Unanswered Prayers and the Glory of God

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". . .true answers to prayer are those that bring the greatest glory to God, not those that satisfy my immediate desires." - Paul G. Hiebert

Hiebert tells the story of his missionary experience in India.  A child in the local village was ill and the village decided to make animal sacrifices to a local goddess, Meuseum, the goddess of small pox.  The Christian missionaries in the community initially refused to comply with the request of the villagers as such a sacrifice to false god is prohibited by Christian practice.  When the Christians in the area attempted to compromise and offer meat for the sacrifice without participating in the sacrificial ritual itself, a local Christian Indian refused to let them do so.  Christian missionaries were unable to purchase food in the markets or draw water from the local wells as punishment because Meuseum required all members of the community to participate in the sacrifice if healing were to occur.  The Christian Indian and Hiebert prayed for healing for the little girl, but it was to no avail; the girl died.

Hiebert felt incredibly defeated.  One looks at the biblical examples of the true God versus false gods and sees God demonstrate His power time and time again, winning the hearts of those who oppose Him.  Hiebert's unanswered prayer caused him doubts: "Who was I to be a missionary if I could not pray for healing and receive a positive answer?"(1)

During a visit with the Christian Indian, Hiebert noticed his sense of joy and victory.  Hiebert, defeated and frustrated, questioned the local as to the source of his triumph.  He replied thusly: "The village would have acknowledged the power of our God had he healed the child, but they knew in the end she would have to die.  When they saw in the funeral our hope of resurrection and reunion in heaven, they say an even greater victory - over death itself - and they have begun to ask about the Christian way." (2)

Hiebert notes that it is "too easy to make Christianity a new magic in which we as gods can make God do our bidding."  He concludes with the quote which opened this post: "I began to realize in a new way that true answers to prayer are those that bring the greatest glory to God, not those that satisfy my immediate desires.” (3)

The Scriptures teach that we can ask for anything in accordance with the will of God and it will be given to us (cf. 1 John 5:14-15).  Yet our experiences of asking and not receiving tell us that we cannot ask for whatever we desire and have it given to us each and every time.  An argument of those who oppose Christianity is the seeming divorce between our experiences and the concepts taught by the Scriptures.  If God says ask and receive, yet you do not receive, how can the words of your God be true?

There are many who solve this problem by stating that the person praying lacks the type of faith that moves God.  While there are verses that indicate faith certainly has an active role in the supplication process, we must be careful not to slip into an anthropomorphic system of prayer in which the faith of the believer is more powerful than the object of that faith: the one, true living God.  God cannot be manipulated into answering a prayer because of a person has prayed the right words, quoted the right Scriptures, and applied the promises of Scripture as he or she sees fit to a given situation.

A farmer prays for rain because of a drought in the Midwest killing his crops and thus his livelihood and a vacationer prays for good weather to enjoy his trip to a theme park in the same area on the same day.  When it rains, whom has God failed?  In our limited knowledge, we vacationers cannot cast stones at God for not answering our prayer nor can our friends (like the friends of Job) come along and cast stones at us for our supposed lack of faith.  What result will bring the greatest glory to God?

Contemporary theologies, particularly of the prosperity variety, imply (and sometimes explicitly teach) that God is glorified when He answers our requests.  How human-centered and selfish!  This is not Christianity, but a brand of pagan magic in which God is moved by spells of supposed promises and our verbose ramblings (cf. Matthew 6:7, “babble like pagans”).  Only God is in the position to answer what brings Him glory!  Hence, John writes that when we ask in accordance with God’s will He grants our requests for God can truly know what and who will glorify Him.

The next apparent question, “How can we ask in accordance to God’s will?” is the wrong question if we ask only to discover the secret to getting what we want out of God.  The right question is “How can my requests honor God in my life?”  And if our requests are not given to us, we ask how we can glorify God in the resultant situations.  The native Christian Indian glorified God during the death of the village girl, rather than mourning an unanswered prayer as Hiebert had done.  And the Christian Indian experienced the blessing of sharing the gospel with those perplexed at such joy!  Anyone can offer a bull and say a prayer to get what they want, but only a person filled with the Spirit of God can walk with confidence, triumph, and peace when prayers go unanswered. 

Unanswered prayers need not discourage us.  They present another opportunity to trust the Lord and glorify Him in a world that is watching us with an eye of scrutiny and skepticism.  I understand that there are times that seemingly unanswered prayers result in hurt and confusion; this hurt and confusion is a topic for future elaboration.  The point here is as follows: when we place God and His glory at the center of our prayer lives, we will see our prayers answered for our requests will be for increased means to glorify God in all situations.  “God, I want do your will and glorify you in the midst of it.”  This is a prayer that God will always answer.  We pray this before, during, and after all other prayers, so when the preferred reply is not given, the conduct of the supplicant will reflect Spirit given peace and glorify God.

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(1) Paul G. Hiebert, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” in Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader 4th ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library: 2009): 414.

(2) Ibid.

(3) Ibid.

Story from: Paul G. Hiebert, “The Flaw of the Excluded Middle,” in Ralph D. Winter and Steven C. Hawthorne, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement: A Reader 4th ed. (Pasadena: William Carey Library: 2009): 407-414.