Answered Prayer: Sermon Notes From Stuart McAlpine

Answered Prayer

Stuart McAlpine

Dearest family,

On Sunday I argued that the lack of our response to asking when it is answered should be as significant a concern to us as our unanswered asking. We need to stop and take stock once in a while. The first thing that should move us, and uncork our gratitude, is how gracious God is in answering us at all, given the inconsistency and infrequency of our asking, or as someone put it,  “the intermittent spasms of our importunity.” Just to realize that our weak asking gets such a strong response, because of the strength of the one asked, not the one asking, should be sufficient to unstop the wells of worship of the character of God.

The more we think about it, the more shocked we should be at the minimal returns from so much answered asking. If our asking is accompanied by thanksgiving anyway, then the lack of it suggests two possible things:

1. There is actually a lot less asking going on than there could be
2. There is a lack of thanksgiving for all the answers received to asking

We are familiar with Jesus’ healing of the ten lepers, only one of whom “came back”. (Lk. 17:11-19) He is described as “praising God in a loud voice.” I am arguing that given the responsiveness of our Father to what we ask of Him, He should be hearing a lot more noise!

The words of Jesus have a disturbing echo: “Was no one found to return…” (Lk. 17:18) If this incident was a rough guide to the return of our responsiveness to the answering response that God returned to us, then we are looking at a 10% return. (Did I say return enough times!) Again, the thought that only one in ten answers may provoke a volley of God-worthy thanksgiving is hard to take and unacceptable. In this case, the non-return of the nine is a bad return on the answer. Speaking of ‘bad returns’, having asked for the answer of forgiveness and received it, let there not be a return of unforgiveness in our hearts towards others, or a return to the confessed sin. Having asked for the answer of deliverance and received it, let us not return to a “yoke of bondage’.Having asked for the answer of guidance and received it, let us not return to a pattern of self-direction. Having asked for the answer of provision and received it, let us not return to any indiscipline that accounted for unnecessary lack. Having asked for the answer of wisdom, let us not return like a fool to his folly. Having asked for a way of escape from ungodly cultural influences and received it, let us not look back like Lot’s wife. These are clearly bad ‘returns’ on good answers.

The return of thanksgiving and praise is what asking has always been about – not the answer per se but the glorifying of God.“Call upon me…and I will deliver you and you shall glorify me.” (Ps. 50:15) His glorification trumps my gratification every time. The psalmist’s ‘return’ of praise is the fact that God “has not turned away my prayer or withheld His love from me.” (Ps. 66:20) We might add, “Therefore I will return my thanksgiving because he has not withheld an answer from me!”  Commenting on this psalm, Spurgeon writes: “What a God is he thus to hear the prayers of those who come to him when they have pressing wants, but neglect him when they have received a mercy; who approach him when they are forced to come, but who almost forget to address him when mercies are plentiful and sorrows are few.”  How is it then that we can be so blessed yet so ‘blah’? How is it that we take for granted what God has granted in answering our asking?

One reason for a lack of sustained expressive affection in response to answers is that our asking is often not imbued with expectation that trustingly lives in anticipation of what God is going to do when we ask. “Petitioning God entails that the petitioner expects an answer.” Sometimes the ‘blah’ begins with our ‘might-as-well’, ‘you-never-know’, ‘can’t-do-any-harm’, and ‘sure-hope-it-gets-through’ kind of asking. How different this is when compared to Solomon’s conviction that his requests would be “near to the Lord our God day and night that he may uphold the cause of his servant.” (1 Kg. 8:59) I have been taught by those like Thomas Goodwin (1600-1680) whose writings providentially ended up on my reading lists as a younger Christian. He was emphatic about the need, once having asked of God, to look earnestly for the answer, and to discern what was going on while the asking continued or while waiting ensued. “It is not enough to pray, but after you have prayed you have need to listen for an answer that you may receive your prayers. The sermon was not done when yet the preacher is done, because it is not done till practiced.” Even so, our asking is not done until we have considered the answers, even if the answer is ‘no answer’.

The fact that we received an answer speaks volumes to us of the loving, purposeful provision of God, but it will also whisper a lot of affirmations and confirmations that perhaps need to be heeded for future spiritual growth and future asking. Did you hear a dog barking? What dog? The asking for deliverance by the enslaved Israelites was raw and raucous: “the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help…went up to God.” (Ex. 2:23) They are asking to get out of there, and they do not care how, but there are so many exquisite details in God’s answer that served to ‘quietly’ underline his power. On the night of the Exodus, who could forget “the loud wailing in Egypt”? (Ex. 11:30) But imagine a conversation a few years into the wilderness journey between Zak and Zeb:

“Hey Zeb, do you remember that night?” 
“Are you kidding me, Zak? My ears are still ringing with the noise!” 
“You know what’s weird Zeb? It’s not the noise I remember but the silence. Do you remember that antsy dog of mine, Nimrod? He never made a single whining, whimpering sound all night. What do you make of that?” 

The text tells us what they were meant to make of that, if they “observed” the full answer. “This is what the Lord says…among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.” But why? “Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Israel and Egypt.” Through the dog’s silence, God speaks loudly about himself. The answer to their asking that was their massive national deliverance included these details, that if considered, conveyed awesome revelations about the power of God in this world, but also about how he feels about what opposes his purposes. Do you not think that Zak and Zeb, having considered how God answered their asking on that Exodus night, would want to be sure that they always stayed on the right side of God’s affections?

The point is that God’s answers, when “observed”, yield so many instructional encouragements, and sometimes, whimsical clues about who He is and how He feels about things, and about what is yet possible if these answers are stewarded well. It is understandable that given the relief of the answer, we are now ready to move ahead where we were once stymied, take care of what was on hold, renew our engagement with what was in limbo. Like the nine lepers, it is the most natural thing to get right on with our lives, now that the brake of our unanswered needs, which did everything from slowing us down to bringing us to a full stop, has made way for the accelerator of answered provision. But the truth remains that “You lose much of your comfort in blessings when you do not observe answers to your prayers.” (Thomas Goodwin) Is there any chance we can improve on the lepers’ 10% return? Do bad returns or good ones characterize your responses to God’s answers to your asking? We got what we asked for. Did He get what He was asking for?

Pastorally yours
Stuart

Asking In Jesus Name: Sermon Notes From Stuart McAlpine

Asking in the Name of Jesus

Stuart McAlpine

Dearest family,

Herewith is the summary I gave at the end of Sunday’s message, giving a top-ten list of some things that are operative when we “ask in the name of Jesus”:

1. Association: We are identifying ourselves with Jesus as the Son of the Father, and accepting our identity as sons and daughters of the Father. We are not outsiders but family. Jesus has put his name upon us. “To pray in Jesus’ Name means to be freed from ourselves…Praying in Jesus’ name we are set free in our inner selves to take on our identity in Jesus as the Son of God.” (Don Carson)We share a common cause in our asking. We are invited to ask on His account, and, as it were, draw on his account. He is asking us to ask for him, on his behalf as it were. To ask in his name is to ask for Him, and not for ourselves. Our name is not on it. So close is this association, it is as if the asker were Jesus himself, and as askers, we cannot but be lovingly welcomed as Jesus is loved. It is as if we have Jesus’ asking-nature in us. If we have Christ’s mind we will ask what he would ask for. Is this not what he said in His own great asking prayer in John 17? He asked that the world would know that the Father loved his disciples “as you love me.” It should also be said that this association is more than just ‘dwelling’ with Him. He ‘indwells’ us so that His very spirit is within us, expressing our asking to the Father.


2. Access: We have access to the Father by the blood of Jesus. We have access in His name. Without this access we are left with our own independence. Where there is no dependence there is no asking.


3. Approach: Because Jesus is the great high priest who has gone before us, we not only have access, but we have the invitation and authority to boldly approach the throne of grace itself. To get into the White House is one thing, but to get into the Oval Office is quite another. It is one thing to have the code to get into a place where we have no personal authority or leverage, and another to be able to walk the corridors to the very inner chambers of the operation. The name of Jesus is our security pass and assures us of both access and approach. You cannot be given access but denied approach. We are all in the inner circle of His love and power when it comes to our asking in Jesus’ name.


4. Acceptance: We know that the only ground of our acceptance is “in the Beloved.” (Ephs.1:6) The acceptance of our asking is not assured by the legitimacy of our needs or requests, or even the sincerity of our affections. Because we are in the beloved, we ask in the beloved’s name.


5. Assurance: It is because of who Jesus is, that his name is the confident calling card for all our asking. There is no confidence in our own name, or in the reasonableness and righteousness of our petitions. We have no leverage of ourselves. We have no persuasive credentials or communications in which we can be assured. As John put it so clearly to his readers (1 Jn. 5:13-15), our assurance is believing “in the name of the son of God” and in asking “according to his will.” It is this knowledgethat assures us, and that now produces the assured “confidence we have in approaching God” assured that He hears us and will answer us. Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine, and He has set His name upon me, so when I ask, it is by His name that I am known as an asker. Is it any wonder that in a timeless treatise on assurance published in 1654, that Thomas Brooks would conclude: “Usually the most praying souls are the most assured souls.”  Our assurance in His name persuades us to ask, and as we do so, our asking becomes “an inlet to assurance.” Assurance is both the premise and the product of our asking in Jesus’ Name.


6. Appropriateness: Obviously if Jesus’ name is on it we cannot be asking for something that is not in keeping with who he is. This is a sanctifying effect on our requests.


7. Agreement: Foundational to the agreement that invites us to ask in his name, is our agreement with everything that Jesus says about himself, and everything scripture reveals about him, in which we fully believe. We also live in agreement with his commands and obediently love him. His name is inseparable from his will so to ask in his name is to ask in agreement with his will and his word. It is only possible to ask for the same things that Jesus would ask for. We cannot make a claim for anything that Jesus would not claim. The nature of what we ask for will conform to Jesus’ nature. Our need for ourselves, or anyone else, will be His need. Asking in his name will be in agreement with his purpose and his passions. Asking “in his name” will always be “for His sake.” When we ask, in agreement with Jesus, according to the Father’s will in heaven, then we draw on an unquantifiable resource that is more than sufficient for any and every possible thing we could ever ask for.


8. Authority: There is authority in Jesus’ name recognized by angels as well as demons. Jesus has authorized us to be his representatives, so we have assurance that we will be recognized by the Father as those who are therefore authorized ask-ers and agents of that authority.


9. Audacity: Although this has become a pejorative term it actually has to do with boldness. Asking in the name of Jesus gives us the same boldness that Jesus himself has, given confidence in the Father, and assurance about the will and the word of God. This is the asking that precisely because it acknowledges personal limitation, has the courage to go to the limit, to ask all the way, realizing that God invites us to test Him, though he is not thereby tested!


10. Approval: To ask in Jesus’ name is to have approval for what we request. I love that statement of Jesus in Jn. 6:27, talking of himself: “On him God has placed his seal of approval.” Jesus is approved of God, so his name carries that approval. But also, we seek his approval in our asking, looking for his “Amen” not just ours. We also need to know that what we ask for meets with his approval. We can only endorse our asking with his name if it is consistent with the character of that name.“Prayers in his name are prayers that are offered in thorough accord with all that his name stands for.” (J.N.Sanders) So important is this hallowed and reverential  relationship between the character of his name and the content of our asking, that John Calvin’s conviction was that to by-pass his name was tantamount to “a profanation of God’s name.” We cannot ask Jesus to “pass on” through his intercession anything that does not accord with his name.

It’s about association; access; approach; acceptance; assurance; appropriateness; agreement; authority; audacity and approval. It’s all about who Jesus is, what he desires, and especially what he asks for us that he wants us to ask for too. We cannot ask in our own name any more than we can do anything spiritual in our own name.

We are agreed then that to ask in Jesus’ name is not to use a magic mantra. In both Jewish and Roman tradition there were magicians who used to use names of deities (secret names of God in the case of Jewish charlatans) to invoke the power for magic. We see an example of this in Acts 19 where Jews, including the seven sons of Sceva “tried to invoke the name of the Lord Jesus over those who were demon-possessed.” (19:13) Talking of Roman practices at the time of Jesus, their prayers were often said in the name of any number of gods, in the desperate hope that one of them might come up trumps! How wonderful that we ask confidently in only one name, because “there is no other name”!  We are also agreed that to ask in His name is not to use a rubber stamp. Because the name of God represents the sum of His character and nature, when we ask in Jesus’ name, it is not just a vague slogan, to endorse vague and generalized non-specific prayers. We can be very specific about the very specific characteristics of Jesus that are summed up in that name, that we are asking to be applied to the very specific situation that we are asking about. (Any phrase stand out there?) Here’s to more specific asking in Jesus’ name!

Inquiringly yours,
Stuart