When God Doesn’t Answer

When God gives us great and wonderful promises, such as found in Jeremiah 33:3:

“Call unto Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know,”

and then He does not answer us when we pray, we can be tempted to doubt His faithfulness. However, as Romans 3:4 says: Let God be true but every man a liar. We must remember that God is true to His Word, and some other reason must exist as to why He does not answer.

Scripture is not silent as to how or why this may happen. Upon examination, several reasons emerge as to why God may not be giving us the answers we seek. To start at the very beginning, you must make sure you are truly His child according to John 6:29:

Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”

“Whom He (God) sent” is Jesus, of course. Each one endeavoring to receive an answer from God must start at this very place. Have you truly believed that Jesus is the One God sent? Do you believe who He says He is and what He says He has done and can do? Our heavenly Father will only answer His own children, not the ones who live in opposition to Him by refusing to believe His Son.

To continue the foundation, I insert one caution: God does not “speak” to us or “answer” us in some booming magical voice; He speaks to us loudly and clearly through His Word. His children, whom He calls His sheep, should not have any difficulties in “hearing” His voice when reading and studying the Bible, as He says in John 10:26:

My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me.

With those details taken care of, let us proceed to the rest of what Scripture says on this subject. First of all, your prayers to God must be according to His will, as in 1 John 5:14-15:

Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.

If you ask according to His will, He will hear you and grant your request. If you ask for what is outside of His will, you will not receive an answer. So the question becomes, how do you determine what is “according to His will”? To save words in this blog, I will refer you to some blogs I have written previously concerning this subject: http://wp.me/p4tk5J-24, http://wp.me/p4tk5J-29, and http://wp.me/p4tk5J-2g.

A corollary to this verse is John 15:7:

If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you.

We must get to the point where God’s Word abides (lives) in us! This takes much more individual effort than merely occasionally reading the Bible, attending church or listening to a Bible teacher.

Also related to the previous point is James 4:3:

You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

We can ask God all day for the wrong things, things we selfishly want, things that are not according to His will, and He will not answer us. The sovereign God exists to be glorified, not as a “genie” to grant wishes at our beck and call.

Another barrier to God answering us is our own sin, as we find in Isaiah 59:1-2:

Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; nor his ear heavy that it cannot hear. But your iniquities have separated you from your God; and your sins have hidden His face from you, so that He will not hear.

And consider Psalm 66:18:

If I regard iniquity in my heart, The Lord will not hear.

God is certainly able to hear all prayers, but will refuse to hear them if we will not repent of our sins (which is turning away from them, not just acknowledging them). Don’t even think of saying that you’re not doing so badly until you have met the conditions of John 15:7 above, having His words “abide in you”! We must become intimately familiar with God’s word so we will be able to have the discernment to root out even subtle sins (like unthankfulness, selfishness, pride, etc.). If you can’t think of any of your sins, ask God to show you what they are (and be prepared: You might not like what you see)!

Another pointed verse on this subject is Ezekiel 14:3-4:

“Son of man, these men have set up their idols in their hearts, and put before them that which causes them to stumble into iniquity. Should I let Myself be inquired of at all by them? Therefore, speak to them, and say to them, ‘Thus says the Lord God: “Everyone of the house of Israel who sets up his idols in his heart, and puts before him what causes him to stumble into iniquity, and then comes to the prophet, I the Lord will answer him who comes, according to the multitude of his idols.”’”

We often prioritize things above God, thus making an idol of them. Common ones in our culture include self, work, money, control of our own schedule, family, love, possessions, appearance, popularity, fame, and even those smart phone or tablet devices. Examine your life carefully: Could it be that someone else or something else has taken the place of prominence in your life that God deserves?

Maintaining a relationship with God such that He is continually answering your prayers is not easy! It takes hard work to know His word to the extent that you discern His will, and to be alert to the different temptations and idols that are snares to us throughout the various and changing circumstances of our lives, but it is worth it! His encouragement to us is found in Jeremiah 29:13:

And you will seek Me and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.

An Ounce of Prevention…

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” We all recognize the wisdom in this Benjamin Franklin quote, that it is better to try to keep a bad thing from happening than it is to try to fix the bad thing after it has happened. (Thanks to idioms.thefreedictionary.com for the quote and definition!) When we find that we have been the victims of deception and its lies, how we wish we could have prevented being deceived instead of having to cure what has happened to us! We determine to be wiser the next time, to be alert for any subtle signs we may have missed, to be more cautious about who and what we trust.

In the Bible, God implores, warns, instructs, and commands us to prevent deception from affecting our lives—spiritual deception, that is. He knows, and wishes us to know, that a person who exits this life spiritually deceived will encounter the fate of hell from which there is no cure. If we fail to be continually wise, alert, and cautious about who and what we believe in this life, we will not get a second chance to make things right.

Here are some scriptures with general warnings (and their implications) about this deception:

Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren.  James 1:16

James, out of love, implores that we not be deceived. He does not want us to experience the cost of spiritual deception.

And Jesus answered and said to them: “Take heed that no one deceives you.”  Matthew 24:4

Jesus Himself, also not wanting us to experience the cost of spiritual deception, instructs His disciples to be cautious about being deceived by anyone.

Similarly, in Deuteronomy 11:16a:

 “Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived…”

This deception in our hearts is dangerous—it makes us elevate our own reasoning or feeling above God’s word (for more information on this, see my recent blog http://wp.me/p4tk5J-2N). We believe we are smart enough in ourselves to not fall prey to deception.

Consider Jeremiah 37:9:

Thus says the Lord: “Do not deceive yourselves, saying, ‘The Chaldeans will surely depart from us,’ for they will not depart.”

Here is a warning that you can even deceive yourself by convincing yourself that what God has said will not come to pass! (God, of course, was right because the Chaldeans did not depart from Israel.)

1 Corinthians 3:18 says:

Let no one deceive himself. If anyone among you seems to be wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise.

It is bad enough that we may be deceived by others, but so sad to find that we can even deceive ourselves! We lie to ourselves! A common example of this is found when people encounter bad news or bad situations and tell themselves, “Everything will be all right.” That is what they hope for, of course, and tell themselves this so they can feel better. However, the truth is that they have no way of knowing or controlling whether or not everything will be all right—sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.

Time and acceptable blog length do not permit me to list the additional warnings against deception given in the Bible—there are several more! What we can glean from these multiple warnings is this: Deception must be a definite danger for God to warn us about it this many times. Deception’s insidiousness is this: People can be deceived without realizing it! A life apart from God and His truth is one of deception, even if a person “feels normal.”

The good news is that God tells us how to prevent being deceived. We have the entirety of His absolute truth contained in the person of Jesus Christ:

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” John 14:6

As long as we rightly divide His word of truth (see 2 Timothy 2:15) and do not twist His words (see 2 Peter 3:16), Jesus is the way to prevent the high price, the eternal price, of spiritual deception. My sincere prayer is for all to escape deception and believe Him and His words today!

Scammed by Satan

Ever get those scam e-mails? You know, the ones that tell you in usually not-so-good English that you have won a sweepstakes (that you never entered) for $2.5M, and to start receiving payment you just need to send $100 and your bank account and routing numbers to a certain link. I can’t believe people actually fall for these, but some surely do, and it ends up costing them. Their desire for the news to be true many times blinds them to the caution they should take in dealing with someone they don’t know.

What is going on here is deception; we have all encountered it. We find it not only in scam e-mails, but in other scenarios as well: car purchasing or repairs, investments, buying products that make certain claims, and many other instances. The cost of deception to us is usually in dollars, but it does not have to be. When we are the one who has been deceived we may feel angry at the deceiver, or angry or disgusted with ourselves for not being wiser. We may end up feeling ashamed at being duped. Deception is unfair!

At any rate, deception has these qualities: Lies are told to purposely mislead, we believe the lies, and when (or if) we discover the lies we find it costs us a price we never would have paid had we known. It is no surprise that the Bible frequently warns us against deception, not financial deception, but spiritual deception. “Someone” (the devil) is out to purposely mislead us, and if we believe his lies the price we pay lasts for all of eternity. You don’t believe he exists? Obviously someone who does not exist cannot deceive you. Great, he has just successfully achieved his first deception!

What exactly is his job? According to Revelation 12:9, it is this:

So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

He “deceives the whole world”—what a job that is! How does he accomplish this task? John 8:44 (which I will not copy here, but please feel free to read it) tells us that he is not only a liar, but the father of lies! If he can get the whole world to believe he does not exist (after all, we’ve never seen him in person, or heard him speak), half his job is done! If you think he is that “little red man” with a pitchfork and pointy tail, you would leave when you see him coming because you’re too smart to be taken in! One of his most successful tactics is to plant his lies in your thoughts, but make you believe they are your thoughts. (For more information on his other tactics, check out Week 26 of my devotional, “More of God,” which can be ordered here: http://amzn.to/1zhm8Y7)

2 Thessalonians 2:10-11 says:

The coming of the lawless one is according to the working of Satan, with all power, signs, and lying wonders, and with all unrighteous deception among those who perish, because they did not receive the love of the truth, that they might be saved.

Although this verse is about the “coming of the lawless one” (the antichrist, which we will not go into here), it informs us of the tools Satan uses to carry out deception, which are “power, signs, and lying wonders, and … all unrighteous deception.” What that term “all unrighteous deception” means is this: Satan does not and will not play fair! He will deceive anyone he can at any time he can, and does not care one whit about the eternal price he exacts from his prey.

How then do we keep from being deceived? We must be able to separate the lies from the truth. How do we know what is truth? Read what Jesus says to Pilate in John 18:37b:

“For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”

Jesus is the solution to spiritual deception. Believe and rely on His words and teachings to avoid paying that price you never intended to pay, to avoid one day saying, “If only I’d known!”

Next week’s blog will be more about the actual price paid for being spiritually deceived. Until then, I’m praying for you!