H
holyrood
Guest
I was in our Adoration Chapel a couple of nights ago reading a Joyce Meyer book, and turned to the section on why prayers go unanswered, that led to both general and specific questions (or maybe I should just say resurrected many of the old questions I already had.)
The specific question is this: On the list of reasons prayers aren’t answered is that if someone is living in sin, their prayers won’t be answered. Yet we’re told we all sin. We’re told even the Pope goes to confession every day. So if Joyce is right and God turns a deaf ear to sinners, what’s the point of praying?
Does she mean, or should she have said, only those living lives of blatant sin, not caring, and praying for things like ‘let me win the lotter?’ I’m curious about others’ take on this.
The more general question is: After years of reading on prayer, it seems there’s a long list of reasons why prayers aren’t answered, or, in other words, if prayers aren’t answered, it’s something we’re doing…or…if we would just do this whole prayer thing ‘right,’ we’d get what we’re praying for. It seems taking this list seriously would lead us away from the reality that God still makes His own decisions about when and how to answer prayers.
And I wonder if it makes people feel better to have a ‘reason’ prayers aren’t answered, rather than face that we really don’t have that much control over it, or that we really don’t know.
Sometimes, the long list seems almost disingenuous, because I think no one could possibly humanly achieve all of that before praying, which to me makes God seem like a cruel deity playing GOTCHA! with us, setting Himself up as benevolent, loving, and desiring to answer our prayers, if we would just…jump through a dozen amost impossible hoops. I don’t believe this of Him.
In addition, I’m sure we have all seen holy, good people pray for good things, with pure motives and have those prayers go unanswered. I am thinking right now of perhaps the holiest family many of us will ever know, whose daughter died despite prayers. It simply does not make sense to me to claim that perhaps these people sinned so God ignored them, or that they didn’t pray in quite the right way, or that they were praying outside the will of God…or any of these other reasons. Why not just say that sometimes the answer is no, and we will likely never understand that on this earth?
Thanks for any thoughts.
The specific question is this: On the list of reasons prayers aren’t answered is that if someone is living in sin, their prayers won’t be answered. Yet we’re told we all sin. We’re told even the Pope goes to confession every day. So if Joyce is right and God turns a deaf ear to sinners, what’s the point of praying?
Does she mean, or should she have said, only those living lives of blatant sin, not caring, and praying for things like ‘let me win the lotter?’ I’m curious about others’ take on this.
The more general question is: After years of reading on prayer, it seems there’s a long list of reasons why prayers aren’t answered, or, in other words, if prayers aren’t answered, it’s something we’re doing…or…if we would just do this whole prayer thing ‘right,’ we’d get what we’re praying for. It seems taking this list seriously would lead us away from the reality that God still makes His own decisions about when and how to answer prayers.
And I wonder if it makes people feel better to have a ‘reason’ prayers aren’t answered, rather than face that we really don’t have that much control over it, or that we really don’t know.
Sometimes, the long list seems almost disingenuous, because I think no one could possibly humanly achieve all of that before praying, which to me makes God seem like a cruel deity playing GOTCHA! with us, setting Himself up as benevolent, loving, and desiring to answer our prayers, if we would just…jump through a dozen amost impossible hoops. I don’t believe this of Him.
In addition, I’m sure we have all seen holy, good people pray for good things, with pure motives and have those prayers go unanswered. I am thinking right now of perhaps the holiest family many of us will ever know, whose daughter died despite prayers. It simply does not make sense to me to claim that perhaps these people sinned so God ignored them, or that they didn’t pray in quite the right way, or that they were praying outside the will of God…or any of these other reasons. Why not just say that sometimes the answer is no, and we will likely never understand that on this earth?
Thanks for any thoughts.
