So Where are All the Miracles? (Part 3) Judges 6:1-13

Judges 6:13 (NASB95)  ¹³ Then Gideon said to him, “O my lord, if the Lord is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all His miracles which our fathers told us about, saying, ‘Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?’ But now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.”

Do you believe that modern Western Christians should expect miracles from God, or are those only for Bible days and primitive third world countries?

Most of the discussions I have heard on this question do not use a lot of Scripture in support of their positions, so I think the answer to this question might best be answered by looking at someone in the Bible who pretty much asked the same question. 

Actually Gideon had three questions, three questions that every Christian needs to answer for his own time.

The story of Gideon is familiar, though many of the details are not.  The nation of Israel, God’s people, “did what was evil in the sight of the LORD” (Judges 6:1). 

This was not a single event but a way of life.  Chapter two of Judges gives an overview of the book as well as an overview of the history of Israel in this period.  Under Moses, God had delivered the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and gave them their own land.  After Moses died, the nation was governed by Joshua, someone that Moses had mentored and who God gave as the nation’s leader after Moses had asked God to give them someone to lead them after he died.

But then Joshua died, and there was no clear leader from God.  There were still people alive who had seen the mighty works of God, but then they died as well.    “And there arose another generation after them who did not know the LORD, nor yet the work which He had done for Israel.   Then the sons of Israel did evil in the sight of the LORD and served the Baals (the gods of the nations among whom they lived) (Judges 2:10-11).

And such was the time of Gideon.  The people did evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of the Midianites, who oppressed them severely for 7 years.  But the people cried out to God.

So the angel of the Lord appeared to Gideon.  We don’t have details, but he didn’t seem to have appeared as an angel but as a man.  The angel greets him with: “The LORD is with you, O valiant warrior.”

Gideon then responds with his three questions.  The first question is actually implied rather than stated.  He starts a question with an assumption.  “If God is with us, then why . . .?”  You can reverse the question like this.   If these things happened to us, can we really say that God is with us?  Or simply, is God really with us?

To modern ears, that question is ambiguous.  Is it a question of location, looking for the answer to, where is God?  And many modern Christians answer it in that way.  They quickly assert God’s presence in their lives at all times, while the world could be crashing in around them.  God offers them comfort in their affliction, but He does nothing to mitigate or relieve the affliction.

But for Biblical questions, we need to let the Bible answer them.  Rather than interpreting the Bible by our circumstances, we need to interpret our circumstances by the Bible.

The Bible talks about God being with people quite often in the Bible.  And when you read the relevant passages, you realize He is not talking about the mere fact of His presence, but that His presence is to be our assurance of His help, not simply in enduring problems but overcoming them, not just comforting us in the midst of our problems but delivering us out of our problems.    

I have added to the end of this paper a list of all those Bible references. [see next article God with us]   Don’t take my word for it.  Look at these passages and see the willingness of God to help His people and what that help looks like.

So in Gideon’s mind, God being with someone tells that person that God is there to deliver that person.  The Bible often notes troubling times and events for God’s people.  The question is: what does God expect or want to do with them?  Should we just endure them with a smile, or should we expect God to do something about the problems themselves?  I think the passages clearly show that God wants to deliver us out of these problems and not just leave us in them.

So Gideon’s second question is:  Why have all these bad things happened to us?   Many modern Christians would consider Gideon idealistic or naïve to even ask the question.  Of course, bad things happen to us.  They happen all the time.  It’s all part of the program. 

But God had very specifically spelled out for Gideon’s people the blessings that He wanted to give to his people (Leviticus 26 and Deuteronomy 28).  Those chapters also clearly spelled out the consequences if the people rejected God’s way of life. 

The people had turned away from God as their basic pattern of life, and what they were now enduring, God had told them long ago that they would.  But wait.  The angel had said that God was with him.  The Hebrew text is in the singular.  The angel was saying that God was with Gideon, not ‘you’ as a people.  But Gideon didn’t see God as being with him apart from Him being with the whole nation.  Gideon wasn’t worried about God being with him but whether God was with his nation.

So Gideon’s second question shows that what the nation of Israel was now experiencing was something that he believed God should have protected the people from.

Are our lives supposed to be one long trial and tribulation until we die and go to heaven?  Look at Psalm 34.  This hadn’t been written by the time of Gideon and long before our time.  But Christians need to decide whether it applies to them today and whether this is all poetic hyperbole or promises you can take to the bank.  The following are excerpts from that psalm:

¹I will bless the Lord at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.

⁴I sought the Lord, and He answered me, and delivered me from all my fears.

⁶This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him and saved him out of all his troubles.

⁷The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him, and rescues them.

⁸O taste and see that the Lord is good; how blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!

⁹O fear the Lord, you His saints; for to those who fear Him there is no want.

¹⁰The young lions do lack and suffer hunger; but they who seek the Lord shall not be in want of any good thing.

¹⁷The righteous cry, and the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles.

¹⁸The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

¹⁹Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.

²⁰He keeps all his bones, not one of them is broken.

If Psalm 34 doesn’t apply to us today as promises from God, then about ¾ of the Bible (the Old Testament) has become essentially irrelevant to our lives.  And what does the New Testament teach?  Sixty percent of that is the gospels and the book of Acts, where the sick were healed and needs were met, whether running out of wine at a wedding or feeding thousands of people in the wilderness.   

We may say today that God was perfectly justified in sending the Midians to oppress the Israelites, but I think we tend to err on the side of expecting too little from God rather than too much.

So Gideon’s third question: if God be with us, then where are all His miracles?  Gideon lived in Bible days, but in his time, miracles were a distant memory.  They happened a long time ago to people now dead, but if God is with a people, any people, of course He would do them again to meet their needs.  That’s what a God would do.  On our part, we worship God, give Him His due in our offerings and in our obedience to His commands, but God on His part is to deliver His people from their enemies and bless them in their lives. 

Gideon actually asked a fourth question which he asked to help answer his third question: “Did not the Lord bring us up from Egypt?  And now the Lord has abandoned us and given us into the hand of Midian.” v.13  The point is that God had done great things for them in the past, doing great miracles and delivering them from their enemies.  And now He abandons them?  It doesn’t make sense.  Why would God do so much for us in the past and then just let us go? 

He was arguing with God.  (See my last article on Sodom and Gomerica about arguing with God.)  He said that if God was with them, then there should have been miracles.  If God delivered them from Egypt, it makes no sense for God to just give up on them now and leave them in the hands of Midian. 

Christians like to quote Romans 8:32 (NASB95): ³² He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

It’s the same principle.  God loves us so much to send His Son to die for us, but then He leaves us to suffer innumerable things that can make our lives hard and miserable?  We are encouraged by the hope of heaven where all pain, sorrow, and tears will be done away with, but we can be easily confused by the state of our lives now.

The time of Gideon was not a time of miracles.  But Gideon said it should have been.  So what happens?  God then uses Gideon to bring about the very miracle that he was asking for.  God didn’t deliver Israel apart from a human being doing the work.  And the human being He chose and used was the same person who questioned an angel of God about what God should be doing. 

God wasn’t angry with Gideon for questioning what He was doing or not doing.  Gideon was named in the Faith Hall of Fame of Hebrews 11.  Gideon’s faith showed itself in his insistence that God do miracles again in his time. 

No doubt Gideon had great faith to attack a huge army with only 300 men.  But he hadn’t attacked anybody when God called him, and why did God do that?  Was it just random, an exhibition of God’s grace?  Or is it that the kind of person who expected God to do miracles because that’s what it means for God to be with somebody is the kind of person who could attack a large army with 300 men?

A person who is not expecting miracles from God is a lot less likely to act in a situation like this than somebody who is.  The person not expecting a miracle will look at the situation, become full of fear, and then not go through with it.  The person expecting a miracle would say, of course, it looks impossible, but that’s what a miracle is.  And I can’t blame God for not doing a miracle if I don’t expect Him to.

Notice that God didn’t deliver Israel apart from a human being actually confronting the enemy in a situation that should have scared his boots off.  Gideon was hesitant at first, making sure that he was hearing all this right.  But I doubt anyone else could have pulled this off who didn’t begin with this expectation that God should have done a miracle here a long time ago.

We are often told today not to expect miracles, that they were for a time long past, that those were unique times, and that we don’t need miracles today because we now have the complete Bible, where they only had bits and pieces back then.  The problem is that I don’t see anything in this complete Bible that says that miracles are not for us.  On the contrary, it gives every impression that miracles are to be a part of the normal Christian life. 

A church in Gideon’s time could have told him the same thing, that the age of miracles was past.  They were now in the land of promise, and signs and wonders only happened to show the Egyptians and the nations the truth of Israel’s revelation and Israel’s special place in God’s economy. 

Sort of like the Christian Church today.  The Bible is the record to show the truth of the message. 

But a problem happened in Gideon’s time which required a miracle.  Now what?  And problems happen today that require miracles, but many of us seem well content to leave them to their natural course, whether it is an early death, years of miserable suffering, or just plain evil.  Gideon wasn’t just content with what was happening.  He thought things should be different, and God used him to change them.

God with us: what does this mean?

Matthew 1:23 Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.   Isaiah 7:14

           

When the Bible speaks of God being with someone, it is not a statement of God’s location or of his sympathy for that person.  It always speaks of His active care, protection, and help, as in, God is on my side.  Nothing can harm or defeat me.

Gen 21:20,22 And God was with the lad; and he grew, and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer. 21:22 And it came to pass at that time, that Abimelech and Phichol the chief captain of his host spake unto Abraham, saying, God [is] with thee in all that thou doest:

Gen 26:3,24,28 Sojourn in this land, and I will be with thee, and will bless thee; for unto thee, and unto thy seed, I will give all these countries, and I will perform the oath which I sware unto Abraham thy father; 26:24 And the LORD appeared unto him the same night, and said, I [am] the God of Abraham thy father: fear not, for I [am] with thee, and will bless thee, and multiply thy seed for my servant Abraham's sake. Gen 26:28 And they said, We saw certainly that the LORD was with thee: and we said, Let there be now an oath betwixt us, [even] betwixt us and thee, and let us make a covenant with thee;

Gen 28:15,20 And, behold, I [am] with thee, and will keep thee in all [places] whither thou goest, and will bring thee again into this land; for I will not leave thee, until I have done [that] which I have spoken to thee of. 28:20 And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on,

Gen 31:3 And the LORD said unto Jacob, Return unto the land of thy fathers, and to thy kindred; and I will be with thee.   See notes at Genesis 32:9

Gen 39:2,3,5,21,23 And the LORD was with Joseph, and he was a prosperous man; and he was in the house of his master the Egyptian. 39:3 And his master saw that the LORD [was] with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand. 39:5 And it came to pass from the time [that] he had made him overseer in his house, and over all that he had, that the LORD blessed the Egyptian's house for Joseph's sake; and the blessing of the LORD was upon all that he had in the house, and in the field. 39:21 But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison. 39:23 The keeper of the prison looked not to any thing [that was] under his hand; because the LORD was with him, and [that] which he did, the LORD made [it] to prosper.

Gen 46:4 I will go down with thee into Egypt; and I will also surely bring thee up [again]: and Joseph shall put his hand upon thine eyes.

Gen 48:21 And Israel said unto Joseph, Behold, I die: but God shall be with you, and bring you again unto the land of your fathers.

Ex 3:12 And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this [shall be] a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain.

Ex 4:12,15 Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. 4:15 And thou shalt speak unto him, and put words in his mouth: and I will be with thy mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you what ye shall do.

Ex 17:7 And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the LORD, saying, Is the LORD among us, or not?

Ex 33:14-16 And he said, My presence shall go [with thee], and I will give thee rest. 33:15 And he said unto him, If thy presence go not [with me], carry us not up hence. 33:16 For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? [is it] not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that [are] upon the face of the earth.

Numbers 14:9 Only rebel not ye against the LORD, neither fear ye the people of the land; for they [are] bread for us: their defence is departed from them, and the LORD [is] with us: fear them not. 14:42 Go not up, for the LORD [is] not among you; that ye be not smitten before your enemies.

Num 23.21 He hath not beheld iniquity in Jacob, neither hath he seen perverseness in Israel: the LORD his God [is] with him, and the shout of a king [is] among them.

Deut 2:7 For the LORD thy God hath blessed thee in all the works of thy hand: he knoweth thy walking through this great wilderness: these forty years the LORD thy God [hath been] with thee; thou hast lacked nothing.

Deut 7:21 Thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for the LORD thy God [is] among you, a mighty God and terrible.

Deuteronomy 20:1-4 When thou goest out to battle against thine enemies, and seest horses, and chariots, [and] a people more than thou, be not afraid of them: for the LORD thy God [is] with thee, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. 20:2 And it shall be, when ye are come nigh unto the battle, that the priest shall approach and speak unto the people, 20:3 And shall say unto them, Hear, O Israel, ye approach this day unto battle against your enemies: let not your hearts faint, fear not, and do not tremble, neither be ye terrified because of them; 20:4 For the LORD your God [is] he that goeth with you, to fight for you against your enemies, to save you.

Deut 23:14 For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.

Deut 31:8,17,23 And the LORD, he [it is] that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee: fear not, neither be dismayed. 31:17 Then my anger shall be kindled against them in that day, and I will forsake them, and I will hide my face from them, and they shall be devoured, and many evils and troubles shall befall them; so that they will say in that day, Are not these evils come upon us, because our God [is] not among us? 31:23 And he gave Joshua the son of Nun a charge, and said, Be strong and of a good courage: for thou shalt bring the children of Israel into the land which I sware unto them: and I will be with thee.

Joshua 1:5 There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, [so] I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. 1:9 Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the LORD thy God [is] with thee whithersoever thou goest.

Josh 3:7 And the LORD said unto Joshua, This day will I begin to magnify thee in the sight of all Israel, that they may know that, as I was with Moses, [so] I will be with thee.

Judges 1:22 And the house of Joseph, they also went up against Bethel: and the LORD [was] with them.

Judges 6:13,16 And Gideon said unto him, Oh my Lord, if the LORD be with us, why then is all this befallen us? and where [be] all his miracles which our fathers told us of, saying, Did not the LORD bring us up from Egypt? but now the LORD hath forsaken us, and delivered us into the hands of the Midianites. 6:14 And the LORD looked upon him, and said, Go in this thy might, and thou shalt save Israel from the hand of the Midianites: have not I sent thee? 6:16 And the LORD said unto him, Surely I will be with thee, and thou shalt smite the Midianites as one man.

1 Sam 3:19 And Samuel grew, and the LORD was with him, and did let none of his words fall to the ground.

1 Sam 10:7 And let it be, when these signs are come unto thee, [that] thou do as occasion serve thee; for God [is] with thee.

1 Sam 16:18 Then answered one of the servants, and said, Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite, [that is] cunning in playing, and a mighty valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the LORD [is] with him.

1 Sam 18:12-14,28 And Saul was afraid of David, because the LORD was with him, and was departed from Saul. 18:13 Therefore Saul removed him from him, and made him his captain over a thousand; and he went out and came in before the people. 18:14 And David behaved himself wisely in all his ways; and the LORD [was] with him. 18:28 And Saul saw and knew that the LORD [was] with David, and [that] Michal Saul's daughter loved him.

2 Sam 7:9 And I was with thee whithersoever thou wentest, and have cut off all thine enemies out of thy sight, and have made thee a great name, like unto the name of the great [men] that [are] in the earth.

2 Kings 6:16 And he answered, Fear not: for they that [be] with us [are] more than they that [be] with them.

2 Kings 18:7 And the LORD was with him; [and] he (Hezekiah) prospered whithersoever he went forth: and he rebelled against the king of Assyria, and served him not.  

1 Chr 17:8 And I have been with thee whithersoever thou hast walked, and have cut off all thine enemies from before thee, and have made thee a name like the name of the great men that [are] in the earth.

1 Chr 22:11 Now, my son, the LORD be with thee; and prosper thou, and build the house of the LORD thy God, as he hath said of thee.  

1 Chron 22:16-18 Arise and be doing! The LORD be with you!" 22.17  David also commanded all the leaders of Israel to help Solomon his son, saying, 22.18 "Is not the LORD your God with you? And has he not given you peace on every side? For he has delivered the inhabitants of the land into my hand; and the land is subdued before the LORD and his people.  

1 Chr 28:20 And David said to Solomon his son, Be strong and of good courage, and do [it]: fear not, nor be dismayed: for the LORD God, [even] my God, [will be] with thee; he will not fail thee, nor forsake thee, until thou hast finished all the work for the service of the house of the LORD.

2 Chr 1:1 And Solomon the son of David was strengthened in his kingdom, and the LORD his God [was] with him, and magnified him exceedingly.

2 Chr 13:12 And, behold, God himself [is] with us for [our] captain, and his priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against the LORD God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.

2 Chr 15:2 And he went out to meet Asa, and said unto him, Hear ye me, Asa, and all Judah and Benjamin; The LORD [is] with you, while ye be with him; and if ye seek him, he will be found of you; but if ye forsake him, he will forsake you.  

2 Chr 15:9 And he gathered all Judah and Benjamin, and the strangers with them out of Ephraim and Manasseh, and out of Simeon: for they fell to him out of Israel in abundance, when they saw that the LORD his God [was] with him.  

2 Chr 16:9 For the eyes of the LORD run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to shew himself strong in the behalf of [them] whose heart [is] perfect toward him. Herein thou hast done foolishly: therefore from henceforth thou shalt have wars.  

2 Chr 17:3-5 The LORD was with Jehosh'aphat, because he walked in the earlier ways of his father; he did not seek the Ba'als, 17.4 but sought the God of his father and walked in his commandments, and not according to the ways of Israel. 17.5 Therefore the LORD established the kingdom in his hand; and all Judah brought tribute to Jehosh'aphat; and he had great riches and honor.

2 chr 19:6 and said to the judges, "Consider what you do, for you judge not for man but for the LORD; he is with you in giving judgment.

2 Chr 20:17 Ye shall not [need] to fight in this [battle]: set yourselves, stand ye [still], and see the salvation of the LORD with you, O Judah and Jerusalem: fear not, nor be dismayed; to morrow go out against them: for the LORD [will be] with you.  

2 Chr 24:20 And the Spirit of God came upon Zechariah . . . and said unto them, Thus saith God, Why transgress ye the commandments of the LORD, that ye cannot prosper? because ye have forsaken the LORD, he hath also forsaken you.  

2 Chr 25:7-9 But there came a man of God to him, saying, O king, let not the army of Israel go with thee; for the LORD [is] not with Israel, [to wit, with] all the children of Ephraim. 25:8 But if thou wilt go, do [it], be strong for the battle: God shall make thee fall before the enemy: for God hath power to help, and to cast down. 25:9 And Amaziah said to the man of God, But what shall we do for the hundred talents which I have given to the army of Israel? And the man of God answered, The LORD is able to give thee much more than this.  

2 Chr 26:5 And he sought God in the days of Zechariah, who had understanding in the visions of God: and as long as he sought the LORD, God made him to prosper.

2 Chr 32:7,8 Be strong and courageous, be not afraid nor dismayed for the king of Assyria, nor for all the multitude that [is] with him: for [there be] more with us than with him: 32:8 With him [is] an arm of flesh; but with us [is] the LORD our God to help us, and to fight our battles

Psalm 46:1-7,11 God [is] our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. 46:2 Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; 46:3 [Though] the waters thereof roar [and] be troubled, [though] the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. 46:5 God [is] in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, [and that] right early. 46:7 The LORD of hosts [is] with us; the God of Jacob [is] our refuge.

Psalm 60:12 Through God we shall do valiantly: for he [it is that] shall tread down our enemies.

Psalm 91:15 He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I [will be] with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honour him.

Psalm 118:6 The LORD [is] on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?

Isaiah 8:9,10 Associate yourselves, O ye people, and ye shall be broken in pieces; and give ear, all ye of far countries: gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces; gird yourselves, and ye shall be broken in pieces. 8:10 Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought; speak the word, and it shall not stand: for God [is] with us.

Is 41:10-14 Fear thou not; for I [am] with thee: be not dismayed; for I [am] thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. 41:13 For I the LORD thy God will hold thy right hand, saying unto thee, Fear not; I will help thee.

Is 43:2 When thou passest through the waters, I [will be] with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.   

Isaiah 43:5 Fear not: for I [am] with thee: I will bring thy seed from the east, and gather thee from the west; I am with you, I will bring your sons

Isaiah 45:14 Thus saith the LORD, The labour of Egypt, and merchandise of Ethiopia and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto thee, and they shall be thine: they shall come after thee; in chains they shall come over, and they shall fall down unto thee, they shall make supplication unto thee, [saying], Surely God [is] in thee; and [there is] none else, [there is] no God.

Jer 1:8 Be not afraid of their faces: for I [am] with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD.

Jer 1:19 They will fight against you; but they shall not prevail against you, for I am with you, says the LORD, to deliver you."

Jer 15:20 And I will make thee unto this people a fenced brasen wall: and they shall fight against thee, but they shall not prevail against thee: for I [am] with thee to save thee and to deliver thee, saith the LORD.

Jer 20:11   But the LORD is with me as a dread warrior;    therefore my persecutors will stumble,    they will not overcome me.   They will be greatly shamed,    for they will not succeed.   Their eternal dishonor    will never be forgotten.

Amos 5:14 Seek good, and not evil, that ye may live: and so the LORD, the God of hosts, shall be with you, as ye have spoken.

Mic 3:11 The heads thereof judge for reward, and the priests thereof teach for hire, and the prophets thereof divine for money: yet will they lean upon the LORD, and say, [Is] not the LORD among us? none evil can come upon us.

Zech 8:23 Thus saith the LORD of hosts; In those days [it shall come to pass], that ten men shall take hold out of all languages of the nations, even shall take hold of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, We will go with you: for we have heard [that] God [is] with you.  Let us go with you, for we have heard that God is with you

Matt 28:20 Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, [even] unto the end of the world. Amen.

Luke 1:28-31 And the angel came in unto her, and said, Hail, [thou that art] highly favoured, the Lord [is] with thee: blessed [art] thou among women. 1:30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. 1:31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name JESUS.

John 14:7-9 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him. 14:8 Philip saith unto him, Lord, shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us. 14:9 Jesus saith unto him, Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? he that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou [then], Shew us the Father?

Acts 7:9,10 And the patriarchs, moved with envy, sold Joseph into Egypt: but God was with him, 7:10 And delivered him out of all his afflictions, and gave him favour and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh king of Egypt; and he made him governor over Egypt and all his house.

Acts 10:38 How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with him.  

Acts 11:21 And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord.

Rom 8.31,32 What shall we then say to these things? If God [be] for us, who [can be] against us? 8:32 He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things

1 Cor 14.24,25 But if all prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, or [one] unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of all: 14:25 And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest; and so falling down on [his] face he will worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth. 

2 Cor 13:11 Finally, brethren, farewell. Be perfect, be of good comfort, be of one mind, live in peace; and the God of love and peace shall be with you.

Phil 4:9 Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you.

Heb 13.5,6 [Let your] conversation [be] without covetousness; [and be] content with such things as ye have: for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. 13:6 So that we may boldly say, The Lord [is] my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me

1 John 4:4 Ye are of God, little children, and have overcome them: because greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. 

The Lord Was with Him

February 19, 2010

"And his master saw that the LORD was with him, and that the LORD made all that he did to prosper in his hand." (Genesis 39:3)

Joseph deserves special recognition among the Patriarchs. His story encourages us, as he remained faithful in adversity and gracious in success. Yet we do disservice to the biblical message if we only see the circumstantial side of the story. The LORD was with him. It is always instructive to see how the rest of the Bible applies God's personal intervention in our lives. Please note the emphasis in these other key passages:

• Joshua (Joshua 6:27)--leadership fame
• Judah (the tribe in Judges 1:19)--military might
• Samuel (1 Samuel 3:19)--complete obedience
• David (1 Samuel 18:12)--God's favor
• Hezekiah (2 Kings 18:7)--leading a zealous revival
• Phineas (1 Chronicles 9:20)--wise leadership
• Jehoshaphat (2 Chronicles 17:3)--his faithfulness
• John the Baptist (Luke 1:66)--total commitment
• Scattered Jews (Acts 11:21)--their witness

Because God was with the various people, they were successful. Yet because they were obedient to God's use of them, God was with them.

The Lord Jesus promised the saints: "I am with you always even unto the end of the world" (Matthew 28:20). But that promise is given to us as encouragement to teach all nations "to observe, all things" as the Lord Jesus commanded us--because all power (authority) is His, and His alone. If we "abide" in Christ, we can ask whatever we want "and it shall be done unto you" (John 15:7). However, the absolute qualifier is the abiding. If we do not abide in Him, we cannot produce "fruit" (John 15:4). If we are "in the flesh," we "cannot please God" (Romans 8:8). God will be with us if, when, and as we are not "weary in we ll doing" (Galatians 6:9). HMM III

Sodom and Gomerica Genesis 18:16-33

Genesis 18:25 (NASB)   “Far be it from You to do such a thing, to slay the righteous with the wicked, so that the righteous and the wicked are treated alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”

Do you believe that God is going to judge America?  A lot of Christians do, but then again a lot of them haven’t really given it any thought.  It is not my intention here to try to persuade anyone to think that God is going to judge America or even that you should give it some thought.

I want to look at the prayer of a man who knew God was about to judge some cities not too far from where he lived.  Every Christian prays, but I’m not sure anymore if Christians still think of prayer as actually changing anything.  After all, they note that God is sovereign, and apparently whatever happens is His will, so why are we even praying for things in the first place?  I think too often the idea of the sovereignty of God immobilizes Christians, because they believe that God controls everything; He does what He wants; everything that happens is His will. 

If our prayers can actually change things, that puts incredible responsibility on Christians, because what if they don’t pray for something that needs changing or they didn’t pray for it in the right way? 

The fact is that all of our actions have consequences, what we eat, what we say, the things we do or don’t do.  Why should we think that doesn’t apply to our prayers as well?

We may say that prayer is simply talking to God, but we all see things every day that just aren’t right and we pray that they might be different.  Do or should our prayers make a difference, or does God just do what He wants anyway and our job is just to live with and accept whatever happens?

Abraham believed that prayer can change things.  As soon as he heard of God’s plans to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, he questioned them, and he questioned God. 

Abraham’s prayer had three elements to it that I believe can help us to understand prayer better and make our prayers more effective.  If we don’t believe that our prayers make or can make a difference in the world, I think we need to look again at the Bible and what prayer is supposed to be.

The first element of Abraham’s prayer that we need to understand is argument.

Arguing has gotten a bad name.  People yell at each other and call that arguing.  Yelling has nothing to do with arguing, except that people who don’t know how to argue or think they are losing an argument often resort to yelling.   Lawyers argue, and debaters argue.

An argument is a line of reasoning, building a case for why something is either true or untrue, or, as in the case of prayer, why or why not God should either do or not do something.

To Abraham, it seemed absurd that God would judge the righteous with the wicked.  Surely there had to be some righteous people in Sodom, and the Judge of all the earth would surely do right Himself and not destroy righteous people when judging wicked ones. 

Abraham proposed a number of righteous people that might be in the city, and God accepted that number and agreed not to judge the city if that many righteous people were found there. 

But should that number be the cutoff number?  What is the right cutoff number where God could judge the righteous with the wicked?  So Abraham asked about the possibility that there were a few less than that fifty.  And he then reduced that number even further until he got it down to ten, and he stopped.

What would have happened had he continued?  We don’t know.  But we do know that God rescued Lot and his family out of the city.  But what would have happened if Abraham had not prayed at all?  Would God still have rescued Lot?  We don’t know.  But of all the events in Abraham’s life that were included or omitted in the Bible, this prayer was included.  If Abraham’s prayer had no effect on the outcome, why was it included in the Bible?  What would we have learned from it?

When you pray for things, how do you ask for them?

When you pray for healing, either for yourself or others, do you remind God that Jesus never turned anyone away who asked Him for healing?  That when Jesus saw a crowd of people, He had compassion on them and healed the sick (Matthew 14:14)?  That the apostles, after having been threatened by the rulers not to preach or teach in the Name of Jesus, explicitly prayed that God would extend His hand to heal the sick while they preached the Word with all boldness (Acts 4:29,30)?

But God surely knows all these things, just like He knew how many were righteous in Sodom before Abraham asked about them.  Did God need to be persuaded and was overwhelmed by the logic of Abraham’s prayer? 

Arguing might be more for our benefit than God’s, in that being able to make a case why God should answer our prayer bolsters our faith, and without faith it is impossible to please God (Hebrews 11:6).  I’m not sure we can fully explain or understand the entire relationship between our prayers and the answers to them, but the Bible is meant to give us understanding in such things, such as we need, and this is how Abraham prayed.  I can cite other examples of the same dynamic, but I will leave them for future articles.

A lot of Christians think of God’s will as being completely individualized such that we can never know ahead of time what His will might be, that there is no pattern to it.  He might want one thing for one person and for another person in the exact circumstances, He might want something completely different.  God might want one person healthy and another person sick; He might want one person employed at a good job and another person unemployed or at a miserable job.  He might want one person to have a problem-free life and another person to have one problem after another.

I say that God gave us a thousand page book to tell us about Himself.  We say that we know God, but that statement is meaningless, if we don’t know what God would do in a given situation.  What does it even mean to know somebody?  You know somebody when you know what they would do in a given situation.  How can we say that we know God if His will is always a mystery to us?

I think we highly undervalue the role that humans are to play in this world, especially the role of Christians.  We want God to do more in the world, and I think He feels pretty much the same about us.  Why did God tell Abraham what He was going to do?  He wanted Abraham to intercede.  And why would He want Abraham to intercede?  Because what humans do affects things.  He gave Abraham everything he asked for, even more.  Was it cause and effect?  Let’s just say that we shouldn’t expect God to do the one without the other.

Prayer can do a lot in changing things, but it makes a difference how we pray.  This is why the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray (Luke 11:2), and Jesus did. 

But we need to note that this was how Abraham prayed.  He made his case why God should not, actually could not, judge the righteous with the wicked, and the clear implication from the text is that God listened to Abraham’s prayer and answered it.  Abraham did not simply make his request and ask that if it be God’s will, He would grant it.  He made the case that it had to be God’s will not to judge the righteous with the wicked, and God didn’t.

Which leads to the second element of Abraham’s prayer: boldness.

You see the idea of boldness more in the New Testament than in the Old Testament.  You read about the apostles speaking the Word of God with boldness (Acts 4:31).  The idea of the Greek word used here is that of candor and freedom of speaking.  Not the idea of license to say anything whether profane or evil, but the freedom to say whatever needs to be said, to speak the whole truth, to say what is right whether somebody else likes it or not, just simply telling it like it is.

But the Bible says also that we have access to God with boldness (Ephesians 3:12), that we should approach the throne of grace with boldness (Hebrews 4:16), and that we have boldness to enter the very Holy of Holies, the Presence of God (Hebrews 10:19). 

Abraham didn’t understand the theology behind this boldness with God, and, according to Paul, this was essentially a new thing that people could have.  But the Bible calls Abraham a friend of God (James 2:23), and friends speak frankly to each other.  God told Abraham what He was about to do, and Abraham felt free to tell Him why he thought it was a bad idea.

When Christian pray, there are two seemingly opposing thoughts that may loom in one’s head:  on the one  hand, one is talking to God, the Almighty, the Maker of heaven and earth, The Lord of all creation; and, on the other, we are talking as children to our Father. 

So which should take precedence?  Should we think of God as LORD or Father?  The concept of fatherhood in the Bible carries the picture of an authority figure who we are to honor and who disciplines us for our own good, so we should not think that we are getting away with anything by thinking of God more as Father than LORD, but the whole idea of the New Testament is this new relationship with God where the veil of the tent has been torn asunder, and where the High Priest could only enter the Holy of Holies once a year to make atonement for our sins, we have now been brought into that very place to live. 

We may fear God in that we know there are serious consequences for putting God out of our lives, but those who live in the very Love and Presence of God need not fear Him but need to learn to delight in His Presence. 

Having said all this, I think the God who knows everything, all the desires and intents of our hearts, is quite pleased when we are completely honest with Him in our prayers. 

To Abraham, it was just not right that the Judge of the universe would judge the righteous with the wicked, and He told God so.  And just like you tried to persuade your father to get you your first car, so you need to tell God very frankly why He should heal you, heal your country, or whatever else it is that is on your mind.

And, lastly, Abraham had resolve.  (I really tried for a C word here but couldn’t find one.)

Now few of our prayers or life situations play out as quickly as this did.  In a matter of minutes, God told Abraham what He was about to do, Abraham responded, and then the conversation was over.

But for most of our prayers, we were not healed immediately, our child didn’t return home in the next few minutes, we didn’t get a job offer that day, and the world doesn’t look any closer to world peace than it did yesterday. 

So you prayed.  Then what?  Abraham’s prayer took only a few minutes, but he took it as far as he could go. 

For most of us most of the time, the time between when we first pray about something until we know we have the answer is not as short as it was here.  So what do we do?  Some will say, just pray and leave it in God’s hands.

Some note the principle about faith that says that you must believe you have already received your answer (Mark 11:24).

A verse that I think of often is Isaiah 62:6–7 (NRSV)

⁶ Upon your walls, O Jerusalem, I have posted sentinels; all day and all night they shall never be silent. You who remind the Lord, take no rest, ⁷ and give him no rest until he establishes Jerusalem and makes it renowned throughout the earth.

In Luke 11, the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, and He told them about a man who went to a friend’s house at midnight, because he needed some things, and though the man inside wanted to go back to bed, the first man persisted until the other man got up and gave him what he needed.  Jesus then said that we are to keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking.  And we would receive.

I know Luke’s gospel here specifically mentions receiving the Holy Spirit, but there are other passages in Matthew (Mt. 7:7-11) and Luke (Luke 18:1-8) where similar teachings are found but with different answers to the prayers.

The arguments that we are able to make in our prayers should make clear to us what the will of God is in a particular situation, and the boldness that we should have based on the finished work of Christ on our behalf should give us the resolve to hold firm in prayer until the matter is settled.  I wish I could say that this won’t take long, but we should be prepared to continue as long as it takes. 

When you pray for something, how long do you pray for it until you believe the prayer has been answered?  A week, a month, a year?  Obviously different prayers have different expectations.  But the Bible expects Christians to pray and for those prayers to make a difference.  And we have to pray like we mean it. 

If you can’t make a case why God should answer your prayer, don’t be surprised if He doesn’t.  And if you are not bold in your prayers, I don’t think you fully understand your position in Christ.  And if you don’t have resolve in your prayers to see them through to the end, it’s probably because you have neither.

The Single Most Important Lesson on Prayer You Will Ever Hear

Does prayer actually change things, or is prayer really about changing you?  Does God actually do things just because we have prayed for it, or does God just do what He wants to do, and the point of prayer is just learning to like what He does?  The question is rarely put so bluntly, but the idea that prayer is more about changing us than changing things is very strong in the United States and growing. 

There is such an emphasis on the sovereignty of God, where God does whatever He wants, and our main purpose is to try to align ourselves with what He is planning on doing that there is a lot less expectation that He is really answering our prayers, as in doing the thing that we asked Him for.  We can certainly ask for things, but if it isn’t His will, we won’t get it, but even if we don’t ask, He does His will anyway, so the result is the same but we just missed the personal benefit of this interaction with God of bending our will to His.

This kind of thinking is not voiced too loudly in churches today, because people are still taught to pray about everything, and to actually come out and say what is generally implied would be like the child who tells everybody that the king has no clothes. Everybody is thinking it to some extent, but they don’t want to think about what this really means.

When something happens that corresponds to our prayers and the result is amazing, the feeling is on the level of winning the lottery.  It is entirely unexpected and nothing to give you any direction on future prayers.  There is no general pattern that we could apply to future situations.  God’s will is entirely on a case by case basis, and what He does in one case has no bearing on what will happen in a similar case down the road.

In Luke chapter 11, Jesus’ disciples asked Him to teach them to pray.  And He does. 

What does that mean?  Does that mean that we have to learn how to pray?  Isn’t prayer just talking to God?  Isn’t prayer just the cry of our heart?  What is there to learn?

More importantly, does it matter if we are taught to pray?  Does this mean that things will be different in my life if I am taught to pray and pray according to these principles? 

Imagine two people in essentially identical circumstances.  One was taught how to pray and the other wasn’t.  They both pray.  Will they get different results?  Wouldn’t God just give them according to His will in each case?  If that was the case, why would Jesus think it was necessary to teach His disciples how to pray?  It wouldn’t matter.  Just pray the way you have always prayed.

But, no, they asked Him, and He proceeded to tell them.  So learning how to pray will make a difference in how God answers your prayer. 

Note too that prayer in this case, the prayer that Jesus is teaching His disciples involves asking and receiving.  A lot of Christians today have essentially given up on the idea that prayer changes anything.  They say that prayer changes us, but we shouldn’t think that our prayers actually change things. 

Because if prayer did change things, or could change things, then we would be responsible for things not being changed that should be changed, and most people can’t handle that or don’t want to.  They feel it would burden them with guilt, or they would feel that certain things were their fault, because they didn’t pray ‘hard enough.’ 

They would rather say that everything is God’s will.  So if things didn’t go the way they wanted, it was God’s choice and not their own. 

But if our prayers were meant to change us rather than circumstance, wouldn’t Jesus have told us this right here?

But let’s go on.

In verse 2, Jesus says, whenever you pray, say this, and He gives us what we have come to call the Lord’s Prayer.

I wouldn’t take that to mean that every time you ever pray, you use only these words and exactly these words.  But I would say that at least once in a day, and I will explain why in a minute, you should use these exact words, just to be sure that you are praying for what Jesus wants you to pray for.and how He wants you to pray for it. 

But doesn’t it then just become vain repetition, the mindless saying of words that you no longer mean or even think about?

Well, there are a lot of things that we do every day that we don’t even have to think about.  I drive the same way to work every day.  I could drive there in my sleep.  But I don’t.  Why?  Because I am driving to work.  I brush my teeth twice a day, and I could just go through the motions, but I am brushing my teeth. 

When I pray this prayer every morning, what we call the Lord’s Prayer, I could just rush through it on autopilot and mumble the words, but I am praying, and I know that my prayers, this prayer, makes a difference.

It begins by calling God Father.  Not Lord, not God, but a word based on a human relationship that hopefully we will all have experienced in a positive way.  Not everybody grew up with a father, and not all fathers were good fathers.  But with very few exceptions, they all wanted to be good fathers.

But I think that anyone who did not have a good father knew what they wished they did have from that father.  But life is designed so that if we don’t learn what it is to be loved unconditionally while we are children, then for most of  us we get a second chance when we become parents and we love our children unconditionally.  All this is meant to teach us about God’s love.

On a side note here, this could be the greatest single reason for the statement that children need their natural fathers in their life.  Now not all natural fathers are good fathers, but I do think that our fathers do and can do a lot in shaping or helping to shape how we feel about God and how we respond to Him.   I think it would be wrong and unwise to think the role of a natural father is not important in the life of a child.

But thinking of God as father should affect how we talk to Him.  We are not talking to Him as the King of the universe, which He is, but as our father who doted over us as a child and taught us how to ride a bike and then riding with us.  Someone we can talk to.

The first thing we are to pray for is that God’s Name be hallowed.  Or you could say honored, or respected.   This draws attention to the bigger picture.  Read the examples of prayers in the Bible, most of which are in the Old Testament, whether Abraham praying for Sodom and Gomorrah, or Moses praying for Israel on several occasions, or Hezekiah praying for Jerusalem.  They prayed like they were lawyers arguing the case before God as to why God should do what they were asking, and the reasons all stemmed back to God’s glory, God’s reputation, God’s Word, His promises. 

I plan to talk more about that at another time. 

But yes, you have needs, and yes, God wants to meet your needs.  But you will find that gradually as you see God meeting your needs, your focus will get off your needs and your problems to those of the world, and your concern will be that God will be exalted through the addressing of these bigger needs. 

But don’t for a second think that God doesn’t’ want to meet your needs.  I know a lot of Christians are concerned that their needs are not really needs but just wants, and that God often doesn’t do wants.

That question should get a separate lesson as well, but this one might answer it for you. 

The next petition is “let Your kingdom come.”  Now this same prayer is also found in the gospel of Matthew, chapter 6, and there the prayer contains a few more lines.  Without going into all the reasons why the two prayers as they are given in most English Bibles are different, for the sake of this lesson, I am going to combine the two.  I don’t think Jesus forgot what He said on the other occasion, and I believe He intended everything He said on that other occasion to have been a part of what He said on this occasion.

So after He said, Let your Kingdom come, He said, Let Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.

Now why would He tell people to pray that God’s will be done if it already is done?  If everything that happens is God’s will, then why pray for it to be done?

Some will say this is just a way of getting us to conform our wills to His.  Well, if that is the case, then why didn’t He just come out and say it, without leading people on to think that their prayer could actually bring about God’s will? 

Some seem to see the purpose of life as an inward exercise of shaping our souls and spirits through trials and tribulations managed or caused by God for our personal benefit.  I see the purpose of life as bringing God’s Kingdom to the world and God’s will to be done.  When we do that, we will see trials and tribulations brought about by those who would try to keep us from doing our job, and our spiritual growth comes from our overcoming the obstacles that hinder the spread of the Kingdom.

But I think to say that God’s will is always done doesn’t square with Jesus telling us to pray for this every time we pray.  That would also mean that every evil thing done in the world, every murder, every rape, every disease, every war, every person sold into slavery was God’s will, and I don’t think that is even close to the truth.  We are here to change all that.  Nobody said it would be easy.

There are two times in the Bible, I believe, when a prayer to change things wasn’t answered:  Jesus’ prayer in the garden and Paul’s prayer about his thorn. 

But Jesus knew what God’s will was before He even prayed.  He knew the best thing for everybody was for Him to go forward with the plan about His death.  But that still didn’t make it any easier.  So we get to hear His struggle.  This is not meant to get us to doubt whether God will answer any of our prayers because there is always the possibility that this thing wouldn’t be God’s will.  We have this thousand page book to tell us about God and His will, and we should have a pretty good idea of what God would want even before we start to pray.

As for Paul, God told him right from the start that he was going to go through all kinds of junk, and he too prayed to get out of it.  People raise a lot of questions about this thorn in the flesh, and I spent 5 chapters in my book on healing talking about it.  So if you want more information on that, please read my book, The Importance of Healing or go to my blogsite Theimportanceofhealing.blogspot.com, where I have all those chapters posted.

Then the prayer says: Give us this day our daily bread. 

First we need to look at this expression ‘daily bread.’  This is clearly a reference to the story of the manna in the Old Testament.  The Israelites spent 40 years wandering in a wilderness prior to their being brought to a land that God had promised them.  Every morning God would send a wafer-like substance on the ground as food for them.  They had to go out and collect it every morning.  They couldn’t keep it for the next day.  It would spoil, except on the sixth day when it would keep for another day, so they wouldn’t have to go out to get it on the seventh day, the Sabbath.  And they had to get it early in the morning before the sun got hot, otherwise it would melt.  

If they didn’t go out, they wouldn’t have any. 

So Jesus says that we are to pray for our daily bread.  We are supposed to do this every day.  And I would say also early in the day.

But what if we don’t pray for it?  Will we still receive it?  If we will get it anyway, why would He tell us to pray for it?  If it doesn’t matter whether we pray for our daily bread, why would Jesus include this petition in a prayer meant to teach us how to pray?  If the Israelites had to go out and get their daily bread early in the morning every day if they wanted to have some for the day, why would it be so hard to think that God wouldn’t expect the same for us today?

The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray.  And He does, implying that learning how to pray makes a difference.  And what does He say? 

He says that we need to pray every day for our daily bread, early in the morning.  And if we don’t, will we still get it?  Well, we live in America, where when we have a drought, the price of bread may go up 20¢. 

But what if we don’t get it, would that be God’s will for us?  After all, He told us to pray for it every day.  And why would He do that if it didn’t matter if we prayed for it or not?

And if He told us to pray for it, we should expect that we will receive it.  And if we don’t pray for it, well, don’t be surprised if you don’t get it, and don’t say it was God’s will that you didn’t.  Because He told you to pray for it.

Is God being petty?  Maybe prayer isn’t like a picture of God sitting on a throne hearing our petitions and deciding whether or not to grant them.  Maybe prayer itself is what unleashes the answer, like writing a check or cashing a check releases the money, and it isn’t the bank deciding to grant our request for money.

Now over the years of praying this prayer, I have learned to be specific, such that I pray for my family, my health, my house, my car, my job, all kinds of things, and a lot of other people as well.  First thing in the morning. 

Now there is a petition further down that says: deliver us from evil.  I know that the modern English translations read this as ‘deliver us from the Evil One.’  Out of context, it can be translated either way, but the idea of a general deliverance or protection from evil itself is found a number of times in the Old Testament and would certainly cover the idea of the Evil One at the same time, while limiting the prayer to the Evil One would seemingly allow for evil not caused by him.  So praying for deliverance from evil is quite consistent with other passages in the Bible.

And Psalm 91, which is one of those Old Testament passages, had already been referred to in both Matthew’s and Luke’s Gospels before Jesus taught us this prayer.  

So we have already established that we are supposed to pray this prayer every day and early in the day before the sun gets hot.  So every day early in the day we are supposed to pray for protection from evil.  Before the fact.

So what if we don’t pray for it?  Might we experience evil that God never intended for us to experience?  After all, He told us to pray to be delivered from it.  Why would He tell us to pray to be delivered from evil if it wouldn’t matter whether we prayed for it or not?

Now if we don’t pray for protection from evil and we experience it, could we say that this was God’s will?  He already told us to pray that we wouldn’t.  If Jesus tells us to do something, let’s just do it.  This is certainly one of the easiest things He told us to do.

As I said before, I have learned to be very specific here.  I don’t just pray every day for my health and the health of my family.  If they have had specific issues before, I will specifically mention those areas.  I pray, as I said, for our house, our property, our cars, my job, a lot of other people, and other things as well.

I have an entire chapter about this in a book that I wrote about this prayer.  The book is called The Importance of the Lord’s Prayer, and you can find the chapter on my blog, LarrysBibleStudies.blogspot.com. 

Now after telling us specifically things that we should pray for and how often we should be praying these things, Jesus tells us a little bit about what to expect when we pray.

First of all, He is very emphatic in telling us to expect to receive the things we ask for.  I believe Christians have grown very skeptical here.  They seem to be forever cautioning people from, first, even thinking they know what to pray for, and, secondly, that we will actually receive it.  Every prayer requires an if-it-be-Thy-will attached to it, to explain why the prayer wasn’t answered and to serve as a subtle rebuke for presuming to know what God’s will is in the first place. 

But Jesus is quite insistent that we should believe God for what we ask.  Just like our regular parents, which Jesus uses to prove His point.  We keep thinking that we will ask for things that God will refuse to give us, because a) obviously we have no idea what we are asking for, and b) God’s will for us is so different from anything we would imagine that we might wonder if we should even pray at all.

But Jesus tells us a story to show us what prayer will often look like, a picture we just don’t see anywhere.

He tells a story about a man who went to a friend’s house in the middle of the night to borrow food.  This may seem strange to us, but this was not so strange at that time in that culture.  The man had a guest who came to him late at night, and he needed to take care of him.  And this was a very serious matter in that culture.  You don’t scrimp on company.

Now for that friend to get up and give this man anything, he would have to disturb his entire family as well as a lot of his animals who would all be sleeping.  Their houses were not like ours.  If he got up, everybody would wake up. 

But because of this man’s shamelessness by coming in the middle of the night, he gets up and gives him what he wants.  The word used here for shamelessness is often translated as persistence, but that is only implied, because the man in the house told him to stop bothering him.  And he didn’t.  Call it shameless persistence.

Some Bible scholars believe that this story contrasts the man in the house with God, because God is far more willing to answer our prayers than he was.  But that is not what Jesus is saying here, because immediately after He says that this man will get up and give the other man however much he wants, He says quite emphatically that we should keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking. 

The fact is that the answers to our prayers may not come as quickly as we would like.

When you pray for something, how long do you wait before you decide that God has answered your prayer?  A day, a week, a month, a year?  And then what do you do?  Do you say that whatever happened or didn’t happen was God’s will?  The point is that what appears to be a no may not be a no at all.  Prayer may often require the persistence of a person who is not going to be denied.

That man in the story who went to his friend’s house at midnight was not going to return home without getting what he came for.  Perhaps the big difference between that man and us is that that man knew what he needed and wouldn’t take no for an answer, and we easily find ourselves questioning whether the thing we are praying for really is God’s will or not.

A lot of Christians will hear/read this and think that I am encouraging whiny, selfish prayers and people who think they can tell God what to do, like God is supposed to serve us and not we serving Him.

Yet look again at the petitions in the prayer that Jesus gave us.  Grammatically speaking, they’re all imperatives, which means a command. 

Some are third person commands, like Let your Name be hallowed, let your kingdom come, let your will be done.  This is like when God said “Let there be light.’  He wasn’t asking anybody to turn on the lights.  He just commanded it to be done, and His word brought it about.

And the rest are second person imperatives, like: Give us today our daily bread, forgive us our trespasses, and deliver us from evil.  These are not requests like we often ask people if they would please pass the salt, or maybe they could loan us five dollars.  Not even a please in sight.  Just one person telling another person to do something.   There is no uncertainty here about the outcome or the willingness of the person to do what is said.  No one is being asked anything here.

I think we often misunderstand how life works.  I think a lot of Christians look at the world and think of God orchestrating its every move.  They call it the sovereignty of God.  I would say that, while the natural order of things shows God’s handiwork, the human side of life is a complete mess, and God expects Christians to jump in and try to change things.

The fact is we live our lives every day, making hundreds of decisions without asking God in every single case what His will is.   And when we pray for something, it is generally something that we would do anyway if we could.  So to see God’s will as a constant deal breaker is inconsistent with how we live the rest of our lives

Yet there are a lot of things that we don’’t know what is best, things that any wise person would want God to show us what the best thing is and to lead us when we don’t know what to do or where to go.

And I have no doubt that if we pray for something that is stupid, wrong, shortsighted, or that would keep or distract us from something bigger and better that God wants to do for us, if we are paying attention, I am sure God will let us know.

But why the need for this shameless persistence?   Is God playing games with us?  In the book of Daniel, it tells of a time when Daniel prayed with fasting for something for three weeks before the answer came.  Daniel was then told explicitly that the answer to his prayer was held up because of opposition in the spirit world.  It does not say what would have happened if Daniel had stopped praying.  Would the answer still have come?  We don’t know.

Jesus doesn’t come out and say why this possible need for shameless persistence, and I am not even sure that we need to know why.  But we do need to know that we shouldn’t be surprised if or when we find ourselves praying for something that shows no signs of changing.  The truth is that we should not take that as a sign that this is not God’s will, that things shouldn’t change or wouldn’t change.

We need to look again at what we are praying for and, if the need is still the same and we haven’t received any word from God to the contrary, then we need to knock a little louder.  Like we mean it.

No, God’s not deaf or hard of hearing.  Maybe He’s not even the one who needs to hear us.  But Jesus told us that prayer may often require a will and persistence that just won’t quit.

There is a story in the Bible about a man named Jacob.  He was returning home after 20 years.  He left because his brother was planning to kill him.  He had no idea what to expect, and he was afraid.  On the night before he was to meet his brother, the text says that he was alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak.   

Who was this man?  In another text, it says that Jacob wrestled with an angel.  Jacob looking back on what had just happened said that he had seen God face to face. 

They wrestled all night.  At daybreak, the man told Jacob to let him go.  Jacob said that he would not let the man go until the man blessed him.  And the man did.  And he even gave Jacob a new name: Israel.  And Jacob became the father of a new nation by that name.  The name means God will strive, or God will contend, but it was given to Jacob, because “you have striven with God and with men and have prevailed.”

The question is: is this just some nice story about a man who had an encounter with God, or is this meant to teach us something important about God and our relationship with Him?  

Compare this with the story that Jesus just told about prayer.  In both cases you have a person who will not take no for an answer.  Christians commonly see this as a person telling God what to do.  I don’t think God sees it that way or even sees that as a bad thing. 

But Jesus said that prayer can be like going to a friend’s house in the middle of the night.  It takes a sense of urgency that overrides any sense of propriety.  If you are praying for something that you just have to have, until God clearly shows you something else, don’t let up.  Don’t quit. 

And as I said earlier, I didn’t say this was the only lesson on prayer you will ever need, just the most important.