This is my last correspondence on the subject.
In my continuing search for a reason why we continue to claim to believe prayer works, while not receiving responses to our prayers, especially for the sick I have looked to "Praying: Finding Our Way Through Duty to Delight" by J. I. Packer & Carolyn Nystrom.
They write:
For the church at Ephesus, Paul prays: Ephesians 3:16-19. For the church at Colossae he prays: Colossians 1:9-12, for the church at Philippi he prays: Philippians 1:9-11 and for the church at Thessalonica he prays: 1 Thessalonians 5:23. For the sake of brevity I do not embed the verses.
When Christians echo and elaborate these thoughts in their prayers for each other, they are therefore entitled to expect their prayers to be answered.
Beyond this, however, questions still arise. When we pray for individuals who in one way or another are close to us---family, friends, mentors, leaders, Christian workers at home and abroad whom we support, and so on--- we become specific in asking God to do certain particular things to meet their particular needs. Often that is exactly what the people concerned have asked us to do. But since many of the details of God's plan are unknown to us, when we have told God what we would most like to see happen, some degree of uncertainty must remain as to whether or not we prayed according to his will. What to do then? Two things, first, we should lay before God, as part of our prayer, the reasons why we think that what we ask for is the best thing. Second, we should tell God that if he wills something different we know it will be better, and it is that (rather than the best we could think of) that we really want him to do.
The puritans used to speak rather grandly about using argument in prayer. By this they did not mean pressing God to fall in line with our own desires ("My will be done"); what they meant was telling God why what we have asked for seems to us to be for the best, in light of what we know God's own goals to be (generating good, saving sinners, extending the kingdom and enriching the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, and glorifying himself by so revealing his transcendent triune glory that his rational creatures give him glory by their thanks and praise). Here, now, is a sample Puritan, Stephen Charnock, making the point in his own way:
Our praying . . . should consist of arguments for God's glory and our happiness; not that arguments move God to do that which he is not willing of himself to do for us . . . as though the infinitely wise God needed information, or the infinitely loving God needed persuasion, but it is for strengthening our faith in him. All the prayers in the Scripture you will find to be reasoning with God, not a multitude of words heaped together; and the design of the promises is to furnish us with a strength or reason in this case: Daniel 9:16, "Now according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thy anger and thy fury be turned away from the city Jerusalem." He [Daniel] pleads God's righteousness in his promise of the set time of deliverance; after he had settled his heart in a full belief of the promised of deliverance, he shows God's own words to him. The arguments [in this and all biblical prayers] you will find drawn from the covenant in general, or some promise in particular, or some attribute of God, or the glory of God.
These authors expect prayers to be answered, or at least prayers prayed rightly to be answered as James cautions. Why don't we? And why aren't we curious?
We pray nothing happens. We offer the invitation nothing happens. And, no one wonders why. If we can ever understand the why we just might be closer to understanding why the church Jesus established on Pentecost is shrinking.
No reply is necessary or expected. Neither of us knows what others are thinking.
Thanks, John Jenkins
865-803-8179 cell
Gatlinburg, TN
Email: jrjenki@gmail.com
Website: http://www.greenbriersolutions.com
Blog: http://littlepigeon.blogspot.com/
HOBBITS are Tolkien Minorities
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