My wife Susan was telling me this week that she had recently encountered a number of people who had distanced themselves from the church and from God because they were angry with Him. Each of these were angry because something didn’t happen that they thought God should make happen or because something did happen that they believed a loving God should have prevented. Either way, they were angry because their expectations about God had not been met.
I think many of us, as believers, have been in that place at one time or another. Perhaps, we weren’t angry but we were certainly disappointed with God and left wondering if God even hears our prayers or doesn’t always keep his promises. I think enough people struggle with this human experience that I want to speak to it in more detail than I have previously.
Taking offense at God puts us in a very spiritually vulnerable situation. When we are offended with God we may fall into distrust and unbelief and stop praying, serving, fellowshipping with other believers and, ultimately, come into agreement with Satan about the character of God. That scenario is what caused Adam and Eve to be removed from the Garden of Eden and what caused an entire generation of Hebrews to wander in the wilderness for forty years, never to enter the promised land. Because of that, I will do this in a series of several blogs rather than just trying to speak to it briefly in only one.
In general, there are several things that may cause us to be mad at God or take up an offense against him when God has not fulfilled our desires or met our expectations. I will list eight of those here.
1. We may fail to recognize that God will not respond to a prayer that is asking Him to violate his righteousness or that would be a violation of his commands
2. We may fail to recognize that many of God’s promises are conditional and, perhaps, we have not yet met those conditions.
3. We may have preconceptions about how God should answer our prayers and so miss out on the answer he does send.
4. We may be unaware that Satan has obtained some legal right to oppose God’s answer to our prayers and will continue to oppose the answer until the legal right has been removed.
5. We may fail to understand the nature of free will in this world, and so are angry at God when someone has exercised their free will and hurt us.
6. We may fail to recognize that our own bad decisions are are keeping us from receiving what we are asking for.
7. We may not understand, that faith must still hold that God is good and righteous in all he does, even though we don’t understand why something happened or did not happen as we desired.
8. We may fail to recognize, that as a good father, God may say “No” to things that would eventually hurt us, even though we think it is the very thing that would make our life worth living.
Let me begin with reason Number One.
I have been in full-time ministry for a number of years and very little surprises me. However, on occasion, I have been surprised by the prayers that some believers have offered up and then been upset with God that he did not answer. I remember a very mature, talented Christian woman who was angry with God because he would not answer the prayer she was offering up night after night. This single woman came to me to confess her anger at God.
She told me that, in the past, God had answered her prayers quickly and clearly, but now he seemed to be ignoring her. She felt betrayed by his “indifference to her pleas.” I asked her what she was asking God to do. She explained that she had been having an affair with a married man who had a wife and three young children. She had been asking God to prompt this man to divorce his wife, leave his children, and marry her. She had been praying that for months but had seen no change in her “lover’s” hesitancy to leave his family for her and so was angry that God had not come through for her.
This was a woman who had grown up in the church and even taught Bible classes for her congregation. I asked her why she thought God should answer that prayer. Who answer was simple. “God wants me to be happy and that’s what would make me happy!” It never occurred to her that she was asking God to participate in her sin and compound the sin by prompting him to abandon his wife and children and violate the covenant oaths he had made when he married the woman. I was amazed that she had ever thought God would aide her in a clear violation of his will and his values…but she was angry that he had not come through for her. Another time, I had a single Christian man tell me that he was praying for God to help him “score” with the woman he was taking out that night. When I asked why he thought God might answer that prayer, he simply answered that he loved sex and he thought God would want to satisfy his “God-given” desires.
These are extreme examples but it is possible for believers to assume that God simply exists to make sure we receive what we believe will make us happy or satisfy some desire. There are, of course, scriptures that tell us whatever we ask for with faith, will be given. Mark tells us. “Therefore I tell you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that you have received it, and it will be yours” (Mk.11:24). Jesus declared, “And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” (Jn. 14:13-14).These promises may seem like blank checks but they are not.
The problem is that we must take all scriptures about answered prayer together without isolating one fromm the others. A key scripture for understanding prayer is, “This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us” (I Jn. 5:14). The psalmist also declared, “If I had cherished sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened” (Ps. 66:18).
One essential condition for answered prayer is that we ask things that are according to or consistent with God’s will. If we are asking God to enable us in a sin we cherish in our heart, he will not respond. He will not respond because, as a responsible parent, he will not reinforce behavior that puts our soul in jeopardy. Paul tells is in his letter to the Corinthians that “love always protects” (1 For. 13:7). Therefore, God will not participate in sin…not just because he is holy, but also because he loves us. When we pray, we need to be sure that what we are asking for is not contrary to the will and ways of God. Some are mad at God, because he didn’t give them what they wanted, even thought it was a prayer birthed out of sinful desires. Sometimes we need to repent rather than being mad at God. God wants to bless us, but sin robs us of blessings. We should pray for things that God desires for us, rather than what our flesh desires.
More on this next week.
