THE PROBLEM OF UNANSWERED PRAYER

The following is an excerpt from my book,  A Life of Prayer.         

   Anyone who has begun to pray seriously will eventually question whether God truly hears and answers our prayers. We must turn to the Bible to learn the truth about prayer. We know that God desires communication with His creation. In the very beginning, God spent time walking and talking with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After they rebelled, humans lost the intimate line of communication they had enjoyed. From that point on, it seems that God primarily spoke directly to those He wished to communicate with either by a mediated presence (theophany) or in dreams and visions.

            The bulk of the recorded prayers in the Bible are found in the Psalms, most of which were written from the time of David through the time Israel returned from captivity in Babylon. We know that prayer is an important activity because Jesus, the perfect human, spent many hours in prayer to His Father. He also told his disciples that they should pray after He completed His mission on earth and returned to the Father. There are numerous examples of prayers and encouragements to pray throughout the rest of the New Testament. It is these Scriptures that give us the most accurate information about prayer in our time.

The temptation is to take one or two verses of Scripture and apply them universally. Jesus did say, for example, that we can ask anything of Him, and He will do it (John 14:13). The context is about glorifying the Father, so the word “anything” is limited to only that which brings glory to God.  It goes without saying that one who believes in Jesus (also part of this context), would not ask for something that would be displeasing or dishonoring to God.

In his first epistle, John seems to double down on the concept of receiving anything we ask for saying, “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” (1 John 5:14-15) The context here is asking “according to His will.” That is another way of saying that our requests must be only those which would bring glory to God.

Another passage that is often misunderstood is found in both Matthew and Mark. In Mark’s version, Jesus says, “whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mark 11:24). The limiting factor here is that you must “believe that you have received it.” Notice the verb tense of the word “received.” You must be utterly convinced that your request has already been granted in Heaven, and you are simply waiting for its fulfillment here on earth. A person can only have that kind of faith if there is absolute assurance that God has granted the request.

There is a way to be quite certain we are asking for what God wants: ask for those things which align with his revealed character and His will for His people. This can be accomplished by praying God’s word back to Him. For example, the Old Testament has repeated assurances that God will never forsake His obedient children. We can pray, “God, I thank you that you are with me in this situation because you have promised never to forsake me as I seek to follow your way.” Add to this the certainty that God is pleased to be praised and we can say, “God, I praise you even in this circumstance, knowing that you will go through it with me.”

There is a danger here that we may take something out of context and apply it to a situation for which it was not intended. This often happens with the statement by Isaiah which is quoted in the New Testament, “He took our illnesses and bore our diseases” (Isaiah 53:12; Matthew 8:17). Matthew makes it clear that this verse does not apply only to spiritual healing (ie. salvation), but that physical healing was also in view. However, it is illegitimate to insist that the taking of illness must apply immediately in every instance. Jesus did not heal every person in Israel. Not every lost soul will come to faith in Christ. His death on the cross made provision for both spiritual and physical healing, but it is up to God to dispense those benefits as He wishes. We are not out of line to ask for physical healing, but it is still God’s choice to honor the request.

            In his marvelous little book, Crafted Prayer, Graham Cooke says, “Prayer, in its simplest form, is finding out what God wants to do and then asking Him to do it.” (p.8) Cooke correctly observes, “We often find ourselves praying out of the shock or trauma of the situation itself and out of … our concern.” (p.1) I remember someone saying long ago that prayer is not about aligning God with our will but aligning our will with God. Instead of jumping straight into a prayer for healing or deliverance or whatever based on our concern, we should first thank God for His presence in times of trouble and wait for Him to reveal His good, sovereign will in the trouble.

            All of this demands that we study the Scripture to know God’s will and His heart. It also requires a time of silent meditation and listening as a regular practice of prayer. As I said before, mature prayer is a dialogue not a monologue. When we don’t know what to ask, we can still go through the first three steps of the ACTS model (adoration, confession, thanksgiving, supplication), and then wait silently. God told the psalmist to, “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted in all the earth.” (Psalm 46:10) We do not need to rush into prayer of supplication or intercession; God is already more concerned with the situation than we will ever be, and He knows exactly what to do. We need only to quiet our minds and listen for His voice.

            There is another way that we can pray knowing God’s will is being honored: prayer in the spirit. In Paul’s letter to the Romans he said, “We do not know how to pray as one ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with unexpressed groanings” (8:26). Some people believe this means that as we submit to God’s will in our prayers, the Holy Spirit takes our requests to the Father in accordance with His will. This is undoubtedly true.

However, there may be more to prayer in the spirit than just the Holy Spirit praying since the Greek word used of the Spirit’s praying generally refers to an actual sound. Romans 8:26 might be translated to say the Spirit “makes sounds that are unintelligible.”  Many people believe that a special prayer language utilizing our human voice is the expression of the Spirit of God aiding our human spirit to pray. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14 that when he speaks in a tongue, he is communicating directly with God (v. 2). He explains later in the chapter that when he prays in a tongue, it is his own spirit that prays, although his mind does not comprehend (v. 14). A prayer language is not essential for spirit led prayer because the Holy Spirit can lead our prayers spoken in the language we know. However, a prayer language can be helpful for those who choose to practice it.

I suspect that everyone has times of dryness in prayer or doubts the effectiveness of their prayers. The Psalms are full of cries to God where the writers wonder if God is hearing their impassioned pleas. Note that in most cases where doubt begins the Psalm, an expression of faith that God will hear and act follows. We also have the numerous promises in the New Testament to assure us that God indeed hears our prayers. Mature prayer becomes a trust-building exercise. For example, when James says that the “prayer of faith will save the sick” (James 5:1), we know that is true 100% of the time. What we don’t know is what time God will choose to heal – it may be right now, later in life, or not until the person is taken home to glory. The fact remains, ultimately, all sickness and disease will be healed.

In the same way, we know when we pray in accordance with God’s will that our prayers will be answered. This is true of prayers for healing, deliverance, protection, blessing or any other legitimate request. When I am waiting for the answer to something I believe is within God’s will, it comforts me to remember that God is not bound by time as I am. God was in the eternal present tense when He created the universe we call home for the time being. Time is a creation of God as surely as the earth and all the heavens. When God calls this age to a close, as Scripture promises He will, He will still be in His eternal present.

The Bible says God knows the end from the beginning. This is true because He exists at the end and the beginning at the same “time” since He exists independently from time. We must labor through the progression of minutes, days and years as human creatures, but God does not. When He promises that something will be accomplished, He can speak with utter confidence because He sees the completion as if it already occurred, because to Him, it has. Knowing this, I can pray and wait out the passage of human time with confidence that God has already seen the answer to my prayer.

I am not a man who is proud of his prayer life. I grew up in a Christian home in a time when families ate every meal together (imagine that!), and prayer before the meal was a privilege that was passed around: “Whose turn is it to pray?” I’m pretty sure I was taught to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep…” before bed every night. Then there were prayers in church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening and Wednesday night. But honestly, these were all rituals to me; I don’t recall thinking of them as communication with the God who created everything.

When I was in my twenties, a religious revival swept over my family. My older sisters (all three of them) became involved in movements where prayer was something you did because you expected to accomplish something by it. They went to “church” and praised God with full voice and lifted hands and an excitement that was contagious. After a couple years of dancing around the fringes of their experience, along with two years of Bible college and hours of serious personal study and seeking God, I finally joined them. Some would say I was baptized with the Holy Spirit or filled with the Holy Spirit, but whatever you call it, it revolutionized my prayer life.

I wish I could say that I became a pray-without-ceasing kind of guy at that point, but that would be a lie. I prayed more often than I had been, and I prayed with the knowledge that God was actually listening. I completed two graduate degrees from Christian institutions which gave me sound foundational knowledge. I bought books on prayer encouraging praise and intercession and warfare, but there were still too many times when I had the feeling that the ceiling was the height to which my prayers rose and little more.

It wasn’t until I became more disciplined (think spiritual disciplines) that I began to feel as if there was power in my prayers. I began to use charts and lists and prayer partners to drive me to a consistency that had eluded me for years. I am not suggesting that everyone needs that kind of structure, but I did. Then I discovered the concept of “crafted prayer” which takes the Word of God and makes prayers from it. That was revolution number two.

As I read the Scripture daily (through the Bible in a year, typically), I began to find prayers everywhere. Since my three children and six grandchildren are on my daily prayer list, they became the focus of my crafted prayers. I don’t get to see them as often as I would like, so I don’t always know what’s happening in their busy lives. When you don’t know what to pray, pray Scripture. You can’t go wrong with that.

The basis of this book was a series of Sunday School lessons I wrote for the people I went to church with. A computer study and devotional program gave me 21^st century tools to fine-tune my regimen.  Retirement gave me the ability to spend as much time as I needed/wanted on my devotions and prayer. Eventually, I wanted to share what I have learned with others. I still frequently reach that point Paul mentions in Romans 8:26 where I, “don’t know how to pray as I must.” I know that the Holy Spirit prays on my behalf in ways that no program, no list, no earthly thing can accomplish. This is good. It keeps me praying. I pray you might find the same confidence and consistency in your life.

Can You Lose Your Salvation?

Today, as I read John’s record of Jesus’ final words to His disciples before He was taken away, I was struck by how many times in chapters 14-17, He said keep My commandments (4 times) or keep My words (10 times) as an essential element of true belief. I ruffled some feathers a while back when I suggested that just as God gives the word to people, He also takes it away. This begs the long-debated question of whether someone can lose their salvation.

The writer of Hebrews describes people who have fallen away as having, “tasted the good word of God.” Some ask if tasting the Word is equivalent to becoming saved. If so, this verse seems to suggest one can forfeit salvation through apostasy. Perhaps the Hebrew readers would recall Old Testament prophets who were instructed to eat a scroll containing God’s word. I might be stretching the metaphor, but I see eating and tasting as significantly different.

Jesus, whom John proclaimed was the Word made flesh, once told people that they must eat His flesh if they truly wanted eternal life. Jesus’ explanation of that shocking statement made it clear that He was talking about His words. The point is obvious: licking nourishing food won’t give any sustenance; it must be eaten. In the same way, tasting God’s Word will not bring eternal life; it must be eaten – taken into the very soul of existence to do any good. Only those eat, who act on God’s Word are true believers, as Jesus implied by tying obedience to belief.

Rather than discuss what level of unbelief results in the loss of eternal life, I want to look at what proper belief looks like. Throughout Jesus’ last supper teaching, He emphasized the fact that love for Him involved obedience to Him (14 times). A.W. Tozer puts it like this: “Our Lord told His disciples that love and obedience were organically united, that the keeping of His sayings would prove that we love Him. This is the true test of love, and we will be wise to face up to it!”^[1] Our obedience to Christ’s Word is the proof of our love, but what does that look like?

When Jesus was explaining the parable of the sower, He described true receivers of the Word by saying, “these are the ones who, hearing the word, hold fast with a noble and good heart, and bear fruit with patient endurance.” Jesus said after hearing the word, there are four characteristics that indicate true belief: holding fast, having a noble and good heart, bearing fruit, and demonstrating patient endurance. Each one of those things bears a closer look.

“Holding fast” is another way to describe obedience. Those who play fast and loose with God’s Word connive whatever ways they can to circumvent it. Strict obedience is the farthest thing from their mind. Those who hold fast make sure that all they do is in accordance with the Scripture. They run a tight course within the boundaries instead of looking for shortcuts that allow them to skirt their biblical responsibilities. They want to do what the Word says.

A person with a “noble and good heart” is just the type we would love to have for a friend. The biblical definition of noble is commendable and honest. To be good in the biblical sense is to be generous and kind. Each of these traits represents obedience to Jesus’ commands and find their center in the greatest one: to love God and to love one another. Essentially, Jesus said to truly love Him the love of others is required. Another was to say this is that our love must be heartfelt not duty bound.

It is no surprise that Jesus included “bearing fruit” in His description of a true believer. In John 15, He called Himself the vine from whom His disciples would draw the life that made it possible to bear fruit for the Gardener, His Father. Throughout the New Testament the nature of the fruit coming from the True Vine is described as righteousness otherwise known as doing good. This hits the same chord once again: hearing leads to doing if it is genuine.

“Patient endurance” can only be found in those who know and do God’s Word. In fact, patience is part of the fruit of the Spirit which characterizes all true believers. If I didn’t know Who the victor is in the struggle we call life, I would not be able to endure. My patience comes only because I know Whom I have believed, and I believe He is able to complete His good work in and through me. I don’t understand how people who are not caught up in love for God and His Word can get out of bed every day. However, I do understand the epidemic of emptiness and despair that characterizes worldly people.

My advice to anyone who is worried about losing salvation in Christ is to look for these qualities in their life: holding fast to the Word, having a noble and good heart, bearing fruit, and waiting patiently for God’s will to be accomplished. I’ll repeat Jesus’ words once more: “If you love Me, keep my commandments.” There is no salvation for someone who doesn’t love Jesus. There is no true love for Jesus without obedience to His commands. The question isn’t whether you can lose your salvation; the real question is whether you have gained it.

Related Posts: Necessary Obedience; Merely Christian

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^[1] A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015), 345.

Disrespecting God’s Sovereignty

Arrogant moderns believe they know better than the ancients who were the writers of God’s Word. This attitude reveals two serious errors in their thinking. The first error is that they discount what it means to say that the Bible is the inspired Word of God. A. W. Tozer says this: “Let a man question the inspiration of the Scriptures and a curious, even monstrous, inversion takes place: thereafter he judges the Word instead of letting the Word judge him; he determines what the Word should teach instead of permitting it to determine what he should believe; he edits, amends, strikes out, adds at his pleasure; but always he sits above the Word and makes it amenable to him instead of kneeling before God and becoming amenable to the Word….

“Why such a man still clings to the tattered relics of religion it is hard to say. The manly thing would be to walk out on the Christian faith and put it behind him along with other outgrown toys and discredited beliefs of childhood, but this he rarely does. He kills the tree but still hovers pensively about the orchard hoping for fruit that never comes!”^[1]

The other deadly error that flows from the arrogance of many modern Christians (so-called) is that they deny the complete sovereignty of God. Many people claim that Jesus is Lord. To have a lord means to have a master. This is why Paul often refers to believers as servants and slaves. Paul also said, “no one is able to say, “Jesus is Lord” except by the Holy Spirit.” Certainly, the words “Jesus is lord” can come from the mouth of anyone, but Paul meant that true belief in the statement is not possible by purely human intention. In other words, the Holy Spirit must have quickened, regenerated a person for them to say “Jesus is Lord” with all its ramifications. If one truly believes Jesus is lord as the Scriptures claim, it follows by definition that God is sovereign.

I have written several articles on the subject of God’s sovereignty. (See Related Posts) The most frequent objection to absolute sovereignty regards God’s election to salvation. This aspect has been debated for centuries by sincere believers, and I don’t think the argument will be settled until we sit at Jesus’ feet in the fully realized Kingdom of God. I think we can agree to disagree about election and still end up at Jesus’ feet.

What concerns me more than election is the consequence of denying God’s sovereignty in other areas. When a weak view of the inspiration of Scripture leads to a limited view of God’s rule over all things, a critical line is too easily crossed. I called those who take such a position arrogant because, as Tozer points out, they set themselves above Scripture as its judge rather than being judged by Scripture.

This is how we end up with Christians who believe God can bless same-sex unions. In this way, Christians can find support for abortion. By adopting this error, believers convince themselves it is alright to live together without being married. Sincere believers can remain satisfied with the milk of God’s Word rather than moving on to the meat by daily, deeply studying the Bible. Such thinkers believe that they can be fully functioning members of Christ’s body without regular fellowship with a local expression of that Body.

Perhaps the saddest result of not trusting in a sovereign God is what it does to our souls. True born again, blood bought believers can forget the reality in which they are supposed to live. When a difficulty arises, they are fooled by the enemy of the soul to think they face it alone. Until we achieve our resurrection (Maranatha! Come quickly Lord Jesus), we are stuck in this world within reach of the one whom Jesus called the god of this world. But the evil one is not our god; we have been transferred from his kingdom into the kingdom of the one who is Light. The correct approach to any problem is to start by looking to God in His Word and through prayer. Once we have settled our position relative to the God of Heaven, we can work our way through the earthly layers of our responsibility. By seeking God first, we ensure that our soul is protected from its sworn enemy, and we can go forward in peace, knowing Who holds the future.

Immediately after Jesus made the startling statement that true commitment to Him required a person to eat His flesh, an argument arose and many of His disciples ceased following Him. In a classic understatement, someone said, “This teaching is hard. Who can accept it?” Jesus’ answer is instructive. He said in part, “The Spirit is the one who gives life. The flesh doesn’t help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life…. This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted to him by the Father.” Coming to Jesus involves both believing what He said and doing what He said. Both believing and doing are Holy Spirit empowered things granted by God.

Arrogance (aka pride) is the original sin. Adam and Eve made themselves the judges of God’s word and reaped the consequences: they were kicked out of the Garden and sentenced to a life of toil and trouble. God also put a cap on their longevity; they would not live on the perfect earth forever, nor would the earth remain perfect. An essential component of believing in God’s sovereignty is condoning what He did to Adam and conceding His right to do it. That places the entire human race in opposition to God until each individual reconnects with Him by the grace of the Holy Spirit’s intervention. The primary way that happens is through God’s Word; as Jesus said, His words are spirit. Until a person fully submits to that sovereign Word, his eternal destiny remains uncertain, and his soul will be troubled. How much of life can be unsubmitted and still retain eternal life? Do you really need to know?

Related Posts: Election: God’s Choice; Calvinist or Arminian; Understanding the TULIP Doctrine; Why Bother With Church? Light Shining in Darkness

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^[1] A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015), 339.

Political Exhaustion

Robert B. Charles made an insightful point in his post in the AMAC newsletter after the 2024 Presidential election, “Prepare for Emotional Exhaustion.” His main point was that after fighting long and hard on whichever team you play for, post-election catharsis is inevitable – exhaustion. I am certainly tired of the political ads that filled the airwaves for the last several months. They seem so pointless to me. I don’t know anyone who makes a voting decision based on advertising. Thoughtful people have better ways to examine the candidates and form an opinion. This was especially true this season because one party repeatedly made numerous false, defamatory accusations and the candidate was usually unable to articulate a cogent position on anything. I am particularly tired of that!

But it was Charles last point that really struck me. He wrote, “In this case, the election was brutal, arguably off-base, historically out of line with American politics.” Brutal: repeated impeachment threats, multiple lawsuits, and two assassination attempts against Donald Trump are definitely “off-base.” Like out of the ballpark off-base. He said they were “out of line with American politics,” but I have to disagree, sadly. Politics in this country has become increasingly partisan and divisive. Part of the reason for this, in my opinion, is the emotional factor being employed: scaring seniors with false threats to their Social Security, making pro-choice voters think abortion would be criminalized (as perhaps it should be), predicting huge increases in the cost of living all played on emotion rather than offering rational policy solutions.

I am aware that as far back as the election of George Washington, candidates tossed political firecrackers at one another. It seems that now they are using hand grenades and IED’s. When anyone calls their opponent Hitler for nothing worse than a policy disagreement, we have gone a step too far. When one party’s supporters attempt to assassinate their opponent, we have abandoned the American way of free expression of political ideas in the most egregious way. And when a candidate tells someone at her rally that the Christian message on a sign shows that the person is at the wrong rally, religious freedom is also being attacked, and a philosophical viewpoint is being proclaimed.

As Christians, we don’t have to insist on electing only fellow believers. What we must insist on is that any candidate we consider voting for cherishes freedom of religious expression. I have written previously that religious freedom is under attack by the progressives in this country. I have warned as Martin Niemöller did during WWII that if we don’t speak out against religious discrimination now, we will eventually forfeit the right to speak at all. There are already signs that the silencing process has begun.

It is now considered hate speech and punishable criminal behavior to use the wrong pronoun in reference to a person suffering from gender dysphoria in many public schools. Many employers threaten termination of persons who express religious opinions that are not appreciated by a fellow employee. The right to stand on a public sidewalk a respectable distance from an abortion clinic and protest the murder of the unborn is a chargeable offense. Wearing a tee shirt with a religious message to a public school will almost certainly get the student sent home, and discipline up to expulsion is not unusual. Need I continue?

The damage that the progressives are inflicting on the First Amendment is not their only attack. Second and Fourth Amendment rights are being trampled on a daily basis. Their explanation for these infringements reveals a fundamental difference in the Constitutional views of the two political parties. Most Democrats believe the Constitution must be continually revised to account for changes in cultural norms and expectations. Most Republican jurists hold the view that the document that governs us was written in such a way that all eventualities can be judged by its historical form. The way this works out is the Democrats are constantly reinventing meaning while the Republicans seek to understand the original meaning of the Founding Fathers.

The Bible teaches us to obey the law, submit to earthly authority, honor those to whom honor is due, and pay our taxes, etc. Despite all the naysayers, America was founded on Judea-Christian values. Those values are enshrined in our Constitution. Rewriting it or ignoring it when it restricts some newly discovered freedom (like freedom to murder innocents) is precisely what the progressives want. As Christians, we ought to be deeply concerned when the foundations of the Founding Fathers are being dynamited. I believe we elected a protector of religious freedom yesterday. If you were praying for that eventuality, don’t stop praying now. Like Robert B. Charles said, you may be exhausted, but I say you need to stay alert and keep praying because the roaring lion hasn’t been caged – he might be fettered, but his reach is still extensive. As the song says, “We are strongest when we are on our knees.”

Related posts: And Freedom for All; How to Boil a Frog; What Price Freedom?; What Does it Mean to be an American?; Strict Obedience

Vote! Please!

After all the rancor surrounding the 2020 Presidential election, I vowed to concentrate my writing on general Christian living and Bible teaching. However, today, three days before the 2024 election, I feel I have to say something. Every national election is important to a degree, but this one will have monumental consequences for everyone, not just Christians.

If you are like me, you are so DONE with political advertising. I wouldn’t be as fried if the candidates were actually outlining their policies; they could even differentiate their views from their opponents, and I wouldn’t mind as much. Unfortunately, neither party is spelling out much of what they plan to do in any detail. In my market (Arizona) the only issue that seems to matter to the Democrats is abortion. They are making outrageous claims to frighten pro-choice voters onto their side. If you read my blog during the last election, you know that I cannot abide the Democrat position that a woman has the right to murder her unborn child. It is seldom wise to vote on a single issue for something as wide-ranging as presidential authority, but I would be remiss if I didn’t say that a vote for the Democrats is a vote for murder.

Polls indicate that there are two main issues voters in this election care most about: the economy and the border. By “economy” I suspect that most people mean inflation. A true measure of prices for things everyone needs to live has gone up between 17% and 20% over the last four years. If you didn’t know this, you must not do the shopping in your house. Harris has said that there are no Biden policies she wound change. You have to decide if that is good for your budget or not. One thing is certain: we cannot afford to bring unlimited numbers of immigrants into this country and give them financial help when we are already struggling under significant inflation and tremendous national debt. (For more on that, read “Man the Lifeboats.”)

Unbridled immigration is a more complex problem than just its economic effect, and the positions of the two parties are clear to anyone who listens. Most of Trump’s immigration policies were reversed by Biden as soon as he took office. He installed Harris as his border czar, and the disaster that ensued is undeniable. The most frightening thing about their current position on immigration is their insistence that non-citizens (illegal aliens) be allowed to vote. This strikes at the heart of our representative government. Only legal stakeholders should have a say in government policies. True, the Democrats are making illegal aliens stakeholders by granting them living assistance of every kind. But to my mind, that just doubles down on the original mistake of letting so many come across the border. They become guaranteed Democrat voters to keep their gravy train running.

Another issue that is flooding the airwaves in my area concerns Social Security positions. The Democrat ads shamelessly mislead seniors by claiming that Trump would cut their retirement benefits. It is true that Trump (and most Republicans) realize that if something isn’t done to reform Social Security, it will implode in the near future. However, to scare seniors now collecting benefits by suggesting that Trump would reduce their checks is a bald-faced lie. None of his policies that I am aware of affect current beneficiaries. His plan would raise the age of initial eligibility and offer a hybrid investment plan with individual control of one’s own money. The kind of changes Republicans are suggesting are necessary to save Social Security for the long run. The Democrats have no such plan. (For more on my take on SS, see “Social Insecurity”)

Finally, independent, non-biased accounting estimates that the goodies Harris promises if she is elected would inflate the national debt by trillions of dollars. If you don’t understand why the national debt is your problem, read “Imaginary Money.” Using a household budget as an analogy, our current situation is like having so much debt that you have to pay every penny you earn to cover the interest – just the interest; you would not be paying one penny on the principle, and there would be no money for food, fuel, clothing, and anything else that you need to survive. It is a sad commentary on the intelligence of American voters that we have come to this untenable position. Our entire system is hanging by a thread, and Harris wants to add more weight to the burden.

Many people were dissatisfied with Trump as a person back in 2016 and 2020. They wouldn’t vote for him because they didn’t like him. As I wrote then, the Presidential election is not a popularity contest: I like her better than him (Nah-nah). On one important level, the United States is the world’s largest business entity. Donald Trump has proven to be a very successful businessman. His term in office gave ample evidence that his expertise transfers to his position as President. He also professes faith in God, and he would never tell someone at his rally (as Harris did) that they were in the wrong place because they were supporting Christian values. If enough conservative voters abstain because they don’t “like” Trump, they will assure the election of Kamala Harris.

This short piece will not likely change many votes. Many people have already voted early, and those who have not yet cast their ballot will probably not be convinced to change. My only hope is that I may encourage someone to vote – either way – so that our next President represents the citizens properly. By that I mean properly elected by a majority of informed, legal citizens. The next four years will be radically influenced by who wins the top of the ticket.

Related posts: Vote Anyway; Politics Stinks; Honor the King; The Circle of Well-being

What Were You Given?

Some time ago, I wrote an article called, “God’s Choice or Man’s.” If you have not read it, or you are uncertain about God’s sovereign election unto salvation, I recommend that you pause and follow the link now. (Also see Related Posts below.) If you are ready to consider the ramifications of God’s sovereign dealings with people in all things, let me present an interesting facet of that condition.

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter thirteen, the disciples ask Jesus why He so often speaks in parables. He responds, “Because the secrets of the kingdom of heaven have been given for you to know, but it has not been given to them.” (Italics mine) At first glance, it may seem that God is being unfair or even capricious. That is until you remember that He told Isaiah that he would be sent to people who would see but not see and hear but not hear. It proved true. Despite numerous warnings of what was to come of Israel’s disobedience and idolatry, they were taken captive to Babylon for seventy years. Isaiah warned them; they refused to hear.

Jesus quotes from that context to explain His use of parables. From our perspective, we look back and see that the Jewish leaders had to reject Jesus as Messiah, or they would not have crucified Him which was God’s intended purpose from the beginning. That in itself is a bit hard to understand, but it is exactly what Peter told them after Jesus’ resurrection. A sinless One had to give Himself as the atoning sacrifice for all mankind. In a weird sort of circular irony, it was the very people He came to save who crucified their Savior.

Think again about the concept of God’s sovereignty. Not only does He rule over all, He has the power to accomplish His will without exception. A few of the Jewish religious leaders were given the secrets, as Jesus explained, but not the majority. Remember Nicodemus, Jesus’ night visitor and Joseph of Arimathea who loaned Jesus his tomb for three days; they were two of the elite who got it. Read the Gospels and notice how Jesus could win converts throughout Galilee, but He was driven from His hometown because of their unbelief. The secrets of the kingdom are given as God wills.

Noone who reads the Scriptures carefully can deny that God chooses His people for His own reasons. One may ask how the concept of sovereignty plays out in the lives of those who have been given knowledge of the secrets of the kingdom. Why were James and Stephen martyred early in the church’s establishment, but many other first-generation disciples ministered for many more years? Why was Saul allowed to capture and kill so many followers of the Way before God finally gave him the secrets of the kingdom, after which he suffered numerous trials including being stoned and left for dead? Why was John boiled in oil (so tradition says) and then exiled to the island of Patmos?

Then there is the curious fact that although Jesus told His closest disciples He was going to die and rise again, they didn’t understand. That has always puzzled me until I read Jesus’ words in Luke: “‘Let these words sink in: The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.’ But they did not understand this statement; it was concealed from them (Italics mine) so that they could not grasp it, and they were afraid to ask him about it.” Apparently, there are some secrets that are not given for all to know. God has His reasons.

In the Gospel of Luke, the narrative that follows Jesus’ explanation for the parables is the one about putting your lamp on a stand rather than hiding it. Jesus closes the parable saying, “For nothing is secret that will not become evident, and nothing hidden that will never be known and come to light. Therefore, consider how you listen, for whoever has, to him more will be given, and whoever does not have, even what he thinks that he has will be taken away from him.” That is a frightening thought. Not only does God give to whomever He chooses, He takes away too.

Job knew this; he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Consider this: maybe that was also the point of the parable of the sower. Jesus said the seed is the Word of God. The Word is sown by God’s grace through human agency. Then the all-knowing, all-powerful God allows some to be taken away by various means: shallow hearts, worldly concerns, and the devil’s schemes. This may also be what the Hebrew writer meant when he said that some would fall away after having, “tasted the good word of God.” It could be that those taste-testers were in one of the categories Jesus mentioned in the parable of the sower.

If you are one to whom it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom – if you have tasted the good word of God, make every effort to see that the soil of your life is deep and kept watered. To do that you must spend time with the written word and commune often with the Living Word. If you fail to do that, you risk having God take back what He has given. That could have disastrous consequences.

Related Posts: Election: God’s Choice; The Hidden Things; Calvinist or Arminian

Moving Mountains

In his popular work, Walden, Henry David Thoreau said, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” I know he was not a Christian, but he was a keen observer of the human condition. Sadly, what he said about people in general can also be said of many who claim to be followers of Jesus Christ. The desperation Christians feel may be of a different sort than others, but it has the same consequence: turbidity. By that I mean that they seem to be confused or muddled in their thinking and acting. Jesus said that He came to bring abundant life to His disciples, yet too many of them appear to have refused or misplaced that gift.

One might ask what the abundant life should look like. Because Jesus has offered this gift to believers, it would help to know what it means to believe. In the Greek language of the New Testament, there is one word that is translated both belief and faith. In English, we need two words because we don’t have a decent verb form of the word faith. We don’t talk about “faithing” something, but we can believe something. Hence, we believe in Jesus or put our faith in Jesus, and we live a life of faith, or we live as believers.

So, the question becomes what faith/belief is. The tenth through the twelfth chapters of Hebrews are a good place to look for a lesson on faith. In the midst of that lesson there is a stunning statement: “Without faith it is impossible to please God.” At the very least we know that means to place faith in the atoning sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. That is the ringing gong of the Hebrews message: remain faithful to Christ, and don’t turn back to the now empty faith of Judaism. The Cross of Christ brought an end to the temple worship of the Jews, yet some of them were turning back to it. The Hebrew writer was admonishing them to remain faithful to the new order initiated by Christ.

But it is not just being faithful to Christ that the Hebrew writer emphasizes. The examples of faith he gives in chapters eleven and twelve delve into the depths of what it means to live by faith. The exemplars of faith – Noah, Abraham, Moses, et al. – each made critical life decisions grounded in their belief/faith in God. Their lives – and often their deaths – proved their faith was genuine. The Apostle Paul said as much in his lesson on faith in the book of Romans. We are all justified before God by the kind of faith demonstrated by Abraham.

So, to live by faith means to believe God – to believe His Word. But saving faith goes beyond even that; it must show up in the actions of the believer. James says faith without works is dead. Some have tried to say that contradicts Paul’s assertion that we are saved by faith, not by works. But in the sentence after that well-known phrase Paul ties works to saving faith saying that we were “created for good works.” Jesus was striking the same chord when He said that true faith would be revealed by the fruit it produced. The right kind of fruit is that which accomplishes the will of the Father – sharing the gospel, seeking justice, caring for the needy, supporting the work of the kingdom of God. That is the thrust of Jesus’ model prayer that God’s will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.

There is another important way to live by faith: to pray in faith believing that our prayers will be answered. Jesus made the startling claim that if His disciples prayed that way, the results were guaranteed. That assertion needs to be explained though. The Greek in Mark 11:24 literally says, “all things you pray and ask believe you [already] have, and they will come to be.” (πάντα ὅσα προσεύχεσθε καὶ αἰτεῖσθε, πιστεύετε ὅτι ἐλάβετε, καὶ ἔσται ὑμῖν.) Some Christians have tried to make that a sort of magic formula like rubbing the genie’s bottle and getting the answer they want. Nothing could be farther from the truth Jesus taught. He said if you have the assurance by faith that your request has already been granted, it will come to pass. That kind of faith can only be supported by the knowledge that the thing prayed for is completely within God’s will. If you know God has willed something to be, your true prayer is, “Thy will be done.” Which, by the way, goes back to Jesus’ model prayer again.

A.W. Tozer commented on the prayer of faith: “But the man of faith can go alone into the wilderness and get on his knees and command heaven—God is in that! The Christian who is willing to put himself in a place where he must get the answer from God and God alone—the Lord is in that! But there is no use trying to cover up the fact that there is a great deal of praying being done among us that does not amount to anything—it never brings anything back! It is like sending a farmer into the field without a plow. Little wonder that the work of God stands still!” ^[1]

Graham Cooke wrote in Crafted Prayers that we often fail in prayer because we immediately ask for our desires for the situation: heal this disease, fill this need, save this marriage. When those things aren’t forthcoming, we ask why God didn’t do what we want. The problem, Cooke says, is that we didn’t first seek to know what God wanted. There are two ways to learn what that is: pray for God to reveal His will in the situation and look to Scripture for the answer. When we know what God wants, we can pray in faith. When we fall short of that, our prayers fall short of heaven.

One time when the disciples failed to drive out a demon, they asked Jesus why they were unsuccessful. He said, “Because of your little faith… For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” If your prayers aren’t moving mountains, examine your faith.

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^[1] A. W. Tozer and Gerald B. Smith, Evenings with Tozer: Daily Devotional Readings (Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers, 2015), 304.