An Unanswered Prayer:

It is often said there is no such thing as “unanswered prayer.” This, however, will seem a facile formulation to people who have prayed to God to keep a loved one alive and then found that the person dies nonetheless. Some requests that God turns down are shattering. After such an experience, how can we maintain the confidence to pray again? How can we really believe that God is hearing and responding to us, if he denies such desperate, heartfelt requests?

When we look at David’s Psalms, we see that David maintained his confidence in prayer despite many deep disappointments in life and despite many denied requests, such as when his infant son died. How did David maintain the heart to pray after that? He had his helps. He had his experience with God over the years in which God saved him again and again, and he also had revelations of the Spirit of God in his heart. We who live after Christ and believe the gospel, however, have even greater resources for assurance that God will hear our petitions. We know God will answer us when we call because one terrible day he did not answer Jesus when he called.

Jesus prayed in Gethsemane that the “cup” of suffering on the cross be taken from him, yet his request was turned down. On the cross itself he cried out, “My God,” but he was forsaken. How could that be? Jesus was the perfect man-he served God with all his heart, soul, and mind, and loved his neighbor as himself and so completely fulfilled the law of God. Elsewhere in the Psalms it says: “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened”.

Sinners deserve to have their prayers go unanswered. Jesus was the only human being in history who deserved to have all his prayers answered because of his perfect life. Yet he was turned down as if he cherished iniquity in his heart. Why?

The answer, of course, is in the gospel. God treated Jesus as we deserve-he took our penalty-so that, when we believe in him, God can then treat us as Jesus deserved. More specifically, Jesus’s prayers were given the rejection that we sinners merit so that our prayers could have the reception that he merits. That is why, when Christians pray, they have the confidence that they will be heard by God and answered in the wisest way. When Jesus taught his disciples on prayer, he gave them this illustration:

Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. (Luke 11:11-13)

Jesus is saying something wonderful and powerful. If earthly fathers, who are sinful, ordinarily want to make their children happy, ”how much more” committed is our perfect heavenly Father to our well-being and happiness? That means there has never been a parent on earth who wants joy for his or her children as much as your Father in heaven wants joy for you, his child. There has never been a human father who wanted to answer his child’s petitions as much as God wants to answer yours Yet we know that God is not only loving but holy and just. How can he shower blessings down on sinful people who deserve the opposite? The answer is that Jesus got the scorpion and the snake so that we could have food at the Father’s table. He received the sting and venom of death in our place.

In conclusion, we know that God will answer us when we call “my God” because God did not answer Jesus when he made the same petition on the cross. For Jesus, the “heavens were as brass”; he got the Great Silence so we could know that God hears and answers. We should ask God for things with boldness and specificity, with ardor, honesty, and diligence, with patient submission to God’s will and wise love. All because of Jesus, and all in his name.