Benjamin M Palmer
Here we meet another objection, which professes to be founded on experience and is the product of feeling rather than of reason. Though shallow in itself, yet because it is popular in its form, it is wider in its reach and more tenacious in its grasp than some others. It may be stated thus: In the very instances where we might have anticipated that God would interpose, we are often disappointed; this leaves us with the alternative: either God was unrighteous in His denial, or His providence did not cover the case and the prayer was unwarranted.
This dilemma is most apt to be suggested in times of bitter disappointment and grief. A gifted young lawyer once said to the writer, at a time of a public disaster: “I used to believe in a great many things, but now I am drifting into universal scepticism. I used to believe in human progress, but now history seems to move in a narrow circle; and Solomon was about right when he wrote, ‘The thing that hath been is the thing that shall be’. I used to believe in civilisation, but now culture seems only to make a man a more cunning savage, the velvet paw only concealing the tiger’s claw. I used to believe in providence, which, as my pious mother taught me, upholds and governs all things; now I am not certain there is a God.”
What answer could be returned to this wail of despair but this: “My friend, you and I are the last persons who can afford to do without God, for we particularly need Him just now”? The incident is recited in this connection as showing how the irritated heart is prone to fly out against God and His providential dispensations in times of great distress and anguish. It is this that makes the present objection so fraught with danger to those who, in this tempestuous life, are brought to the wreck of all their hopes. It will be the aim of this chapter to unmask the fallacies which lurk within it.
There are three directions in which we are liable to err in considering unanswered prayer: we may err in judgement, supposing that we are asking for what is right, which the outcome may show to be otherwise; or we may be at fault in the spirit and temper of the prayer, and this failure in the fundamental condition of true prayer explains the outcome; or we may sadly misconstrue the whole providence of God in relation to the answer which was expected. The fallacy is to be sought in one or other of these three directions: in the matter of the prayer, or its manner, or in the response to it. Let us examine and see.
1. We may err in assuming that the request is intrinsically right, justifying a confident appeal to God’s integrity.
The objector urges that his prayer in a particular case should have been heard, and that for God to withhold a favourable answer proves either that He was unjust, or else that His providence did not rule in the situation. The assumption here, on which the reasoning turns, is that God was under obligation to grant that special request.
Now there are two classes of objects which may be covered in prayer. The first embraces all things about which God’s will is clearly known. In this nothing remains but to believe the promise and to pray in constant expectation of the answer. Thus believers pray for their daily bread, by which they are nourished; and thus they should pray for sanctifying grace, whereby they are “filled with the fruits of righteousness”. God may see fit to delay the answer even to these prayers, which are definitely prescribed; or He may answer them by methods so unexpected that we shall fail to trace their connection with our petitions. Nevertheless, the duty is simply to believe and pray and wait until the response is given. In this case there can be no doubt as to the matter of the prayer, that it is for things agreeable to God’s will. The answer must come in the time and way determined by infinite wisdom; “for the vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak, and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; for it will surely come, it will not tarry”.
But there are other things, falling into the second class, in regard to which the will of God is not known beforehand; they are perfectly certain as to God, but uncertain as to man, to whom the disclosure comes only through the outcome. Here the prayer is to be offered with entire submission to the sovereign pleasure of Him who will give or withhold at His discretion. Where the will of God is not revealed, how is the objector to know that He is bound in righteousness to grant a favourable answer? Until this knowledge is absolute, the alternative which the objector presents does not exhaust all the possibilities in the case. There is the disagreeable, but very probable, supposition that he desired what he ought not to have, and which nothing can explain but his own ignorance of the fact.
Therefore God in His righteousness, so confidently invoked, is compelled to refuse the petitions. When the plea comes to be examined, it amounts only to a presumption, more or less strong, but insufficient to justify so bold a claim. It may be thought that the prayer rests on a solid foundation, such as the known perfections of God, or the admitted principles of God’s rule. But what margin there is here for the widest mistakes of interpretation! Who can claim such a knowledge of God’s character as to pronounce infallibly what He is under obligation to do in every case? Who is so versed in the diplomacy of heaven as to detect every principle of God’s administration? Man’s judgement often fails in the earthly sphere, and he must hold all his opinions open to the correction of superior light. In addition to this peril, arising from the limitations of his knowledge, how much he is in danger of being warped by his prejudices, and of being seduced by his passions!
Shall such a being – who constantly trips in his earthly walk, and mourns the errors which have made his life here one huge blunder – intrude within the supernatural sphere and interpret the secret of the Most High’s purpose, which He conceals? The objection is therefore illogical, since, with a possible error in the assumption, the alternative presented is not exhaustive. The fatal flaw in the reasoning, which makes inferences simply from the silence of God, is that the prayer may be at fault in the very substance of the request.
2. The matter of the prayer may be right, while its spirit may be wrong.
It thus lacks the first element of prayer and is discounted as worthless. Prayer must have its boundary within God’s will. This arises from the supremacy of the Creator and the dependence of the creature. Nothing can be desired by the creature which is not already known to God, and known because it is included within His sovereign will. Nothing can be executed on earth which was not embraced in the purpose of heaven. The prayer then which springs out of a sense of emptiness and need must recognise the provision already made in the divine counsels for its supply. Its first acknowledgment is the sovereignty of that wisdom and goodness upon which it relies for succour. It opens with a filial submission of its wishes to the discretion of One whose office as ruler requires the revision of all requests by His superior wisdom and judgement. Without this submissiveness of spirit, the prayer lacks its fundamental condition. It ceases to be prayer, and degenerates into a wild foray upon God’s prerogatives.
In man’s present sinful estate, the opportunities for mistakes are fearfully multiplied. The prayer may be insolent, dictating to the Almighty rather than supplicating His favour. It may be arrogant, claiming as a right what can only be granted as a privilege. It may be presumptuous – disregarding, like Cain, the appointed way of approach to the mercy seat. It may be intensely selfish, having regard only to the creature’s advantage rather than the honour of Him who is supreme. It may rob God of all discretion in the time and mode of the answer. In these and other conceivable ways, the spirit of true prayer may be lacking – as shown by the resentment which flaunts its defiance against God in the very objection now before us. Thus, while in substance the petition is proper, the fault in its temper causes it to be disallowed. And in this rejection God’s jurisdiction is as clearly vindicated as in the quickest response which could be given.
As previously shown, prayer is the condition that goes before the answer – rather than a producing cause in which the human will blends with the divine, and man’s fitness to receive the promised blessing is indicated. Thus the absence of the necessary condition, of submission to God’s will, rests the denial of the prayer on the very justice of God that the objection assails. There was really no prayer, in any true sense, to be answered at all. Thus again the alternative, presented as conclusive against the usefulness of prayer, fails to exhaust the suppositions in the case, and the reasoning is shown to be defective.
3. The prayer may have been unexceptionable, both in its substance and in its spirit, whilst the providence of God may have been misconstrued in relation to the answer.
It is mainly here that human judgement is most likely to err. It will therefore be necessary to specify matters further.
(1.) The answer may be only postponed as a means of moral discipline.
The key to the interpretation of the believer’s earthly life is this: it is a state of discipline. It is rendered so by the intervention of grace, which provides and offers a redemption from the curse and punishment of sin. We are here to be educated for a higher and holier sphere, and each life is ordered, in all its details, to develop and cultivate the virtues which shall fit us for that higher state. Hence the faith which must rest eternal hopes upon the pledge of God’s veracity, without craving the testimony of sense in regard to things unseen. Hence the patience which waits upon God’s will in fulfilling all the promises. Hence too the continuous discipline by which these and co-ordinate graces are brought to their fullness of growth and ripeness of fruit. We cannot perhaps appreciate the wisdom of this moral training, the more beneficial in proportion to its severity, until we reach the results in the world of reward. It will be the peculiar happiness of the redeemed that the whole of life’s painful experience will be poured into song before the throne.
The infirmity of our nature, however, betrays itself in the haste with which we misjudge the dealings of God with us. We say God does not hear when, in His higher wisdom, the answer is only delayed to adorn us with the graces of humility, patience and hope. It should not be forgotten too that the Lord is under obligation to Himself as well as to His creatures. He must vindicate His sovereignty in the fulfilment of His pledges. It is astonishing that God should seem to fetter His own movement by oath or promise of any sort; but the more He binds Himself, the more necessary it becomes to illustrate His perfect freedom. Not only was He sovereign in the first disclosure of grace to the sinner, but in the outworking of that grace in the after experience there must be the current assertion of a supreme will which the creature shall reverently recognise and obey.
Thus while the promise which is given may be absolute, there is a reservation as to the time and mode of fulfilment – which is a fresh reminder of the subject’s dependence upon the will of his King. The methods also by which prayer is finally answered come as so many surprises, bringing the creature to a fresh persuasion and acknowledgment of God’s supremacy. The delay of the answer, so necessary to Jehovah vindicating Himself, becomes thus an important factor in our religious training. Yet such a delay is rashly assumed, in the objection before us, as the basis of the charge that prayer is unwarranted and unprofitable.
(2.) The present denial may be ordered to secure the answer which is desired.
It is not well to be at cross-purposes with God, in the intricacies of God’s complex providence. It may be His will to confer the benefit we ask, but the jewel must have its own setting. In the impatience of desire, it may be sought when the providential arrangement for others requires to be disentangled from this before the petition can be granted.
Take a concrete illustration from a case within the writer’s knowledge. An anxious mother wept with bitter tears on finding all the rooms in a certain steamer booked, so that she was detained a fortnight in the city of New York after a summer’s absence from her distant home. But the sorrow was turned into thanksgiving when, within a few days, she learned that this vessel was buried in the depths of the treacherous ocean. Earnest was her desire to look upon the faces of the children at home, and keen was the disappointment of that unexpected delay. The prayer was denied, only that it might be answered; and to this end, she must first be separated from those who were to be drowned. This typical case, better than any reasoning, will set forth the principle announced above. God takes care of His own, through easy and natural combinations in His providence, and it is often recognised as an answer to prayer, only when it is set over against a previous denial.
A larger instance is furnished in the history of ancient Israel. The promise made to Abraham slumbered for 400 years before it was redeemed in the deliverance from Egyptian bondage. They were brought out under a distinct promise of being led into the land of Canaan. Yet they must first experience 40 years of wandering. Did this delay forfeit God’s pledge given of old to the patriarchs? No, it was only thus it could be redeemed at all. The foolish generation which came out of Egypt was unfit to enter the “land flowing with milk and honey”. They could not grapple with the sons of Anak, for the mere report of their size filled them with cowardly fear. Those children of bondage were not the race to found an empire and rule its destiny. Hence the promise assured in the covenant could only be fulfilled through a generation reared under the discipline of the desert. The denial of many a fervent prayer came before its final answer. Thus a thousand times in the history of the Church, the march to victory and triumph is through defeat. How then shall the flippant argument stand, that God’s present silence is of necessity the denial of His people’s prayer?
(3.) God may answer prayer, not in form but in substance, by substituting higher blessings than those asked for.
In such cases the answer reaches the petitioner in disguise, as it were. While he is looking for it in a certain shape, lo, it comes in another form and from another side. He may trace the hand of a Father in bestowing it; but he does not discover the exchange involved in the gift, because he does not see the connection with his prayer as accepted before God. Yet the moment the disclosure is made, a fervent gratitude recognises that divine love has exceeded the desire in bestowing what an instructed heart would surely have preferred.
Thus David, in response to God’s gracious covenant with him, exclaims, “This was yet a small thing in Thy sight, O Lord God; but Thou hast spoken also of Thy servant’s house for a great while to come” (2 Sam 7:19). In like manner God gave Solomon not only the “wisdom and knowledge” for which he prayed, but also “riches, and wealth, and honour, such as none of the kings have had . . . before” him (2 Chr 1:12). In the New Testament, Paul sets forth this principle in the grand doxology with which he closes his prayer for the Ephesian Christians: “Now unto Him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think” (Eph 3:20). It would be easy to furnish familiar instances of this in the experience of the pious. A mother bends over her sick babe and, with the instinct of motherly affection, prays fervently for its recovery. But if the conviction should lodge in her heart that its early removal may be the fixed condition of its eternal salvation, her prayer finds its answer in the higher blessing which swallows up the lower. In view of this she becomes more than reconciled to her bereavement.
Thus we see the difficulty of interpreting divine providence, especially when we are in the swell of the current. Until we shall have power to look through the entire scheme in all its details, we cannot assume the failure of any prayer offered with faith in God’s goodness and power. The reasoning then from occasional disappointment, in tracing the answer to prayer, falls to the ground as faulty.
1Benjamin M Palmer (1818-1902) had a long ministry in New Orleans. This is a chapter, edited, from his Theology of Prayer. It deals with the third of four objections he refutes.