Today on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Sometimes we pray outside of the will of God and God hears us, but he doesn't give those things to us because he has a better plan.
When you and I come and pray, we pray to a father and we ought to say, God, I think this is your will, but if it's not your will, I trust you as a good dad to give me what I ought to have and not my will, let all but yours be done. Welcome back to Summit Life with pastor, author and theologian J.D. Greer. As always, I'm your host, Molly Vidovitch. Today, we conclude our short series on prayer called Ask. Now, if you missed any part of this series, you can always catch up on any previous messages at J.D. Greer dot com. So do you still feel like our prayers aren't heard by God even after listening for the last several days?
If so, you're not alone. In today's message, Pastor J.D. Greer makes one more attempt to meet us right where we are in this sentiment. It's titled Does Prayer Change the Mind of God? So grab your Bible and let's jump back in. Prayer is the preordained way that God has for executing his will on Earth. God has hardwired the universe so that it runs on prayer.
Moses in this story does not dwell on the unchangeable purposes of God as he does the unchanging promises of God and how they apply to the situation. God has sovereignly placed you in certain situations precisely for the purpose of praying his promises and changing his plans for you to employ divine power to create a different destiny than the one that everybody's headed to. And God sovereignly puts you there to let you see that problem for you to ask. He wanted you to be there. That's why he placed you there.
I want you to let that really sink in for a minute, OK, before we move on. God has sovereignly put you in the situation now with all the problems that you see, with all the dysfunctional people that are a part of your life. He puts you there to see it and to remember his promise and to release his power into the situation. Like Moses, he has sent you down into a family or a group of friends or a neighborhood.
Some of you have looked around at your family and you have thought, how did I become a part of this family? Why did God give me these people to call my family? The reason is because he puts you there as his emissary.
He wanted somebody to see the problem and he wanted somebody to believe in God's willingness to help. And you are his instrument. Like Moses, you have been sent down. What I'm trying to tell you guys is the system is rigged.
The whole system is rigged. He put you there sovereignly in that place to perceive the problem, believe the promise and release his power. You see, a lot of times when people talk about the sovereignty of God, they talk about it as if it keeps them from action. They say silly things like, well, if God's sovereign, then what does it matter what I do?
Because if I don't do it, then somebody else will just do it. Scripture actually points you to the exact opposite place. It is realizing that God sovereignly puts you in places as the instrument of his power. That's what actually gives you the motivation to pray and the confidence to speak.
My friend, David Platt, he says it this way, reflecting on this passage. When we pray, we take our God-given place and we use our God-ordained privilege to participate with God in the accomplishment of his purposes on the planet. Y'all, let me take this one step farther and share with you an amazing, I would call it life-changing truth that God used recently to revolutionize my own prayer life. One of the primary reasons that God saved you was to put you in a place to pray for others.
Here's why I say that. I went back to an old, one of my favorite devotionals called A Gospel Primer. And in this book, he talks about the position that you and I have in prayer. And he's talking about in Ephesians 1 where God explains that he has chosen us before the foundation of the world.
And this is what the author of this book points out. When God chose me in Christ before the foundation of the world, he did not merely choose me to be holy and blameless. That's a quote from Ephesians 1. He also chose me, again from Ephesians 1, to be before him in love. That's about prayer. Now I actually memorized Ephesians 1 last year and I totally missed that. I don't know how I missed it, but I missed it. God chose me to be before him in love.
Go to the next one. As a chosen one of God, I was saved to pray. And whenever I come into God's presence to behold him, worship him or make requests of him, I am arriving at the pinnacle of God's saving purposes for me. This is why God put me here.
It's what he wants to do. It is his will for my life. How can I not feel the infinite sincerity of these invitations? Especially when I consider the painful links that God endured so that I might enter his presence in prayer. Believer, you are chosen to pray.
Where you are chosen to pray and part of that means that you've been sovereignly put where you are right now so that you can say, God let your kingdom come here and let your will be done in this moment because that is the means by which God makes his kingdom come and lets his will be done as your prayers. In light of that, I told you two things last week that you need to be absolutely full of if you are going to be an effective prayerr. They were the word and the spirit because the word and the spirit are the two means by which God lets you know what his kingdom wants and what his will is.
The word, the word. I told you that this is not just a textbook for you to learn and memorize spiritual truths from. This is a book of promises to be claimed. I have heard that there are 3000 promises, individual promises in that book and we are supposed to claim every single one. This is a book that you're supposed to read on your knees. I do not want a single promise that God has for me to not come to pass in the life of my kids, not come to pass in my life or in your life. That's why we often say, don't just read your way through the Bible.
Pray your way through the Bible. It is a book of promises for prayer. And to that end, last week I gave you a little acrostic I said you should use as you read the Bible. It's a good outline. It's the HEAR method, H-E-A-R, HEAR.
H stands for highlight. Highlight any promise of scripture that you see in whatever passage you read. Then examine, make sure you're applying the promises correctly. Apply, figure out where it applies to you and to the people in your life and then R, respond, respond by praying and say, God, you put me here to see this promise and I know the problem it goes into and I want your kingdom to come and your will to be done. The second thing I said you ought to be full of is the spirit of God because you ought to be letting him guide you as you pray to show you where and how to extend God's kingdom. I refer to this as listening prayer. And I told you that prayer is not just talking. That's the way we think about it.
It's also listening. You're not just supposed to pray to God. You're supposed to play with God. The spirit prays through you. Be full of the word and the spirit and you will be closer to what Moses experiences in Exodus 32 because that's exactly what happened. God revealed his will. Moses knew God's word. The spirit showed him what to pray and Moses prayed it and it happened. That's why we gave you this statement last week.
I gave you the statement. The prayers that are heard by heaven are the ones that start in heaven. That's what happened on the mountain. Moses perceived what heaven wanted and he prayed it and it happened. So now I wanna use that understanding of prayer because that's the core understanding of prayer. I wanna use that to shape the answer to that question. What do you do if you're praying persistently and you're still not getting an answer and the prayers that you pray and are not being answered the way that you think they should be answered?
Let me give you just a handful of things that might be going on in light of this story. Number one, you might not be a Christian. I hate to start negative, but I feel like there are a lot of people who are praying and wondering why God's not answering their prayer and this is the answer. Only Christians are appointed to pray this way. Only they are walking in the kingdom and only they're walking according to the will of God. Nowhere in scripture, not one place does God ever promise to answer the prayers of unbelievers. Now, God sometimes does answer the prayer of unbelievers because he is compassionate and gracious, but he hasn't promised to do that the way he promises to hear believers. And I know some of you hear that and you say, well, that sounds exclusive and it sounds mean. Listen, God wants you to be his child.
It could not be more inclusive. God has offered to you right now, become my child. He has paid for your sin on the cross and he says, if you will surrender to him as Lord and receive him as your savior, you can become his child today. And then God will begin to answer and work in your prayers the way he does any of his other children. But there are a lot of people whose prayers aren't answered because they're just not Christians.
Or a variation on this would be Christians who aren't really walking with God. David said, if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me. If I'm a Christian who knows that he has sin in his life, then God will not be hearing my prayers because it disqualifies me from him hearing.
So that's reason number one. Reason number two, he might not be answering you the way that you think you need an answer because something in you needs to change. Scripture says that sometimes God didn't grant a request because we're asking with, for example, the wrong motives. James chapter four, verse three is really clear about this. James says, you ask and don't receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your sinful passions. And sometimes God will use the delay and an answer in order to work on your heart and in order to confront you about these wrong passions. I use the example of some parents I knew that prayed for a decade for a wayward son. And after the decade was up, they're like, you know, what we realized was that we were the ones that really had the problem, that there was a lot of stuff in us that God needed to change and he may not have changed it had he answered our prayer the moment that we asked it.
Unanswered prayer is often God's way of purifying you. I mean, even in this story, even in this story, we can see God working on Moses' heart. The reason that God keeps saying to Moses, your people that you brought up is not because God had forgotten that they were God's people. He keeps saying that because he, listen, he wants Moses to feel about Israel the way that he feels about Israel. So what he is doing is putting Moses in this situation where Moses' heart can change to be like God's heart where Moses loves the way that God loves.
Christ's likeness for Moses, not just deliverance for Israel was the goal. That is God's first goal in your prayers also. He wants you to become Christ-like and unanswered prayer is often the way that he purifies us.
Number three, it might be that your prayers don't align with God's will. If the prayers that start in heaven are the ones that are heard by heaven, then it makes sense that sometimes we're praying things that are not heaven's wishes. Here's the way the apostle John says it. The apostle John says, and this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. And we know that if he hears us, we have the request that we asked of him. And what that means is that there are some times that we pray outside of the will of God and God hears us, but he doesn't give those things to us because he has a better plan. When you and I come and pray, we pray to a father and we ought to say, God, I think this is your will, but if it's not your will, I trust you as a good dad to give me what I ought to have and not my will but yours be done. So it might be that you're just praying and not according to the will of God.
That doesn't mean there's something wrong with you. It just means that we can't always perceive exactly what God wants. And so we pray, God, if this is according to your will. You're listening to a message titled, Does Prayer Change the Mind of God? Here on Summit Life with J.D.
Greer. We'll rejoin this teaching in just a moment, but I wanted to tell you about a daily email devotional from Pastor J.D. that you can sign up for today. I know the busyness of life can quickly choke out any joy that we feel in our walk with God. So why not cut those weeds away each morning with a word from the Lord? The devotionals even follow along with our current teaching here on the program, so you can stay plugged into these messages regardless of your schedule. What better way to remember and rehearse all that we're learning about prayer right now by staying plugged in even after the show is over.
Sign up for this free resource at jdgreer.com slash resources. Now let's return for the final moments in our teaching series titled, Ask. Once again, here's Pastor J.D. Here's number four. This is sort of a variation on that one. By the way, just give you a little heads up on this one. I really struggled as to whether to put this one in here with the detail I'm going to put it, but there are some of you that I know this is what you struggle with, and you're nerdy enough that you're gonna appreciate the next four and a half minutes, okay?
For the rest of you, I apologize. But number four, your prayer circumvents God's processes. Sometimes your prayers not answered the way you pray it because you're trying to circumvent God's processes. Sometimes we pray for God to overturn processes that God has established in running the world. For example, God set up our universe to run according to natural laws. And that means that miracles are by definition rare. God does not typically rewrite the laws of nature through prayer. And many things including sicknesses, typhoons, rainstorms, these things are in our world because of the curse of sin. And they operate now according to natural laws. God does not routinely interrupt those laws.
Occasionally, yes, commonly, no. This is why, by the way, God typically doesn't answer all the sports prayers that get prayed. The game is not usually determined by who has a prayer ministry. If you're a coach here, you probably shouldn't depend on a prayer strategy to guard against three pointers.
You should work on your defense. It is rare that you're gonna see a three pointer just swatted inexplicably out of the sky, evidently by an angel because Sister Margaret was praying that her little nephew would win the game. That's just not how God works. Let me give you a more spiritual example. We might pray. We might pray, God save everybody in Afghanistan tonight and have them all believe on Jesus. Now that's a prayer that seems to align with what God wants, right? Yet it goes against two processes that God has set up in seeing people come to salvation. One process is that God intends to use his church to preach the gospel, and you're trying to circumvent that. Two is that he cooperates with our free will in seeing the gospel go forward. And so praying that God will magically, apart from those things, make everybody in Afghanistan a Christian tonight is not a prayer that God has invited us to pray. Which brings me to another observation. God's answers to prayer in the Bible often seem to have a regard for our free will.
Now I'm gonna warn you, this is gonna start making your mind hurt. Matthew 23, 37, Jesus said this, talking about why Israel was not coming to believe in him. He said, Jerusalem, Jerusalem, how often I wanted to gather your children together like a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you weren't willing. Now here's what's hard to understand. What does Jesus say is the reason that they haven't come to him? It's because they resisted, they weren't willing, they weren't freely choosing to come to him.
Now here's what's hard. There are certain places in the Bible that clearly teach that Jesus is the one who draws. John 6, 44, all who come to the son are come because the father drew them. John 6, 37, all that the father draws will come to Jesus.
All right? But then there are other verses like this one where God is saying, actually, you weren't willing. I was trying to draw you. The invitation had been extended, but you weren't willing to come. So there are certain, these processes that as we're praying, God is working through these processes and that may not be why it's happening the way that you think it should happen.
Here's another example. We might be asking God to deliver us from something that God intends is the means of his accomplishing something in us. Acts 14, 22, Paul's talking to the new believers in Antioch, strengthening their souls, telling them that through many tribulations or suffering, we must enter the kingdom of God. Suffering and tribulation is how God has purposed to prepare you for his kingdom, which means that when you were asking God to always deliver you from suffering and tribulation, you shouldn't be surprised when he doesn't always do it because those are the very means that he has appointed for producing what he wants in you. You are free to ask him to deliver you from those things. Paul did, but you should not be surprised when you hear the answer that Paul got, which is no, I'm not going to deliver you from that suffering because my grace is sufficient for you and my strength will be made perfect in your weakness. My strength is not gonna be made perfect in the answer to that prayer. My strength is gonna be made perfect in the weakness that I leave you in and producing my strength in you is better than even giving you what you are asking for. Sometimes we're trying to circumvent God's processes. One more on this one before I go to the last one. Maybe you've prayed for deliverance from some inner struggle or some temptation and God hasn't given you that deliverance yet because his plan, y'all, is to use the struggle to produce something even greater in you.
Let me explain what I mean. John Newton, who wrote the hymn Amazing Grace. He wrote a series of letters when he was an old man but are in a little book now called The Letters of John Newton. And one of my favorite ones, he wrote when he was 86 years old. And he was complaining to a friend in this letter that he had prayed about something for 60 years, an inward temptation and struggle that God would deliver him from. And he says, I'm 86 years old and it's as bad now as it's ever been. He goes, and for years, I could not understand why God wouldn't deliver me from this because I'd prayed and I thought it was his will.
He said, now as an 86 year old man, I understand why. He said, because God has used the ongoing presence of this struggle to remind me how desperately I need his grace. And because I know I need his grace, I can be a help to other people who struggle because I can point them to the grace that I have found for myself. And had God healed this of me when I was a 26 year old young man, then probably what would have happened is I would have gotten proud and forgotten what it was like to struggle and I wouldn't be any help to anybody. So God has left this struggle so that I would go even deeper into his grace so that I could be a better instrument of his grace than I would be if I'd walked in total righteousness all the time. You see, maybe God is leaving you with that struggle because he wants you to learn to cling to God's grace, to that teenager who has a same sex attraction. Maybe God hasn't delivered you from it fully because maybe he wants you to be a testimony to your friends that you're going to conform your life to God's word that God is better. Even when every desire in your heart is going the other way, you would rather have the kingdom of God than you would anything that's in your heart. Maybe he's intending to use those doubts that you have to take you deeper into his truth to get you beyond these superficial answers and to press into the depths of who God is. That's why God didn't take away my doubts when I asked him because he was inviting me to go deep in him and I'm so glad that I went. Here's number five, the last reason he might not be answering your prayer the way that you think he should.
Maybe he's delaying his answer until his return. Y'all, one of my favorite unknown scenes in the Bible happens in Revelation five when right before Jesus is getting ready to bring in the last days, it talks about these bowls of incense around his throne, which represent the prayers of his people. And here he's got these, and he begins to pour them out. What that's a picture of is all these prayers that have been prayed by the church that never got an answer on earth. And what is happening is Jesus brings in the last days, it's like he is going to fulfill all the longings of our heart that never got answered on earth. Maybe you desire to be married.
Maybe you desire to have a family. Maybe it was a broken relationship that you wanted restored or a broken body or something that God says, I'm not gonna give you that in that chapter on earth. You get to experience that for the rest of eternity because all the promises of God are yes in Christ Jesus. Every promise for blessing, every promise for healing, every promise for prosperity, they're all yours.
They may not be yours in this little veil of tears we call life, but they will be yours in eternity. So God might delay his answer until the final consummation. That doesn't mean he hadn't heard it because he's kept it in a little bowl right there beside his throne, metaphorically speaking. And he's gonna answer them all for the rest of eternity. So see, there are five reasons why God may not be answering your prayer in the way that you think he should. But let's return to this story one last time because this story shows you in the midst of unanswered prayer, the one thing you can be sure is not happening. You see the children of Israel assumed when God was a little late that he had abandoned them.
And I told you that was a crazy, totally insane freak out after all that they'd seen. But here's my question, haven't you and I seen even greater things in Israel, Saul? You see, that's where you really get into the true meaning of this story. Moses is actually giving the people a picture on that mountain of what Jesus would one day do in a much more dramatic fashion for us. Like Moses, Jesus stood in the gap between the anger of a righteous God and the sin of his people. Like Moses, Jesus offered for God to take his life rather than to destroy us. But see, Moses only offered that to God. God actually took Jesus up on it and Jesus did give his life for us in our place. God said to Moses, what we saw, God said to Moses, I'll destroy the children of Israel and I'll take you. Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane replied, said, nope, you destroy me and keep them. And Jesus shed his blood so that God could keep us as a part of his kingdom.
Jesus was the mediator who would rather die than let us perish. And see y'all, what that shows me is that when I feel alone and when I feel like God is late and when I feel like God's not answering my prayer and even sometimes when I feel abandoned in prayer, it's not because he actually has abandoned me, he gave his life for me so that I would never have to feel abandoned. And see, because of that, I know that God hears me when I pray, I know that I'm a precious son, I know that I can leave my request at his feet and I can trust that whatever he's doing, even when he's not doing what I think he should be doing, whatever he's doing, it is for my good because he proved that when he put himself in harm's way so that he could deliver me from the punishment of my sin. I'll be totally honest with you, I have a hard time doing this consistently because when I pray about something that's bothering me, I try to lay at the feet of Jesus and almost as soon as I get up off my knees, I pick it back up and I put it back on my shoulders. But what I realized through stories and passages like this one is that I've got a heavenly father who knows when every sparrow in my life falls and who says you can leave your burdens with me, cast your burden upon the Lord, he will sustain you. Leave it with him and trust that he has heard you and that he's working and that he's answering because he proved that on the cross.
Let me ask you to bow your head. Believer, do you see the privilege that God has given you in prayer? To those of you who may not be believers yet, are you ready to receive this invitation to become God's child? Answered prayer is one of the many benefits that comes with receiving God's offer of salvation. Jesus died on the cross to save you. He calls you to surrender to him and come back to him. And when you're ready, he's ready. You can do it right now. Believer, let me ask you this, where, where, where has God sovereignly appointed you and placed you to pray?
Where? And are you ready to take up that position and then to trust him? Oh, it's so sweet to trust in Jesus and to know that you're there where you are because of his choice and because he's ready to hear you. He appointed you to pray. I'm chosen by God to pray. We participate with him. Doesn't that bring a new dimension to our prayer lives? This is Summit Life with Pastor J.D.
Greer. We'd love to give you a very encouraging new resource this month. We have a set of three guides that will help you to pray for three personal areas of your life, praying for your kids, for your parents and your community. Praying for our parents is a way in which we can continue to honor them every day. Praying for our kids or the kids of those closest to us brings wisdom and guidance to these precious lives that we've been entrusted with.
And praying for our community is a way of loving and caring for those around us and even those we don't necessarily know personally. We'll be glad to send you these books to express our gratitude for your financial support. So give today and join our mission to bring the gospel into center focus.
Donate by calling 866-335-5220. Or you can request them when you give online at jdgreer.com. Now before we close, let me remind you that if you aren't yet signed up for our email list, you'll want to go online and do that today. It is the best way to stay up to date with Pastor J.D. 's latest blog posts and we'll also make sure that you never miss a new resource or series.
It's quick and easy to sign up at jdgreer.com. I'm Molly Vidovitch inviting you to join us again tomorrow when we dive into another teaching series on the topic of prayer. Let's continue this important theme, Friday on Summit Life with J.D. Greer. Today's program was produced and sponsored by J.D. Greer Ministries.
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