James 1:1-8 [NLTse]

¹ This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am writing to the “twelve tribes”—Jewish believers scattered abroad.

Greetings!

² Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. ³ For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. ⁴ So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

⁵ If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and He will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking. ⁶ But when you ask Him, be sure that your faith is in God alone. Do not waver, for a person with divided loyalty is as unsettled as a wave of the sea that is blown and tossed by the wind. ⁷ Such people should not expect to receive anything from the Lord. ⁸ Their loyalty is divided between God and the world, and they are unstable in everything they do.

Last week we saw an angel-messenger from God telling the prophet Daniel that the Almighty had heard Daniel’s prayer and begun to act the very day Daniel had first prayed. And we asked, “Then why so often the delays to our prayers?” We talked about the need for persistence in our prayers – to never give up praying until we receive God’s response! And yet we acknowledged occasions where we’ve prayed and prayed and prayed and yet it seemed that nothing much happened.

So today we’re going to look at why, sometimes, our prayers go unanswered. And looking across the Scriptures there seems to be several basic reasons: uuu

1. Sometimes it’s because we haven’t kept asking, kept seeking, and kept knocking as the Lord calls us to. Sin and the power of evil in this world is strong, and it takes more than quickie, half-hearted requests to stir the powers of Heaven to overwhelm the powers of Hell;
2. Sometimes the Lord has responded to our prayers, but we haven’t liked His response, so we keep on praying;
3. Sometimes we ask God for things He doesn’t want to give us;
4. Sometimes God doesn’t respond to our prayers because we’ve separated ourselves from Him through hard-hearted sin or falling back into old sinful ways; and, lastly,
5. Sometimes the answers to our prayers are delayed because what we’ve asked the Lord for simply takes much time.

uuu First we said that sometimes it’s because we haven’t kept asking, kept seeking, and kept knocking as the Lord calls us to. We talked about that last week, so let’s go on.

uuu Sometimes the Lord has responded to our prayers, but we haven’t liked His response, so we keep on praying hoping we’ll get a different answer this time. Like when we plug an address into our GPS? Directions to get where we’re going pop up, but maybe we don’t like that route – we wanna go another way – so we hit the button for an alternate plan.

But God’s not a GPS, letting us pray again and pray again until we get the answer we want to get from Him. No, He’s made us; He’s purchased us on the cross; and He knows what we need to live abundant lives of great meaning and purpose! Pretending the Lord hasn’t responded to our prayers in the hopes of getting a better, different answer is just fooling ourselves.

Arguing against God’s Way must have been a constant struggle for Moses, because we see it throughout his life, including this clear example from just before he died. The Lord told Moses he would not be allowed to enter the Promised Land. uuu And Moses writes, “At that time I pleaded with the LORD and said, ‘O Sovereign LORD, You have only begun to show Your greatness and the strength of Your hand to me, Your servant. Is there any god in Heaven or on Earth who can perform such great and mighty deeds as You do? Please let me cross the Jordan to see the wonderful land on the other side, the beautiful hill country and the Lebanon mountains.” uuu

“But the LORD was angry with me,” Moses went on, “and He would not listen to me. ‘That’s enough!’ [the Lord] declared. ‘Speak of it no more.’” (Deuteronomy 3:23-27)

It’s God’s version of what some people today call “tough love”. We human beings want to do what we want: What feels good and keeps us from too many difficulties, even if it means we remain stuck in habitual troubles. But God loves us too much for that: “That’s enough!” He says. And He gets us going, even when we don’t like it.

Another reason God doesn’t seem to answer our prayers (that’s similar to this) is when sometimes we ask God for things He doesn’t want to give us. uuu Jesus said, “You can ask for anything in My name, and I will do it, so that the Son can bring glory to the Father. Yes, ask Me for anything in My name, and I will do it!” (John 14:13-14) So you might think, “If I want a fine car like the pastor drives, you just ask God for one in the name of Jesus.” (I used my car as a example so none of you would think I was picking on you. J) Do we truly think that tacking Jesus’ name onto the end of some self-serving prayer would make God have to do as we’ve asked?

But James (Jesus’ half-brother, and the leader of the church in Jerusalem in the First Century) wrote to his congregation, “You don’t have what you want because you don’t ask God for it. And even when you ask, you don’t get it because your motives are all wrong—you want only what will give you pleasure.” We want to be healed, but not necessarily so we can get back out there doing good, caring for the poor and weak, and sharing Christ. We want to have money, but not necessarily to promote God’s purposes and set people free around the world. We want this or that relationship reconciled, but not necessarily for Jesus’ plans and Jesus’ sake. We want this or that or some other thing, but not necessarily because it’s going to serve God’s purposes in our lives.

Face it, many of our requests are vain and prideful and self-centered. And as the best, most loving Father, God is set to move Heaven and Earth just to keep us comfortable, so we can look good to others, and live our lives the way we want to live them.

But don’t be discouraged. Can you imagine that the apostle Paul was like this, and he tells the Corinthians, “I have received such wonderful revelations from God. So to keep me from becoming proud, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger from Satan to torment me and keep me from becoming proud.

“Three different times I begged the Lord to take it away. Each time He said, “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) (Just an aside, notice Paul doesn’t assume God’s telling him that His grace will be sufficient; Paul doesn’t stop praying until God makes His response clear to him.)

So Paul wanted this “thorn in the flesh” removed. And that seems okay, doesn’t it? I mean, what problem could there be in asking God to keep Satan’s tormenting-messenger’s away from him, right? And yet, sometimes the physical ailments we have and the financial difficulties we go through and the relational breaks we experience and the gossip we have to endure are given to us by God to keep us from becoming vain, proud, and selfish. God gives them as a strange gift, an unasked for blessing. A blessing we don’t know is good for us, and the Lord doesn’t want to take them away…

uuu Another reason the Lord doesn’t answer our prayers, or delays for long periods of time, is because sometimes we’ve separated ourselves from Him through hard-heartedness and nurturing sin in our lives. For example, uuu Simon Peter writes, “You husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God’s gift of new life. Treat her as you should so your prayers will not be hindered.” (1 Peter 3:7)

Jesus came to serve. So whether we’re a guy or a gal, when we misuse authority God has given us (in our various roles and relationships) we cut ourselves off from Him. uuu Proverbs says it this way, “Those who shut their ears to the cries of the poor will be ignored in their own time of need.” (21:13)

uuu Isaiah cries, “Listen! The LORD’s arm is not too weak to save you, nor is His ear too deaf to hear you call. It’s your sins that have cut you off from God. Because of your sins, He has turned away and will not listen anymore.” (59:1-2)

Ever seen the bumper sticker, “If God seems far away, guess who moved?” Yeah. Sometimes God doesn’t answer our prayers because we’ve turned away from Him, and He wants us to turn back.

uuu Of course, sometimes God seems to not be responding to our prayers simply because what we’ve asked Him for takes a long time for Him to give us, especially since He wants to give us more and better than what we ever ask Him for. Look at Job.

Before all of his trials, Job was among the wealthiest and most influential men of his day, a vigorous man with a big happy family of seven sons and three daughters. The Book of Job describes how all of that was taken away from him by the Devil hoping he could get Job to curse God. Job wouldn’t however, but across the pages of that book we read Job asking God again and again to help him understand the reason for his trials, and asking the Lord to restore him to his place of righteous-influence in his community.

Would you open your Bibles to Job 30:20… Job is praying here, “I cry to You, O God, but You don’t answer. I stand before You, but You don’t even look.” It’s the prayer of many who have prayed and prayed and prayed but received no answer.

If you’ll keep your finger in that page, but now turn to Job 42:12… We read, “The LORD blessed Job in the second half of his life even more than in the beginning. For now he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 teams of oxen, and 1,000 female donkeys. [That’s twice as many as before.] He also gave Job seven more sons and three more daughters. He named his first daughter Jemimah, the second Keziah, and the third Keren-happuch. In all the land no women were as lovely as the daughters of Job. And their father put them into his will along with their brothers.

“Job lived 140 years after that, living to see four generations of his children and grandchildren. Then he died, an old man who had lived a long, full life.”

Sometimes there’s such a delay in our prayers being answered simply because

when we’re living for God rightly

and walking with God closely,

and asking the Lord to bless us so that we can be His blessing to others,

Sometimes it can just take a long time for God to give us all the good things He has for us in answer those kinds of prayers. J

Ascription of Praise

All glory to the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, forever. Amen?

Traditional Worship: [“I Need Thee Every Hour” (Hymn #428, vv. 1, 2, 3, 4)]

Contemporary Worship: [Closing Worship]

Charge