Mining Grace

We move now to the fourth method by which God answers prayer. As I said last post, the first two of five methods are the primary ways in which God answers prayer. These two are:

1. By answering a prayer as we pray it
2. By answering a prayer by giving something of equal or greater value to that for which we pray

The next three methods are in actuality subcategories of these first two but are still important enough to mention as separate methods. Last week, we covered method three saying that God will often delay a prayer in order to grow our faith, increase our patience, further our love for God himself, or increase our appreciation for the thing for which we pray. This week, we cover the fourth method by which God answers prayer.

Sometimes God will answer the end of our prayer without answering the means for which we pray.

In most prayer requests we pray for the means and an end. For example, “God would you heal Joe so that he would be returned to service in his church and home.” The means is this prayer is Joe’s healing. The end is being of service to church and family. Many a time God will answer the end without answering the means.

Before we get to biblical examples of this, it is important to note that this type of answer is usually the hardest to discern. My experience in prayer meetings and in my own prayers is that we often only pray for the method and neglect praying for the end. So often the sum of our prayers are, “Dear God, Heal so-and-so”, without saying or even thinking why we would want them healed. Certainly we imply the end but often don’t pray it or consciously think it. It is therefore especially bewildering to us when God doesn’t seem to answer our prayer when in fact he is giving the end without giving the means. He may be making Joe to be of service to his church and family by not healing him but instead keeping him ill.

Here are some examples from Scripture of granted ends and denied means.

1. Gideon and his 300 men (Judges 7). Gideon knew what he had to do. He had to defeat the Midianites. He knew the apparent means: a large army. So he gathered together 32,000 men and marched on the camp of Midian. God comes to Gideon to inform him that he cannot give Gideon a victory with this many men. So God commands that any Israelite soldier who was afraid could go home. That sends two-thirds of Gideon’s army packing. With 10,000 left, there were still too many men. So God picked 300 men according to how they drank water from a stream. Gideon then lead those 300 men against the Midianites and saw God give them victory. God gave them the end that they desired but chose a method that would bring himself the most amount of glory.
2. Naaman the Syrian (2 Kings 5:1-14). Naaman was a highly decorated commander in the Syrian army. However, Naaman had a big problem, he was a leper. A Jewish servant in Syria tells Naaman of someone who can cure him, a prophet in Israel. Naaman, eager for healing, goes to Elisha with the blessing of the king of Syrian and the king of Israel. He arrives at the prophets gate. A servant meets him and tells him to go wash seven times in the Jordan River for healing from his leprosy. At the servants instructions, Naaman is immediately enraged. We pause here to consider Naaman’s response. Why was he so angry? We find our answer in his words. Naaman expected that the means of his healing would be at least the courtesy of seeing the prophet face to face and certainly some ritual display of religiosity. And the Jordan river? There were plenty of better rivers in Syria. At a servants request, Naaman obeys and his healed, not only of his leprosy but of his pride. Naaman’s end was met but not by the means he expected. God chose different means to bring himself more glory.
3. The resurrection of Lazarus (John 11:1-44). Lazarus, Mary, and Martha were good friends of Jesus. Jesus would frequent their house on his trips through Bethany. This leads to some puzzlement over Jesus’ response when he hears of Lazarus’ serious illness. Instead of going to ill Lazarus and his anxiety ridden sisters, he waits until Lazarus is dead. He then goes to Bethany. In his conversation with Martha as well as his prayer before the tomb, we cannot help but see that Jesus had a much more glorious method for healing Lazarus. Jesus wanted the people, in the resurrection of Lazarus, to know that God had sent Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God. Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead and we see again that the end was granted, the healing of Lazarus, but by a method much different than anyone expected.
4. The request of a mother (Matthew 20:20-28). James and John, sons of thunder, had a good mom. She did not hesitate to seize any opportunity to ensure the prosperity of her boys. So when she discerned that Jesus was going to establish a kingdom she came to him requesting the top spots in this new administration for her boys. Jesus’ response was along the lines of, “You have no idea what you are asking. If you knew the suffering that was ahead for your children, you wouldn’t be asking this.” The mother of James and John as well as the rest of disciples wanted to be near to Jesus and wanted as their end to be servants in his Kingdom. They however had no clue what this kingdom would look like. It was not an earthly kingdom that would come by the sword but rather a spiritual kingdom that would come through death. Jesus granted their request but not by the means they thought. They learned that in this kingdom the first is last and the last is first. They learned that Jesus did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Let’s consider some hypothetical situations.

• You pray for someone’s healing through a successful surgical procedure to the end that God would be glorified and that this person would grow in their faith. God may decide to answer the end of your prayer without using the means for which you pray. God’s greatest glory and the person’s greatest good could come through an unsuccessful surgery, a miraculous healing apart from the surgery, a continued illness, or even death.
• You pray for your children to have good educations, good jobs, and good spouses so that they can be of greatest service to the kingdom of God. God may decide to grant the end, making your children of service to the kingdom of God, but by limiting their intelligence, making them missionaries, giving them a rocky marriage, or giving them the privilege of being martyrs for Christ. God’s ways are not our ways, they are better.

Allow me to offer a few words of encouragement in closing.

1. Pray the means and the end. To help you to discern God’s gracious answers, root all of your prayers in the end goal of God’s glory and the satisfaction of his people in him alone. Don’t try to pigeon hole God’s answers. He is the best judge of what is best and he will see it done. It is certainly not wrong to close a prayer, “Thy will be done.” It is giving the means over to him.
2. See the gospel in this. We would have never thought of the gospel. The weight of sin perplexes us, its putrid tendrils creeping into every corner of our lives. We might think up a number of solutions to the problem of sin and the Fall but none of them would have been as glorious as the gospel revealed in the person of Jesus Christ. God’s ways are the most glorious to himself and the most good for us. I’ll close with a line from the prayer God the All found in The Valley of Vision.

I am well pleased with thy will, whatever it is,
or should be in all respects.
And if thou bidst me decide for myself in any affair,
I would choose to refer all to thee,
for thou art infinitely wise and cannot do amiss,
as I am in danger of doing.
I rejoice to think that all things are at thy disposal,
and it delights me to leave them there.

______

How God Answers Prayer Series:

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3
• Part 4
• Part 5
• Part 6
• Part 7