James 5:13-18 (NKJV)
“Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.
Is anyone cheerful? Let him sing psalms.
Is anyone among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise him up.
And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.
Confess your trespasses to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed.
The effective, fervent prayer of a righteous man avails much.
Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed earnestly that it would not rain; and it did not rain on the land for three years and six months. And he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain, and the earth produced its fruit.”
Even in troubled times, the Lord still answers prayer.
However, many people do make the assumption that the Lord answers every prayer including the ones that’s not His will.
1 John 5:14-15 qualifies the kind of prayer that the Lord will answer.
1 John 5:14-15 (NKJV) “Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we have asked of Him.”
Even when we pray, crafting His Word, yet, the ultimate conclusion is that the Lord is sovereign.
We have to address this. There are times when we’re fervent in our prayers.
We’re very emotional in our prayers and we equate this with an assurance that the Lord will answer our request.
Then for whatever reason, the prayer isn’t answered.
Why?
What happened?
If sin is in our lives, we know what happened.
James 4:1-7
"Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?
You lust and do not have.
You murder and covet and cannot obtain.
You fight and war. Yet you do not have because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.
Adulterers and adulteresses!
Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God?
Whoever therefore wants to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you think that the Scripture says in vain, "The Spirit who dwells in us yearns jealously"?
But He gives more grace. Therefore He says:
"God resists the proud,
But gives grace to the humble."
Therefore submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you."
And....
Psalms 66:18-20
"If I regard iniquity in my heart,
The Lord will not hear.
But certainly God has heard me;
He has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Blessed be God,
Who has not turned away my prayer,
Nor His mercy from me!"
And....Proverbs 28:9
"One who turns away his ear from hearing the law,
Even his prayer is an abomination."
Lack of faith, doubt, and unbelief are critical acts on our part that's also a factor.
Mark 11:22-26
"So Jesus answered and said to them, "Have faith in God. For assuredly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, 'Be removed and be cast into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that those things he says will be done, he will have whatever he says. Therefore I say to you, whatever things you ask when you pray, believe that you receive them, and you will have them.
And unforgiveness will stop our prayers from being answered.
"And whenever you stand praying, if you have anything against anyone, forgive him, that your Father in heaven may also forgive you your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your trespasses."
And Psalms 84:11-12
"For the LORD God is a sun and shield;
The LORD will give grace and glory;
No good thing will He withhold
From those who walk uprightly.
O LORD of hosts,
Blessed is the man who trusts in You!"
Are you walking uprightly? Be very honest with yourself.
Other than that, if you're righteous in Christ, and you've received no answer, we don’t know what happened.
Did God fail in honoring His Word?
We all know that the Lord never fails.
Then what happened?
We don’t know, except that the Lord knows everything. Remember. He’s omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent.
The “unknown factor” is always present.
The thing that we do when we don’t get what we’ve asked for. Even when we ask in faith, believing, there’s always the “unknown factor.”
Job had this situation. Remember. The Lord said to satan that Job is “blameless and upright. One that fears God and shuns evil.”
Job didn’t sin with his lips. When we look at the entire story of Job, we see that he was growing weary.
First, his possessions were taken, along with his family. Then sickness came. His friends sat there and had already prejudged that for all of these things to happen, there’s no question that Job sinned against God.
This is the common approach with most people when trouble comes.
But the Lord sees everything. The Lord knows the hearts.
We must consider that we don’t have the absolute correct reason why calamity happens unless we’re absolutely confident that the actions of a person resulted in their calamity.
There’s plenty of Scriptures that tell us about the acts of the wicked brings upon them calamity.
But the righteous also suffer affliction.
Psalms 34:15-19 (NKJV) “The eyes of the LORD are on the righteous,
And His ears are open to their cry.
The face of the LORD is against those who do evil,
To cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.
The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears,
And delivers them out of all their troubles.
The LORD is near to those who have a broken heart,
And saves such as have a contrite spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous,
But the LORD delivers him out of them all."
The Lord will be us in the time of trouble.
Psalms 27:5
"For in the time of trouble
He shall hide me in His pavilion;
In the secret place of His tabernacle
He shall hide me;
He shall set me high upon a rock."
Job, as a righteous man suffered affliction, but in the end, the Lord restored twice as much.
Job 42:9-10 (NKJV) “So Eliphaz the Temanite and Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite went and did as the LORD commanded them; for the LORD had accepted Job. And the LORD restored Job’s losses when he prayed for his friends. Indeed the LORD gave Job twice as much as he had before.”
As a side note, the three friends of Job failed to see that Job suffered and that Job needed comfort and help through troubled times. Instead, they chose to judge with planks within their eyes (see Matthew 7:1-5).
But when were the things restored to Job?
After Job did what these three friends should have done.
These three friends could have said, “Job. We don’t know why this has happened to you, but we’re going to help you as best as we can, and we’re going to pray for you.”
Many times, I’ve prejudged and got burnt for it. I didn’t do what I’ve should have done.
Either offer my assistance or kept my mouth shut, or both but one thing that we should never do.
When we may experience a time when prayer isn’t answered, that we should never cease to pray.
Luke 18:1-8 (NKJV) “Then He spoke a parable to them, that men always ought to pray and not lose heart, saying: “There was in a certain city a judge who did not fear God nor regard man.
Now there was a widow in that city; and she came to him, saying, ‘Get justice for me from my adversary.’ And he would not for a while; but afterward he said within himself, ‘Though I do not fear God nor regard man, yet because this widow troubles me I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.’”
Then the Lord said, “Hear what the unjust judge said. And shall God not avenge His own elect who cry out day and night to Him, though He bears long with them?
I tell you that He will avenge them speedily.
Nevertheless, when the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?”
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