it's always really disorienting and very confusing.

I have prayed for things, I've prayed for miracles and watched God do miracles.

And when that happens, I want to pray about everything else.

I'm like, look, what else can I pray for?

Just adding stuff to the list.

And then I've prayed for miracles and I've watched the tragedy and the confusion of unanswered prayer happen, and it's made me question my faith, and it's made me question God's existence.

The God that I'm praying to, I'm like, are you actually even there?

Is this all fake?

Like it's just so brutal and it's so devastating walking through something like that.

And so when we're talking about teach us to pray, and we're talking about the power of prayer and prayer's ability to change things and for it to have sway in the kingdom of God and on this world, I want you to know I genuinely believe that.

I believe prayer is powerful and it is the way to move the hand that holds the world.

That is what I believe about prayer.

Actually, just if you look at the data in the scriptures, there are far more yeses to prayer than there are no's.

And God is far more responsive to prayer than he is silent if you just look at the data in the scriptures.

But it is still very true that unanswered prayer and the silence of God is an experience and a real a real reality that people face.

And so when we're talking about the power of prayer, we have to talk about the other side of this piece because anybody who's actually prayed, anybody who's actually tried to pray, has walked through seasons, if not their primary experience being, I don't know if this works.

I don't know if this does anything.

I don't know, maybe I'm doing it wrong.

But people have walked through unanswered prayer.

And so today, what I want to look at is the cause of unanswered prayer.

Like, just according to the scriptures, I'm gonna give you here's here's a handful of causes of unanswered prayer that we see in the scriptures.

Why he says no, why sometimes he's silent.

And then I want to look at what that should teach us about prayer.

And so, a couple of causes, and then I want to give you five things that that should really how we should respond to what the scriptures say about unanswered prayer.

And so, one of the causes that we see for unanswered prayer in the Bible is just sin.

Sin affects our prayers and it affects how God responds to our prayers.

In the Old Testament, just a handful, you see this in Moses' life, who was a very righteous man, the most humble man to ever live.

But in Moses' life in Deuteronomy 3, Moses prayed to enter the promised land, to go with the people of Israel, but God would not allow him to go at that time on the basis of his sin.

You disrespected me, you did not hold me up as holy.

And so the answer is no, Moses.

And God actually says, Don't talk to me about this anymore.

He gives him a response, but it's like, I don't want to talk about this anymore.

The answer is no.

And it was on the basis of his sin.

King Saul in 1 Samuel 28, Saul prays for God's guidance, but God is silent completely, doesn't even give him a response, doesn't speak to him through dreams, casting of lots, through prophets, because Saul is actively rejecting God's word to him.

He's not listening to what God is trying to say to him.

He's rejecting God one way, but he wants God's advice the other way, and God does not respond to that.

He's choosing to live in sin away from God's plan and away from God's way.

And so God's like, I'm not even gonna, I'm not even gonna respond to the request that you have.

King David in 2 Samuel 2 12, after, I mean, he slept with Bathsheba, committed adultery with her, then killed her husband, not a strong day for the king of Israel.

David prayed for his child that he conceived through the adultery to recover from its illness and live, and God said, No, on the basis of David's sin.

Your sin has caused this tragedy.

This is a consequence of your sin.

Please let my child live.

No.

Why?

Did my child do something wrong?

No, you did.

Our sin affects other people.

So that's the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, we have a couple of examples of this as well.

Um Peter says that how we treat our spouses can affect our prayers.

Um Peter 3 7 says, uh, husbands must give honor to your wives.

Treat your wife with understanding as you live together.

She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life.

Treat her as you should so that your prayers will not be hindered.

How you treat your spouse can hinder your prayers.

And I would suggest that this isn't just from husbands to wives, but also wives to husbands, mainly because God cares about the union of marriage.

He created marriage to be a picture and an image, a visible image of what God's love is like for us.

The way a husband loves a wife, the way a wife respects a husband, that is the way the relationship that God wants with his people and his people should have with him.

And so it's supposed to be a marriage.

It's supposed to be a visible what is God's love like?

All you have to do is look at a marriage.

That's what it's supposed to be.

That's why he created it.

The issue is when it doesn't function that way, God's like, I'm going to hinder something ultimately, so that when you're praying and something's not happening, you're like, I feel like I'm hitting a wall here.

What is this?

That it would lead married couples to go, like, maybe I need to go reconcile with my spouse.

Maybe this is something, maybe I'm treating her in such a way, and God's like, yes, you were treating her, you were treating him in such a way that it is going to hinder what you actually want to see because I actually want your marriage to be a picture of what my love is like.

And so he hinders our prayers in order to bring us back to a solid relationship with the spouse that we have.

And so how you treat your spouse can do that.

Another thing that we see that can affect our sin, or excuse me, our prayers, is um praying for God to assist you in sin.

You're actually asking God to help you sin.

James says this in uh his epistle in chapter four.

You do not have because you do not ask God.

And when you do ask, you do not receive because you ask with wrong motives, that you may spend what you get on your pleasures.

And you're just asking God for something.

And the motive is I actually don't want this to bless others, I actually don't want this for the kingdom to advance, I just want this for me, and I want to sin with this a little bit.

I want I need that money, not because I'm trying to like pay off my bills, I'm actually trying to live at a level that's actually discontentment level.

I'm trying to live above my means.

I want to, I'm trying to prove to somebody else that I can be this, like, and he is just not going to help us and assist us in our sin.

He will forgive every sin we ever confess to him.

He's just not interested in helping us to press into sin.

He won't assist in our desire to sin.

And so it challenges our motives.

Like, why am I actually asking for this?

If we're walking through unanswered prayer, like, is there something in me?

Am I asking for this promotion?

Am I asking for something to happen to them?

Am I asking for something for my kids?

Do I really just want my kids to succeed because they reflect me?

Or do I actually just want them to succeed because I love them?

And so there are things that like challenges our motives because praying for God to help you sin is just a way to not receive what you actually want.

And then another thing that can affect our prayer lives is doubting or being double-minded.

Doubt in the way that we think of doubt is not the same as what the scriptures are talking about.

We'll get there in a second.

And I think doubting can be very confusing for the church.

You're like, pray and not doubt, and you're like, ugh, trying to work on that.

But James says this.

He says, if any of you lacks wisdom, if you lack wisdom, ask God.

He gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you.

That's a promise.

But when you ask, you must believe and not doubt, because the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea blown and tossed by the wind.

That person should not expect to receive anything from the Lord.

Such a person is a double-minded person and is unstable in all they do.

And so doubting in this way is not just wondering.

It's not like I prayed, I wonder if he will get that.

It's kind of implied in a request that you wonder, it's a request.

Maybe they'll say yes, maybe they say no.

That's true in any relationship.

If I, if Teddy comes to me, my son comes to me and asks for something, he knows whatever he's asking for, not in prayer, but asking of request from me, is a request.

I have discretionary power to say yes or no to that.

He's not wondering, he's not doubting whether I will say yes or no.

It is a general wondering, like maybe he'll say yes to this, maybe he won't.

That's not what doubting means.

And so when you're praying to God and you're going, I wonder if he'll say no, that's not doubt.

That's the truth of all prayer.

He might say no.

He might say yes.

It is up to him.

And so doubting is not wondering.

It's not a genuine seeker of God who's just wondering, what will his response be?

That is not what doubt means.

What it really means is someone who doesn't actually even believe that this prayer will do anything.

I'm doing the act, but I don't think this is actually going to do anything.

Uh, Douglas Mu, in his commentary on James, says this he says the word doubt suggests not so much intellectual doubt as a basic conflict in loyalties.

Like the surface of the sea, never having the same appearance from one moment to moment, the divided person has no fixed beliefs.

People characterized by doubt and division must not expect that God will respond to their request, for they are insincere and inconsistent in their allegiance to God.

And so what James is talking about is not like I'm wondering if God's gonna say yes to this, and I have to convince myself that he will.

If I but if I name it and claim it, then he'll give it to me.

That's not what James is trying to get us to do, because wondering is just a natural part of making requests.

What James is referencing is really a type of atheistic prayer.

You have two sides of yourself.

You you look like a believer with the prayers that you're praying, because believers pray.

And so it looks like I'm saying the words, I'm I'm a praying person, and so on one side, I look like a believer, but in my heart, what's actually taking place is this is going to do nothing.

If your heart could speak, I'm just saying the words, this is actually gonna do nothing.

I believe in this in zero way.

I look like someone who believes, but in my heart, I'm actually someone who doesn't believe in this.

That's what James is talking about.

That's why the word is double-minded or double-souled.

It's two different ways of looking.

It's similar, uh, if you've ever, I mean, I'm assuming you have, uh if you have kids or work as a teacher, you've seen kids that do something wrong and you force them to say they're sorry, and then what they say, they're like, huh, sorry.

They, in one way, they look like someone who's sorry.

They're saying the words, they're doing the thing, we could applaud them, but in their heart, they're like, but if I could stab him with a fork, I would.

Like, like that's what's actually taking place in their life and in their heart is something very different than the sorry.

Like it's just very, very different.

They look like they're sorry or in some ways because they're saying the words, but internally, there's no sorrow in the midst of them.

There's none of that.

And that's what James is talking about.

It's to mouth the words but believe in your heart this does nothing.

It's to say the prayer, but actually to believe God doesn't answer prayer, this doesn't do anything.

That's what James is saying.

That person is really just doing a ritual of prayer, and God does not respond to dead ritual.

He just doesn't do that.

And so those are the sin issues that can hinder our prayers.

Those are the things that can get in the way and stand in the way and lead us into spaces where God says no because of our sin or silent over our sin.

The next thing that we see that can hinder our prayers is spiritual warfare.

I talked about this two weeks ago, um, and so I'm not gonna spend a ton of time on this, but spiritual warfare is a very real thing, deliver us from the evil one.

Um, but it can hinder our prayers.

You see this in the book of Job primarily.

Um, if you've ever read the book of Job or know his story, we're introduced to Job really through a battle that's taking place in heaven.

God is speaking to Satan, he is speaking to uh an enemy force that's seeking to do something against Job.

And so Job, the entire book, is asking questions of God and going, God, why is this happening to me?

What is taking place?

Like, I thought you were good, all these different things, things that we have also prayed and expressed.

And in the midst of that, like, he is receiving zero answers.

He is receiving nothing but silence from God.

And the reason is because there's there's other things behind the scenes taking place.

This is bigger than him.

Some other battle is taking place in a spiritual realm and in the spiritual world that Job is never made aware of.

God never answers his question, why did this happen to me?

He never answers that.

And so he's dealing with the silence of God because something else behind the scenes is actually taking place.

Now, God loves Job, blesses Job, and tremendously blesses him at the end of his life.

But Job walks through a season of unanswered prayer and confusion of the silence of God.

And it's like, why?

And it's like, because there's something spiritual bigger than you happening behind the scenes.

We see something similar with the minor prophet Daniel.

I talked about this two weeks ago in chapter 10.

Daniel is praying, he receives this vision, and he's praying, he's like, God, I want to know what this vision is.

So he fasts from food and stuff, and he begins to pray.

And for 21 days, he's fasting and praying in the silence of God.

God's given him no answer about what this thing is.

And then eventually an angel comes to him and explains, and he says, Hey, look, from the moment you began praying, I was sent to you.

But I was hindered in coming.

Like God heard your first prayer, and I was sent at that moment.

But I was hindered getting to you because of the demonic presence in Persia.

I was in the midst of a battle, and so thank you for continuing to fast and pray for 21 days.

I am finally here to give you the message that I that 21 days ago I was sent to give you.

So there's spiritual warfare slowing things down, which is why we should persist in prayer, which is why fasting and praying is very effective and very powerful.

Because those who earnestly seek the Lord, he rewards.

And so that's the spiritual warfare element of it.

That can affect our prayers.

And then, third, the third thing that can affect our prayers is God's own will.

God has his own mind and own will and wants to do his thing sometimes.

Sometimes he's just doing whatever he wants to do, which is by trust and faith we have to take as good and necessary and better than what we want.

But sometimes he's just doing his thing and nothing's gonna change it.

The premier example of this is obviously Jesus himself, God's own son, in the garden, praying and saying, God, I need Father, please change the plan.

Please do something else.

You can do anything.

This is what he says.

Jesus fell to the ground and prayed that if it was possible that the hour, that the cross, the suffering of the cross, might pass from him.

Abba, Father, he said, everything is possible for you.

Take this cup from me, yet not what I will, but you will, what you will.

He prays this three times.

It's not like he prayed it once and was like, ah, it's fine.

He's like, I'm gonna go back a second and third time and see if anything shifted or changed.

But God's will, according to Isaiah 53, 10, God's will, it says it was the Lord's will to crush him.

It was God's will to crush his son and cause him to suffer.

And really it was an as an offering of sin, to make him an offering for sin for all people.

It was God's will that his son endure the torture and the death and the pain of the cross.

And he does that ultimately.

God's will was ultimately good on our behalf because now he has suffered a death that we actually deserve to pay for our sins, for sins that he actually didn't even do.

But that was God's will, and there was nothing that was going to happen to change it.

Paul experiences something very similar.

Um, he talks about his experience in 2 Corinthians 12.

He says, I was given by God, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me.

God gave me something to torment me.

Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me, but he said to me, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.

And so in both of these examples, like, God is doing something else.

He is actively doing something in their lives and in the world that's just different than what they want.

They're praying against it, but nothing's changing it.

And God's not saying no to be cruel to them.

It's just he has different plans that are actually better plans long term.

But in the midst of the confusion of it, I mean, there's there's something that's real there that they're having to battle.

And three times they're wandering through this thing.

And so both of these requests, God's will was just different than what they were praying.

They weren't bad requests, they weren't sinful requests.

They were just the fact that like his will is different than ours.

And this can be true of us as well.

There are things that we're praying for, things that we want to see happen.

Sometimes it just misaligns with God's will, and then we're forced, or at least invited, to align our will with his and go, actually, yeah, I do actually want what you want more than what I want, even though I'm in the midst of the confusion of understanding why yours is better than mine, because mine sounds a lot better.

It's hard, but we are invited to trust him in that.

Now, I will say this about God's will.

When Chase died, well-meaning Christians said to my sister, well, it's just God's will for him to die.

And I wanted to hurt those people.

Um because actually, if you just if you just look at these two examples, notice who tells them that it's God's will.

God.

He says, Hey, actually, my will is different.

My will is different than that.

It wasn't some, it wasn't Peter walking up to Jesus in the garden, like, hey bro, it looks real hard.

Listen, I'm pretty sure this is God's will, so why don't you just suck it up and move on and be okay with God's will?

No, he didn't do that.

And I think sometimes we can take God's will, hijack it, and then something bad happens, if something tragic happens, and we don't actually know what to say, and so the easy thing is like, must be God's will.

Like, why don't you just not be the messenger of that?

Let God be the person that determines what his will is.

And if God wants to speak to that person, if God wants to speak to my sister and say, Hey, it was my will for your husband to pass away the way he did.

It was my will for him not to meet his son.

Let God be the one who says that.

And you just comfort the broken and comfort the broken hearted people in front of you.

I think it's very interesting that that is what's happening here.

God makes that announcement to both of these people, not people making that announcement on behalf of God.

I think many times.

We get it wrong, he hasn't yet.

So let him make that decision.

So those are the things that hinder prayer or lead to not receiving a response in prayer, our own sin, spiritual warfare, and then God's own will.

Now, one of the things I want to point out before we move into how should we respond is that the people who experience unanswered prayer that we've looked at were some of the most righteous people, and if not Jesus being the most righteous person who's ever lived.

So I think we can get to the point where like I'm experiencing unanswered prayer.

Maybe there's something wrong with me.

And it's like, well, there was nothing wrong with Jesus.

And so I I don't want us to be like, maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

And yes, I do think we should learn how to pray and we should, we should seek to grow in that discipline.

I definitely think those things.

But if you notice, like the people who experience unanswered prayer, if we are experiencing unanswered prayer, we're in good company.

Moses, David, Job, the Apostle Paul, Jesus, God's own son, was told no in prayer.

Of course he's gonna say no to you and to me.

If he says no to his own son, he's gonna say no to us from time to time.

That's just gonna be the nature of unanswered prayer.

Excuse me, the nature of life with him.

If we're to treat him, he wants to be called father, if we're to treat him in a relationship like a father, I say no to my kid a lot.

Like that's just normal relational stuff.

He asks for things that some things are good and some things are ridiculous, and some things are just neutral.

But it's like, no, we're not doing that right now.

Why?

It's like I don't mind if you ask why, but I need you to know that every now and then I'm gonna tell you no.

And for them, they experience no.

The most righteous individuals that ever lived experience no.

The most righteous individuals experience the silence of God.

So of course you will.

That is gonna be our experience as well.

And we need to see that all these people, even though they experience unanswered prayer, even though they experience no's from God, even though they experience disappointment in those ways, all of them kept praying.

None of them gave up on prayer.

None of them were like, well, God said no or God told me to wait, so I'm gonna stop praying.

They all continued to press in.

And even though they experienced unanswered prayer, their lives, if you just look at all of those people, Moses, David, Job, Apostle Paul, Jesus, look at those people who experience unanswered prayer.

The primary experience of their lives is answered prayer, not unanswered prayer.

And so there's something to that.

They did experience unanswered prayer, but it wasn't the defining marker of their life.

They experienced far more answers to prayer and far more responses from God than the other side.

And I think that's available to us, but unanswered prayer is a reality that we will walk in.

And it is something that many of you might, right now, I'm walking in unanswered prayer right now.

It says that Jesus is still walking in unanswered prayer.

He sits beside the Father, interceding on behalf of us, and he's still waiting for prayers that he has prayed to be answered, that the church would be unified.

And we are not unified.

There's denominations everywhere.

There's all kinds, I mean, there's all kinds of divisions in the church.

There's all kinds of stuff.

And so Jesus even sits in the waiting of that.

And so if he is, of course we will experience unanswered prayer and waiting.

And so unanswered prayer is a reality that we're going to have to deal with, and it's one that we're going to face.

And so, how should we respond?

Five ways.

Five ways that we can respond.

One, if sin can hinder our prayers, we should be quick to repent of sin.

We should be quick to check ourselves, to dig deep in our hearts, and just ask the spirit, like the Spirit of the Lord, like, is there something in there?

In Judges 10, there's this time when the people of Israel are oppressed by another nation and they pray and cry out to God for help.

And this is what the Lord says.

He says, Look, when the Egyptians, the Amorites, the Ammonites, the Philistines, the Sidonians, the Amalekites, the Moanites, when they oppressed you and you cried out to me for help, did I not save you from their hands?

But you have forsaken me and served other gods.

So now I will no longer save you.

Go and cry out to the gods that you've chosen.

Let them save you.

But then the Israelites said to the Lord, They confessed, We have sinned.

Do whatever you think is best, but please rescue us now.

And then they repent.

Then they got rid of all the foreign gods.

They're praying these prayers to God.

God help us, but they're probably also praying those exact same prayers to a bunch of other foreign gods.

They're double souled, they have double allegiance.

They're praying to anything and everything that moves, breathes, or sits there like wood on a rock.

Like they're just doing whatever it takes.

We'll take whatever we get.

But then all of a sudden they got rid of their foreign gods that were among them and served the Lord.

And then notice the last line.

And God could bear Israel's misery no longer.

And what I find so interesting about this story is like God said no.

Like, I'm not, like, no, I am not going to help you.

And their repentance stirred his heart and was like, I can't, it's hard not to be merciful.

I long to be merciful.

And so he said no, but he changes his mind when they repent over their sin.

And so we too should consider man, is there sin hindering our prayers?

It's hindering not to hurt us or not to harm us or anything like that, or him trying to be cruel to us.

It's hindering so that we are made aware of like there is something deadly inside of you, and I need to get it out.

I need you to turn from this.

And so it's possible to persist in sin to have those things hinder our prayers.

It's not the only reason prayers are unanswered.

And so I do think that sometimes we can guilt ourselves and be like, the only reason, or we can look at other people, the reason that God didn't answer your prayer is because you're clearly living in sin, and then we go on witch hunts to try and figure out like what's wrong with me or what's wrong with them.

We're not supposed to live that way.

But I do think there should be this comment.

We're never in the wrong when we're repenting of sin.

We're never ever wrong when we're asking or confessing sin, ever.

And God loves to forgive our sin.

And so we should consider some questions.

Is there sin in our lives that we're just choosing to live with?

Like we just, I made my peace with this.

You no longer, it's not even a struggle anymore.

I don't struggle with it, I just do it.

Are you choosing to live with sin?

Uh if you're married, how are you treating your spouse?

Do you need to reconcile, forgive, or seek forgiveness?

It will affect your prayers.

Now, if you don't pray, then maybe you don't even realize it's affecting your prayers.

But if you pray, you should notice.

What are your motives when you're praying?

James says, like, are you are you doing this to sin more?

Are you asking for something to sin more?

God's not gonna do that.

He's not gonna help you with that.

He's not gonna assist you in sinful living.

And then four, do you actually believe in prayer at all?

Are you double souled?

Not do you wonder, is he gonna answer?

Like, I know he can, I know he can heal.

I I just don't know if he's going to heal this person.

I know he can heal, I just don't know if it's the his will to heal this person.

That's a genuine question.

That's not doubt, that's just wondering.

Prayer is request, and so we're going, look, look, I'm gonna give you every request that I have.

Please answer all these prayers.

I don't know that you're gonna answer them all, not because I don't know that you exist, not because I don't think that you hear me, but because I recognize that prayer is a request, and you're a father who says yes and no sometimes.

And so it's not genuine wondering, do you actually even, I just don't even believe in this at all.

Like a kid just saying the words, but not really meaning it.

So repent of sin.

Second thing should be our responses.

We should practice fasting and prayer.

We should practice fasting and prayer.

Hebrews 11, uh the writer says this he says, Anyone who comes to God, that person must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

One of the things in coming to God is believing that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

And one of the ways that we can earnestly seek him is through fasting, denying ourselves something else in order to seek after God.

You see, you can deny yourself food, social media, TV, drink, um, and just use that time or whatever in order to seek God.

Um, a great book on this is the uh Celebration of Discipline by Richard Foster.

Uh, even just for the chapter on fasting, it's really good, the uh celebration of discipline.

Uh it's chapter four in that book.

But this is what he says about fasting.

He says fasting can bring breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that will never happen any other way.

Fasting can bring breakthroughs in the spiritual realm that will never happen in any other way.

It is a means of God's grace and blessing that should not be neglected.

Numerous people have written on many other values of fasting, such as increased effectiveness and intercessory prayer, guidance and decisions, increased concentration, deliverance from those and for those in bondage, physical well-being, revelations, and so on.

In this, as in all matters, we can expect God to reward those who diligently seek him.

And he's referencing Hebrews 11:6.

Hebrews 11:6

Like God just responds to hearts that are just fully devoted to his.

I'm not double-souled, I have one mind, one heart, one soul, and I'm aiming it at you.

He responds to that.

And some of the most notable, powerful stories of God breaking into the world and doing incredible stuff began with people calling for national days of fasting and prayer and calling people to do those things.

And so it was Esther, Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra, Jehoshaphat, Jesus fasted and prayed.

The disciples fasted and prayed.

And so if you are seeking an answer to prayer, seeking direction from God, wanting to hear from him, it is a good practice to practice a day to fast and pray, or a set of days to fast and pray, or a season of time to fast and pray.

And again, it can be food or it can be digital or it can be whatever.

But just choosing to, I'm gonna set something down, and then in the absence of that, in the void of that, I'm gonna fill that void with him and praying to him and asking him to do things because I want to show him, like, Lord, you know I need this, I want this, I need to know, I need direction, I need to know what to do.

I'm gonna call you guys to do this in a couple of weeks because we're talking to a building that we might purchase and it's a whole thing, and it's really exciting, and I'm very excited about it.

But I want to fast and pray.

I want us as a congregation to do that and be like, open this door so that we don't have to get out of that door at 1040.

That was a slow burn joke.

Again, Richard Foster's book on prayer, uh, or on the disciplines, read that book.

It's great.

Richard Foster was a Quaker, which I don't actually fully know what that means, but I love Quakers.

All right, back in.

Um fast and pray.

We should fast and pray.

Um, and then third, if God's will can be a reason that our requests go unanswered, one of the things that we should do is we should seek to understand God's will.

I think I love when my kid comes up to me and is like, I just want to I want to understand.

Now, if he asks me why 30 billion times and I've already given him 200 whys, I don't want to hear why anymore.

But I do like that he's seeking to understand, that he really does want to understand like what is the process here?

What are you guys doing?

What are the decisions it's making?

God also likes that.

He's not offended by us going, like, I'd love to know your will.

John talks about that we're supposed to be praying in line with his will, so of course there's something about like understanding God's will, so we can seek to understand God's will.

Jesus and Paul in the in the uh before-mentioned passages, both of them prayed and petitioned three times.

And Paul's answer, my grace is sufficient, God gives him an answer, my grace is sufficient for you, my power is made perfect in your weakness.

That answer did not come the first time or the second prayer, it came the third.

And so the third time he prayed, God, take this from me, take this from me, take this from me.

He's praying, and then God then explains, like, my will is actually for this thing to stick in your side and to torment you because it's actually gonna do work in your life that allows me to do greater work in your life.

And so to sit there and to pray numerous times and to seek and to understand, Jesus understood the first time.

I want your will, and I know the scriptures and I know what's happening, but I also want to know.

And so he prays three times.

And the assurance of knowing and the confidence of knowing, even though this is gonna be difficult, I'm not, God is not just letting me out there alone and going, like, figure it out, man, my will is for you to just suffer and you, I'm not gonna be with you, but like to fully understand, like, this isn't just a random act in your life.

I have guided the world in this direction and your life in this direction to where my will that I'm so tightly related to, I am with you in this, guiding your life, and I'm gonna use this thing that you think is just random.

I'm gonna use this thing in your life to hear that from God, to have the words from him, to be like, why is this illness not leaving?

Why is this pain not leaving?

Why is my relationship the way that they are?

Like, what is happening in the midst of this?

And it's not sin and it's not that, it's not this, but it's like God's going, I am doing something in that.

When he speaks that, it gives Paul the resolve and the willingness and the strength to move forward.

He says, now I will boast about this weakness because I know God is working through it.

And so to seek to understand what he's doing in our lives and the the areas of our disappointment of prayer, to ask God, like, what are you doing here?

What is your will in this thing?

And if it is to cure it, to move past it, great.

But he might say, like, I am doing something here, and those words can give us resolve and strength to move forward.

And so we should seek to understand the will of God that he has for us for the things that we're praying about, especially in the spaces where we're disappointed in prayer.

And then fourth, don't let unanswered prayer cause you to lose heart in prayer.

You will experience unanswered prayer.

Don't let it cause you to lose heart in prayer and to stop praying.

Jesus knows that a strong possibility with prayer is that people will just give up.

And he makes this very clear in Luke 18.

It says, Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not lose heart.

The only reason to say that is because he recognized the implication is prayer is gonna be difficult and you're gonna be uh encouraged or at least feel like I'm losing heart in this.

I'm confused by it.

I prayed, nothing happened.

I prayed and got silence, I don't really fully understand what's happening.

Jesus understands a natural step in prayer could be that they would lose heart and give up on it.

So he gives them a parable to tell them a story.

Do not lose heart, keep praying.

He knows that this practice will be hard.

C.S.

Lewis uh seeks to explain why our prayers are not always granted.

And he tries to give this, uh I think he does a really good job, but giving this explanation of like, here's why they're not always granted.

And here's what he says prayers are not always granted.

And this is not because prayer is weak, but because prayer is strong.

When prayer works, it works unlimited by space and time.

That is why God has retained a discretionary power of granting or refusing it.

Without that condition, prayer would destroy us.

So, for example, Teddy in our house likes to play in our house.

He likes to bounce balls and jump from couch to couch and all this stuff, and maybe we're bad parents, but that's what he likes to do.

And inside the house, when he asks to do things, play inside the house, what he mostly receives are yeses.

He requests things, and inside the house he mostly receives yes.

That's okay.

Every now and then he gets to know, but inside the house there's more that's available to him.

Now, sometimes he likes to play on the roof.

It is still very, very important for him to request and ask for things.

Requesting and asking for things still works.

But the number of no's he receives about what he can do on the roof changes dramatically from what he experienced in the house.

And the reason isn't because I hate him, don't love him on the roof, but I love him in the house.

It's not because I didn't hear him, it's not that.

The reason is the decisions that are made up here have more power.

They could kill you, you could break something.

Like it's just there's a greater consequence to the things and the decisions that are made up here.

And so, can I can we play tag on the roof?

No.

Can we play tag in the house?

Absolutely.

Why is one other than because it has more power up on the roof.

The dangers are more.

And so C.S.

Lewis is trying to say the exact same thing about prayer.

He's like, look, prayer isn't weak.

Requesting things from God isn't weak.

It's just so powerful that he has to say no sometimes.

Someone who knows more than we do, is wiser than we are, knows everything that's gonna happen in the world, past, present, and future, knows it all.

That person has maintained discretionary power to give a yes to your request or a no to your request.

And so because he knows those things, he gets to make those things.

So of course it'll be confusing sometimes.

It's confusing for Teddy when he's like, why can't I throw this ball from that roof to the other one and then do da-da-da and see if it bounces back and maybe jump and catch it?

Why can't I bring the dog up there?

I'm like, I know you don't understand, but I'm just trying to let you know, man, like that there's it's there's bigger things at play here, and you don't fully grasp what's taking place here.

And in the same way, God is looking at us and going, look, there are bigger things at play here.

You will experience no's because prayer is so powerful that you could change the world with your prayers.

And there are things that He does align with you and go, Yes, let's change that thing.

But then there are other things that go, like, actually, if you knew what would happen if I answered that, you would, and you saw all of it that would take place, you would actually be like, Oh, actually, no, thank you.

I don't want that anymore.

I didn't realize everything that you realize.

And so he maintains discretionary power over those things.

Of course, we're gonna hear no.

Jesus heard no, we're gonna hear no.

But don't let the unanswered prayer be discouraging to you.

Prayer is powerful, and so he must say no sometimes.

And then finally, we should know that Jesus is walking with us in the difficulty and confusion of unanswered prayer.

He is walking with you in the midst of that.

He has experienced unanswered prayer.

He is currently living and waiting prayer and waiting for prayers to be answered.

Pete Gregg, in his book, uh recommended before about how to pray, says this.

He says, The Bible, the Bible is more honest about unanswered prayer than the modern church normally is.

The gospel writers make no attempt to hush up the fact that Jesus himself experienced disappointments in prayer.

In the garden, we witnessed Jesus suffering pain at every possible level, physically, psychologically, and spiritually.

My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death, he said.

The passage says that his sweat was like drops of blood.

Jesus was suffering from a rare medical condition called hematodrosis, in which the capillaries around the sweat glands can rupture under extreme anxiety and stress.

Here then is a man suffering unimaginable levels of distress.

So whether your struggle with unanswered prayer relates to physical illness, mental health, or a spiritual void in which God seems to have abandoned you, Jesus truly understands you the most.

And so you will experience unanswered prayer.

You will walk through seasons of confusion over the fact that God seems silent.

Again, if Jesus did, you will.

But my encouragement to you would actually be to press into that relationship, not to move away from it.

Jesus has experienced unanswered prayer to the point where his sweat turns to blood.

He's experienced struggling in unanswered prayer until sweat is bleeding from his sweat glands.

I don't, I, maybe you have.

I've never, I've struggled with unanswered prayer, but I've never struggled with unanswered prayer that much.

And people who have walked in the pain that you've walked in or walked in more pain that you've walked in are the people that can help you the most.

We shouldn't run from those people.

We should actually run to those people to have them encourage us, to have them sit with us, to have them actually comfort us in the midst of our agony and in the midst of our suffering.

And that's what he wants to do.

Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted because you're going to the Father who actually wants to do that thing.

He's experienced the same stuff that we have, and so it should lead us to press in.

I would encourage you to do what Jesus did in Luke 22, 44.

It says, and being in anguish, Jesus prayed more earnestly.

In being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly.

Normally, when I'm in great anguish, I'm like, I just want to, I don't know, I want to numb out.

I want to make this go away.

And in anguish, Jesus is like, I want the comfort from the Father.

I need more of his presence in my life.

I need more time with him.

And I would encourage us to have that BR experience as well.

Not to run from him, but to run to him.

I love what Liz said last week.

It was like, run to the God who's running to you, like running to you.

Like I he is turning to you, turn to him.

And so we should turn to the God who's actually sitting there going, please, open armed, please come here.

And then we need to know that God has not abandoned us.

On the cross, Jesus was abandoned.

It can feel in the silence, it can feel in the nose, God has abandoned us.

But Jesus on the cross actually said those words, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Jesus said that so that we would never have to say that.

Jesus said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

So that Jesus could say to us, I will never forsake you.

Now I've experienced the actual abandonment of the Father on the cross, so you will never actually be abandoned by Him.

He is always with you, even to the end of the age.

Even when the world seems to be shaking and all the things, the end of the age, like the mountains crushing and the waves covering everything.

Like when you feel like your earth is ending and my world is coming to an end, even then, to the end of the age, even then I will be with you in the midst of those things.

And so we need to allow the anguish that we experience in our answer prayer to turn us to Jesus.

It's not easy, and I'm not saying it's easy, but I do think that that's where we will find the comfort and the things that we're actually longing for.

Honestly, it's hard to believe, but that is where my sister has found God Himself.

He's been closer, what her words, like He's been closer to me the last eight years of walking through this pain than ever in my entire life.

He meets us in our suffering.

And so I want to close by just asking you, if you don't mind, bow your heads, close your eyes, worship team, y'all can come on up.

And I y'all know I like a responsive room.

Um, and so I am gonna ask you to lift a hand mainly because I just want to know who I'm praying for.

To me, unanswered prayer, experiencing the silence of God, experiencing nothing is happening when I pray is a reality that we will walk in.

And so to me, like if you are, I will have my hand raised with you.

If you are in the midst of prayers that you're praying for, wanting those things to be answered, and you're just experiencing nothing changing, would you just lift your hand so I can pray for you?

If you kept your eyes closed, you know, you don't know this, but some people peek.

It's most of the room, y'all.

We're not alone in this.

This is the thing that we're gonna be walking through.

If Jesus did, we did.

And so I want to take some time to pray for you.

Let me do that now.