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[Silence] The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler-Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled "Three Prayer Problem." Let us continue in worship by giving attention to the reading of God's Word

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as it is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, the seventh chapter. I begin the reading at the verse numbered seven. Jesus is speaking. "Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find;

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knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone?

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Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know what good things to give to those who ask you, how much more will your Father, who is in heaven, give good things to those who ask him?" And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his Word.

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Pray with me. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. I would like to share with you the three questions or the three problems concerning prayer

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which have been most often put to me across the 31 years of my ministry. And I would like to suggest to you what Scripture and Christian experience have to say to these questions or problems. The first problem might be phrased in this way. "How can the maker of all that is have any personal concern for me?"

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I remember a businessman who came to me with that interrogative. There was nothing snide or confrontational in his question. He wanted to know how the great God, the maker and sustainer of everything that is, could possibly be interested in the intimacy of conversation with him.

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Now this question is a dangerous question because it appears to honor God while it actually does not. You see, it speaks about the greatness of God. And it is good for us to be reminded of that because there are many today who approach God with a casualness and an irreverence which is almost blasphemy.

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So it is good that his greatness should be noted. But then this question goes on to suggest that God is somewhat like the old woman who lived in the shoe. You remember the lines, "There was an old woman who lived in a shoe. She had so many children she didn't know what to do."

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The suggestion of the question is that God is big enough to have made everything but he is not big enough to care about and be involved in everything. But you see, precisely because God is so great, so magnificent, because his omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence are what they are,

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it's precisely because of these things that he could make all and at the same time be related to all. Let me illustrate it in this way. Suppose that we were to go into a law library and we observe a man come into this library and he is an ignoramus. If he is asked to describe what he has seen, he will say there are simply long rows or stacks of books.

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He will say that and nothing more. Now let's suppose that a first-year law student comes into the library. If we ask him what he sees, he will probably recognize the names of some of the authors, the titles of some of the books, and certainly the sections and the divisions of the library.

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But now let us suppose that the master jurist, the one who has collected all these books, the one whose library this is, enters the room. If we ask him about the books, he will tell us about each and every one, why he has added it to his collection, what it has to say individually,

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and how it relates to other books on the shelves. His fingers will have moved across the pages of every volume. His pen underlined the sections that he wanted especially to remember. You see, the more perfect one's knowledge is, the more detailed it is.

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To suggest then that God is so great that he cannot have anything to do with individuals is not to exalt God, but to make him too small. Jesus put the point in this way. The very hairs of your head are numbered.

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Now I've had the experience, and I'm sure you have too, of going to visit some parents, and they bring out the scrapbooks that they have been building on their children, and almost invariably you will find in those scrapbooks a little plastic envelope, and in that will be some cuttings of their little boy's hair from the first time he had his hair cut,

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and perhaps a few golden locks from their little girl when her hair was still golden yellow. They keep this hair because it speaks to them of these that they love. In just the same way, Jesus says to us that God knows the very number of the hairs on our heads. And he is saying by that that he cares so much for us, and he is so magnificent in his omniscience

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that he can enter into that kind of intimate personal knowledge with each one of us. Now medical science tells us that the average person loses 60 hairs every day. So only the infinite could possibly master the mathematics of what I'm suggesting. But it's precisely because God is who he is, as great as he is,

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that he can be at the same time the sustainer of everything and the imminent communicator with only one. And I think the knowledge of this blesses our souls. Now the second problem that I have heard most often is this. If God knows all things, if he is aware of our needs, why is it necessary for us to pray?

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I think of a youngster in college, a young girl, who had just become a Christian. And she was seeking to learn more of God through the study of Scripture, and she came to Matthew 6 where Jesus says, "And when you pray, do not heap up for yourselves vain repetitions,

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for your Father knows what things you have need of even before you ask him." And when this young lady read these words, she said, "Well, if God already knows what we need, then why is it necessary for us to pray at all?" Well, there are several things to be noted here.

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The first one is this. God never forces himself upon us. Love respects freedom, and perfect love respects freedom perfectly. God never jams anything down our throats. Even though he knows our needs, he waits for us to invite him to meet those needs.

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You've had the experience of being helped by someone who's so aggressive in their helping that you feel your life is being manipulated or dominated by them. That never happens with God. He knows our needs, but he waits until we know them and seek his blessing

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before entering into our lives to give us what we most need. But here's a second thing to notice. Since God does know all of our needs, that means that nothing that we ask him can ever come as a surprise to him. We're never going to get a mimeographed letter from God which says,

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"I'm sorry, that item is out of stock and we have back-ordered it." Jesus says when we pray, it is not necessary for us to heap up piles of words. Why? Because God knows. No ostentation in prayer is necessary because God understands our needs. Nothing that we ask him, is he unprepared for.

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Nothing that we come to him about, is he unwilling or unready or unknowing enough to not be able to answer us. It's more wonderful than both of these truths. If God knows all that we need and listens to our prayers still, that means that nothing that we can say to God will change his mind about us.

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If he loves us so intimately that he knows the number of hairs on our heads and still draws near to us, if he knows us so intimately that he knows all of our thoughts and our needs even before we express them, and still draws near to us in the intimate communication which prayer is, then we can say that there is nothing we can say to God that is going to lead God to reject us.

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There is no sin we can confess from which God is going to recoil with horror. There is no word that we can utter that is going to cause him to raise his eyebrows in astonishment. There is no request with which we can come that will lead him to throw up his hands in despair. You see, regardless of what we come to God with, no matter how deep the hurt or ugly the sin or profound our wrongness,

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God, because he knows us so intimately, our very bodies as well as our spirits, God always says to us, "I know. I know. I know all about it. I understand." And when you grasp that, then that opens the door for you to be completely honest with God.

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You know, most of us are not completely honest with anyone. Most of us are not completely honest with our children, with our parents, with our friends, with our ministers or our priests, with our working associates, even with our husbands and wives. Most of us are unwilling to be utterly naked inside and outside with anyone.

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But we can be that way with God because God already knows us inside and outside. There is no reason for pretense because he always grants us the knowledge of knowing every dimension of our being. And so we can say that God will never force his will upon us because he already knows our needs and waits for us to ask. God will never be surprised by anything we ask because he knows our needs and is therefore prepared.

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And God will never drive us away because he knows our needs and is ready to say, "I understand." And when you grasp those truths, that doesn't push you away from prayer. That pulls you into prayer. And there is great blessing in this for the soul.

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The third problem or the third question about prayer that I have heard most across the years and this one far more than any other is this. I pray and my prayers are not answered. Why is this so? I think for example of a man named Stephen Harcourt.

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Stephen and his young wife had three sons. His young wife died and Stephen raised his three boys alone. Now Stephen was a deeply committed Christian. And the greatest desire of his life was that his three sons would come to know Christ as their Savior and their Lord.

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And he sought to witness to them in every way that he could possibly imagine. But his sons did not come to Christ. And then Stephen discovered that he had cancer. He prayed to be healed but the rapid progress of the disease made it evident that he would not be healed.

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And so he began to pray another prayer. He began to pray, "Oh God, if I must die, then at least let me die in such a way that my calmness and my peace and my confidence in you will be a witness to my sons." "And that out of my death they will find their way to you." And Stephen Harcourt died a hideous and agonizing death.

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He died in pain of body and of mind. He died literally screaming. And when you encounter something like this, you want to look toward heaven and say through clenched teeth, "I pray and my prayers are often not answered. Why is this so?"

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Well, the Bible says that sometimes our prayers are unanswered because our prayers are prayed by godless hearts. The psalmist says that those who are not righteous will not be heard by God. And yet that could certainly not have been the difficulty with Stephen Harcourt because here was a man who loved God with all of his heart. His whole life was devoted to his Savior.

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The scriptures say that some prayers are unanswered because they are selfish or stupid prayers. Some people pray very unsophisticated prayers. And that's the reason their prayers are not answered. You remember what James says, "Ye ask and ye receive not because ye ask amiss."

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God is ready to give good gifts. And if we come to him with a request for something which is not really good, whether we know it or not, he will not answer that prayer. But that certainly doesn't speak to Stephen Harcourt's situation. What could be a better prayer than for a father to be praying that his three sons would come to Christ as Lord?

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Now, the Bible says that some people have their prayers go unanswered because they are not persistent in their praying. They're like children on Halloween who run up and ring God's doorbell and then run away before he has a chance to answer. The Bible records for us, for example, Christ's parable of the widow who kept knocking on the judge's door till her knuckles were bleeding, but she knocked still until the judge came out and gave her what she sought.

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Now, why did Jesus tell that parable? Well, if you look in Luke chapter 18, you will find the answer. It reads, "And he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not to lose heart." Jesus was calling people to tenacity in prayer.

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But again, this doesn't speak to the situation of Stephen Harcourt. He had been praying for the salvation of his sons from the very days on which they were born. Those prayers were the center of his devotional life. This wasn't any casual thought which one day came to his mind and he hurled toward heaven.

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This was the great desire of his life. The Bible goes on to say that most often our prayers are unanswered because our faith is in faith and not in God. Many times we pray believing that God will answer our prayers. We measure whether God answers our prayers by whether he does exactly what we've asked him and expect him to do.

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We score as successful prayers only those prayers to which God acted in a way which matches our requests. The scriptures say, and I read it in your hearings a few minutes ago, "Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent?

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If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more will your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him?" You see, what we seek is oft times not the very best. The prayers that we pray are oft times not the prayers that ought to be prayed.

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We may not know that this is so, but it is still true. If a prayer that we pray is answered, we assume that our faith has led God to do what we have asked him to do. In other words, we have faith in our faith. Our prayers become a kind of magic utterance which we whispered to God, and in response to it, precisely what we asked for occurred.

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But you see, most times it doesn't happen like that. God gives us the best, whether the best is what we ask for or not. Unanswered prayers for Christians are most often not unanswered. They are just not answered in the way expected.

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When Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, "Take this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done," he wasn't erecting some psychological hedge to protect his theology in case the prayer wasn't answered. Not at all. Jesus was saying that the Creator knows much more than the created. And therefore, the answer that God gives will often be different but always be better than the answer which was sought.

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And this brings us back to Stephen Harcourt. You remember I said that his great desire was for his three sons to come to Christ, and how he worked all of his life to gain that goal, and how he got cancer and was dying from it, and then prayed that he would be given a death so beautiful with the peace of God that his sons would see it and be one.

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And then I told you of how he died screaming in agony. But I haven't told you the end of the story. Within a minute after Stephen Harcourt died, his oldest son said, "If our Father, being the splendid Christian man that he was, found death to be so awesome, how will it go for us?"

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And the other two brothers, hearing that question, joined their older brother, and they knelt down by the side of the bed of their deceased father, and on that spot, at that very moment, they gave themselves to Christ. They were accepted of Christ, and they have persevered in the faith.

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Stephen Harcourt probably thought, as he lay dying, that his prayer was not answered. But God was moving in his mysterious way to use that death so that Stephen's sons would become his own. My friends, I have prayed that God would take pride out of my life. And God said, "No. I cannot take your pride. You must give it up."

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I have prayed to God that the crippled might be made whole. And God said, "No. The spirit is already whole, and the body is only temporary." I have prayed to God for patience, and God has said, "No." Because patience is the byproduct of tribulation.

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"It is not something I can give," he said. "It is something you must earn." I have prayed to God for happiness, and he said, "No. I will give you blessings. But whether you will make them into happiness or not is for you to decide." I have prayed to God that I might be spared pain, and God has said, "No."

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Because suffering separates people from the world and draws them closer to him. And so I have prayed to God, "Teach me to pray and to live in accord with your wisdom and your love." And God said, "Aha. At last, you are getting the idea." God loves each of us intimately and personally.

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Only a God great enough to make everything could love each of us as if there were only one of us to love. God never violates our freedom, is never surprised by anything that we ask, and never turns away from what he discovers in our lives. He says, "I understand," because he knows the things we need before we pray for them.

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And God's answers to our prayers are always the best answers. If we, being evil, know how to give good gifts, how much more does our Heavenly Father give good things to those who ask him? And how the knowledge and the certainty of this blesses the soul.

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Pray with me. O God, our Father, teach us to pray. Teach us to discern the answers you give to our prayers. And out of this knowledge of what to pray, and this experience of thy goodness,

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may we find the joy which soothes and sweetens our souls. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]