In this final section of the Book of Galatians, Paul will return to the theme which has dominated every verse of this book: the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In this passage, Paul will look at the cross and the new creation which is found through the Lord.
Category: devotional
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Excuses why people don’t get baptized
At the end of his ministry, Jesus commanded his disciples to go out into the world and baptize people in the name of the father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:18-20). Baptism is not meant to be an option for the church. It is a command of Christ.
If you’ve never been baptized but consider yourself to be a Christian, I want to encourage you to get baptized.
I’ve heard various excuses throughout the years as to why people haven’t gotten baptized.
I wanted to just address a few of those.
1. IT’S NOT NECESSARY
Yes it is. Jesus commands it.
2. I’M AFRAID OF WATER
The pastor is not throwing you out into the ocean. If it’s a church that does baptism by immersion, the pastor is right there. You’ll be fine.
3. I DON’T WANT TO GET MY HAIR WET.
Wear a swim cap.
4. I’M TOO OLD.
You’re neve too old to be obedient to God,
5. I’M EMBARRASSED.
I can appreciate that. I really can. There might be different reasons why a person would be embarrassed. Maybe you’ve never gotten baptized and you’re at an age where you feel like you should have by this point but never got around to it and now you think you’ll look really silly.
I can appreciate that.
It’s not a good reason to not get baptized but I’m just saying I personally can appreciate that.
In Luke 9:26, Jesus said:
whoever is ashamed of me and of my words, of him will the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in his glory and the glory of the Father and of the holy angels.
If you’re someone who hasn’t been baptized and you do feel embarrassed about that fact, come talk to me. I promise you I’m not going to recoil in disgust that you haven’t done it. The fact that you didn’t do it in the past is something you can’t change. But you can do something about it and get baptized.
Part of the purpose of baptism is that it’s a public proclamation to the world that you identify as a follower of Jesus Christ. If you’ve waited this long and finally do it, people aren’t going to judge you. People will think it’s so great that you’re finally doing it now. You ever see those news stories at graduation time about some like 90 year old who finally is finishing up her college degree? People love those stories.
Don’t let stage fright be a reason to not get baptized. Don’t let pride be a reason to get baptized.
6. GOD HASN’T TOLD ME TO GET BAPTIZED YET.
It’s the devil who’s telling you not to get baptized and to disobey Jesus’ command!
You don’t need a divine prompt to do something that Jesus universally commands of his church.
You have God’s word and that tells you to do it.
7. IT DOESN’T APPLY TO ME.
It applies to all Christians.
Yes, there is the thief on the cross in Luke who’s promised heaven. Yes there are death bed conversions. But that’s not the same as a professing believer who’s simply dragging their feet.
8. I JUST DON’T WANT TO.
Once again, it’s a command of Christ for all Christians.
9. I’LL DO IT NEXT TIME.
Why then and not now?
As Nike used to tell us, just do it.
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The hardest commandment: love your neighbor
Throughout the Bible, there are lots of commands to love people. Why?
Obviously because it’s important. But it’s also interesting that the command keeps coming up.
The fact that it has to be told to us over and over again points to the fact that it’s actually hard for us to do. The Bible doesn’t call us to do things are super simple and which come naturally to us.
There’s no command to love chocolate in the Bible.
Loving people is hard. And part of why it’s hard is because we don’t think it’s hard.
It goes back to how we use the language of the things we love. If we will throw around the word “love” for things we don’t actually even love, then we believe in an idea of love that’s pretty easy.
The Greek language actually had four words for four different types of love. I’m not going to get into all of those this morning, but even to know that fact is interesting. That there are different ideas of love, different types of love.
And we probably all understand that but we only have one word for love. We don’t think it’s hard to love people because we think love is easy.
Real love is hard.
Sometimes when we say “love,” what we really mean is tolerance. Let and let live is not love. That’s easy. Anyone can do that.
We do love our families. That’s usually pretty easy, at least for most of them. They’re our family. But we’re called to love everyone.
Now, that’s easy to do in that aggregate. It’s easy to love humanity as a human race and want what’s best for it. And that’s fine. But that’s also pretty easy because that’s so big and broad that we can also still get away without having that really needing to impact how we live.
But what about loving the people who are hard to love.
Jesus and love
We see that from Jesus throughout his ministry.
We see him associating with those his society most despised. We see him visit lepers, people who were viewed as inherently unclean and who were outcasts in their society. We see him show grace to a woman who was a prostitute.
One of his disciples was a tax collector. Tax collectors were hated in their society. For the Jewish people, they were looked at as being traitors to their people. Taking money from Israelites to give to Rome. We see Jesus show grace to those who hated him, personally. Pharisees who plotted against him, guards who beat him, officials who crucified him.
Jesus loved the groups who were hard to love.
Every society has its groups it looks down upon. We see how Jesus showed love. Who are the groups with whom our society struggles?
Criminals. People who struggle with addiction.
People who have hurt us. And that can be hard. There’s incredible damage people can inflict. Forgiveness can be hard. Let alone saying that we love that person.
People who have different political views than us. The division right now in this country is incredible. Some of us can really struggle with not being judgemental on those who have some different political views.
You still have to love them.
How do we love people? It begins not with the people, but with the God we serve. Loving others is, and especially loving those who are hard to love is a reflection of our love for God.
We are to love others because we have a savior who loves us when we were unlovable.
Knowing the love God has for us. Knowing the need others have for grace and the gospel. Knowing that every person we meet is created in the image of God and is worthy of value and dignity.
How do we love people?
By praying for a person, by sharing the good news of Jesus with someone, by showing kindness to someone, by serving someone. By stepping into a person’s life.
Jesus stepped into our world to show love for our world.
Jesus went out and found the people who were hard to love. We actually can have pretty good control of our surroundings to avoid people we don’t want to be around. And I’m not saying that we all need to make a checklist of every difficult group. But let me ask you this: when is the last time you’ve had to regularly interact with someone who challenged you? When was the last time you’ve been around someone where you’ve had to turn to God and ask you for strength to love that person?
For some of us, maybe it’s been recent.
And I’m not even saying that you need to go out today and go out of your way to find the most difficult person you possibly can. But I think we do need to have some humility that love is actually hard. The love that God calls us to is hard. But Jesus didn’t shy away from us, he didn’t walk away from our world, he entered into it. He loved us when we were unlovable.
We can’t do it perfectly. But we have a savior who loves us perfectly.
And the more we understand God’s grace, and the more we grow in our love for God, the more that is meant to impact our love for those around us.
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Costly grace vs cheap grace
In John 14:16-17, Jesus is foretelling his death. He promises another helper in referring to the coming of the Holy Spirit. In John 14:18-21, Jesus promises that he himself will also return.
John 14:18: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.
When Jesus says I will not leave you as orphans, that seems to have a double meaning. The disciples will not be orphans both because they will be given the Spirit of truth who will be the helper with them forever. And they will not be orphans because Christ himself will return. And at the end of the verse, he says: I will come to you.
Scholars have interpreted that last part of the verse in different ways. But the best evidence is that Jesus is talking about the resurrection. That on the night before he was to go to the cross, Jesus was promising his disciples that he would come back.
Given what will follow, I believe that is what makes the most sense because Jesus will start talking to the disciples about what is revealed and what the world is blind to, both in light of the resurrection.
There is an immediacy to Christ’s coming back which I think fits better with the resurrection appearances.
John 14:19: Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live.
Here, Jesus is clearly talking about the circumstances of his death and resurrection. When he says the world will see me no more, it’s referring to the sinful and fallen humanity. Those who are not of God and who are not his disciples. And on the eve of his death on the cross, it is true that the world will not see him again.
His resurrection appearances will be exclusively to those who are his disciples or to those who will become his disciples, such as when he appears to Saul. And while the world will not see him again, the disciples will see the risen Lord. This will be covered in chapters 20 and 21 of this gospel.
And not only will the disciples see Jesus, they will have life because of Jesus.
Because I live, you also will live.
Life in Christ has been talked about all throughout this gospel.
In John 11, when Jesus’ friend Lazarus had died, Jesus had proclaimed:
“I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?”
The Gospel
Again, the world loves to create its own gospel. It loves to undermine the truth. It loves to tell you there are other ways. It loves to tell you that you can make your own way.
But the Gospel of John is continually confronting us with the fact that it is Christ and Christ alone who is the way to life and who is the giver of true life. That there is one gospel and this is it. That Jesus would go to the cross and die for the sins of the world.
John 14:20: In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.
In the day that Jesus is raised from the dead. On the first Easter, you will know. When you encounter Jesus, you will know. And we too are invited to know the risen Lord. To know that he died, and rose, and lives forever and that life is found in him. We are invited to know him and live in the truth of who he is and what he has done through the power of the Holy Spirit.
John 14:21: Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
It’s noteworthy that Jesus is mentioning obedience to his commands for the second time. When he says whoever has my commandments and keeps them, the point is that it’s not just knowing his commands. It’s also about following….Him.
Grace and Law
There is this complicated balance within churches of grace and law. Too many churches go too far to one extreme or the other.
If you go too far to the extreme of law, you have a church that’s very legalistic and self-righteous. The danger of that is that you can start to withdraw your faith from Jesus and ultimately start to put your faith in yourself. Your goodness, your righteousness.
And when you do that, you’ve missed the whole point.
You can follow a bunch of rules and not even believe in the gospel at all. Following all the rules is worthless without faith because you’ll never be good enough.
But on the other side of the coin, you have churches that go too far to the grace where we lose sight of the commands of Christ and accountability, and repentance
The danger of this is that we can start treating grace like it’s a license to sin.
God is loving. So it doesn’t ultimately matter what you do because he’s a loving God who loves to love people.
This devolves into what Dietrich Bonhoffer called “cheap grace.”
And what that means is that it cheapens the gospel, it cheapens what Christ has actually called us to.
Quoting from the Cost of Discipleship. I’ve read this before but it’s a classic.
Cheap grace
“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will go and sell all that he has. It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods. It is the kingly rule of Christ, for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble; it is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows him.
Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.
Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.”
What we need is balance between the two. Now it’s interesting in our passage.
And I think the key to balancing all of that is right in our passage. Let’s look again.
Jesus says: you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
Jesus speaks of his unity with the Father. He’s said similar things elsewhere in this gospel.
But what’s unique to this passage is that Jesus also adds and you in me, and I in you.
That we will be in Christ. That when we have faith in the gospel, we are united with Christ. That’s not to say that we are Christ, or are somehow deified.
But we are forgiven in Christ. We are loved in Christ.We have union in Christ.
Jesus and the Father have perfect unity with each other. And we have a share of that when we are in Christ. Now we are still human and still sinful so it is not yet the perfected union that it will be. But we are in Christ and Christ is in us through the Spirit.
And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”
That to love Jesus is to be loved by God. Because Jesus is the Son of God. Jesus is the one whom God sent. Jesus is the one who goes to God on our behalf. Jesus is the one who sits at the right hand of God.
Again, John’s Gospel does not give wiggle room. Jesus is not just a great teacher.
He is the way, the truth, and the life, and he is the one who gives us the privilege of being loved by God.
And Jesus says he will love us and manifest himself to us.
That we will have a greater and greater sense of the truth and love that are in Christ, as a result of having the Spirit, as we live for Christ and walk with Christ.
And that is why our lives matter and what we do matter.
Because our lives are not our own. When we truly know Jesus, when we truly love Jesus, that Jesus changes us from the inside out. True faith creates a new person who can never again be the same.
And the world does not understand that message.
The world thinks Christianity is just a guy telling people to be good, and mocking that idea because anyone should be able to figure that out on their own.
Christianity is living a new Spiritual life in Christ to the glory of God.
And because we’re still finite people living in a fallen world, we will do that imperfectly, and the good news is that there is grace and forgiveness when we fail.
But the costly grace of the gospel is that Jesus calls us to live for he who paid the ultimate price for our forgiveness.
And that’s either beautiful to you or detestable.
It’s either the wisdom of God or it’s an absurdity.
But what is it to you? Is it the bedrock on which to build your life? And is it shaping who you are?
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Jesus and answers to prayer. John 14:13-14
In his book “Prayer,” writer Philip Yancey gives examples of some well known prolific prayers.
He says that the 17th century English Bishop Lancelot Andrews devoted 5 hours a day to prayer. The 18th and 19th century English minister Charles Simeon rose daily at 4am to pray for 4 hours. -There’s an order of Catholic nuns who pray in shifts and where people form their order are praying all day, everyday. Martin Luther would pray for 2-3 hours, or more, a day.
Prayer is a practice that the Bible calls us to and values. Over 650 prayers are found in the Bible. Prayer is something that the vast majority of Americans value. In research polls, I saw numbers ranging from 55-65% of Americans saying that they pray everyday.
But there’s often a disconnect.
Even though we know it’s important. Even though we do it, for many, prayer is a struggle. The prayer life is not full of joy and expectation, or intimacy with God. Prayer can feel cold and stagnant. It can feel like a waste of time, or feel pointless.
There are prayer warriors today, like the people I mentioned a moment ago. But I think that most of us, if we’re being honest, are much more likely to have an unsatisfactory prayer life.
But why is this the case?
Yancey suggests that the prosperity in our society might also inhibit prayer.
We can be tempted to rely on ourselves, our abilities, our talents, instead of prayer.
I think that part of the problem with prayer is that American Christians are often not poorly taught about the purpose of prayer.
And I think that John 14:13-14 gets at the heart of the Christian prayer life.
Prayer passages
Jesus says: Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.
What does that mean? Does that mean that he will always give us what we want? Some interpret it that way. There are even other verses in the gospels which say similar things.
John 15:7: If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
John 15:16: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.
John 16:23: Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.One verse later. John 16:24:Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.
And it’s not just in John’s Gospel that we see this.
Matthew 21:22: whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith.”And there are other places to which we could look. Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.
In that case, I’ll have a mansion. And a private jet. And a private lake. And a fleet of cars.
But that’s not what the verses are saying. None of these verses actually gives an unconditional promise that all prayers will alway be answered in the way in which they want.
Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do.
That is not an unconditional promise that we can always get what we want in prayer. It’s what we ask in Jesus’ name. And the point of that is not that just a perfunctory addition of Jesus’ name to a prayer is what causes the prayer to get answered. That wouldn’t be prayer. It would be witchcraft.
Just say this incantation.
But that’s not what the verse is saying. Nothing in this passage is saying: you can get whatever you want. In fact, this passage is not primarily about us. This is a passage which revolves around God. It’s a passage that is Spiritual. It’s a passage that is missional. It’s a passage that has a heavenly focus. And in these verses, it’s a passage which deals with the glory of God.
And in looking at John 14:13-14, I want to look at the object of prayer, the purpose of prayer, the power of prayer.
The Object of Prayer
Verse 13:Whatever you ask in my name
As with many other things that Jesus says in his ministry, we can lose sight of how radical his words are. If Jesus isn’t God on earth, and the savior of the world, then what he’s saying here is totally insane.
That we are to pray in his name. It’s blasphemous if Jesus isn’t who he says he is.
All the people you’ve ever met in your lifetime, I doubt that any of them ever instructed you to pray to them. To invoke their name as a source of blessing in your prayers.
But Jesus does. Because he’s the Lord. Whatever you ask in my name.
It’s also interesting considering how much time Jesus spends in this passage talking about the Father, and honoring and glorifying the Father. So again, the point isn’t just that we pray for what we want and then just attach Jesus’ name onto it and that’ll cause it to happen.
Praying in the name of Jesus is a sacred task. And we should never be flippant about that.
Now prayers are often addressed to God, to the Father, to our heavenly Father, to our Father in heaven. But the prayer is in the name of Jesus. He is the one who enables us to go to God in prayer. It is because of his name, because of the salvation that he brings, because of the life that he invites us into.
The Purpose of Prayer
Remembering the object of our prayer is Jesus and that he’s instructed us to pray in his holy name and to pray for his holy purposes.
In his commentary, Grant Osborne says: “to pray in Jesus’ name means to pray in union with who and what he is, to pray in accordance with his will. Self-centered prayers are not answered.”
When Jesus is telling the disciples to pray and he gives what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, he says in Matthew 6:10:Your kingdom come, your will be done,
We see similar language in Luke 11:2, when Jesus again is talking to the disciples about prayer and he uses the phrase your kingdom come.
In a different event, in John’s Gospel, Jesus is talking about prayer: Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
God is glorified through his son. He is glorified through his sovereign will in the world. He is glorified through his coming kingdom. Jesus answers prayers so that the Father can be glorified through the work of the Son. Prayer is a transformational spiritual interaction between creatures and our creator where we are invited to speak to – and be heard by – the Almighty.
Prayer is God inviting us into his presence in adoration of his goodness, in confession of sins, in lamentation for the sins in the world, in thanksgiving for blessings, and in making intercession on behalf of our lives, families, church, and world around us.Prayer should always be in pursuit of God’s will in creation and in our own activities for the sake of the glory of God.
So to summarize. Prayer to God is meant to conform our hearts and wills to the will of God for the glory of God.
To quote Tim Keller from his book: “Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God.” “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knew.”
And so the heart of prayer is not about trying to get God to align with our will. It is to get our will to align with God. It is to surrender to God. It is to let go and let God.
Romans 12:2 says: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.
Prayer is meant to have time set aside to put our focus on God. To focus on his goodness and his will. There are a million stresses, a million frustrations, a million questions everyday. But in prayer, it’s meant to be a time with God. Again, we so often don’t take time for that. Is it any wonder that we’re so often so worried and anxious?
In Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis said:
“The moment you wake up each morning, all your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists in shoving it all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other, larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in.”
Your kingdom come, your will be done.
It’s not “my kingdom come, my will be done.”
Spirituality in prayer
We should pray for our needs, for our loved ones, for our church, for our nation, for people in our lives. We should pray and thank God for the many blessings he’s given to us and to confess our sins before God.
We often look at prayer from a material perspective, but prayer has a greater spiritual aspect to it. That God cares more about our spiritual blessings than stuff. He cares more about our sanctification and spiritual formation than our comfort or ease.
Early in the Book of Ephesians, the Apostle Paul says: Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places
God cares about our faith and faithfulness, he cares about our holiness.
We don’t always know the specifics of what God’s will is. And I think we can get too caught up on that sometimes.
It’s God’s will that we love him. It’s God’s will that we pursue holiness, that we have faith, that we worship him, that we don’t sin. It’s God’s will that we love one another. Those things alone really provide a pretty good life to how we’re to live.
There are certain prayers that God will always answer. God will always answer our prayers when we turn to Christ for salvation.
Romans 10:13: “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
God always gives forgiveness when we seek it.
1 John 1:9: If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.God grants wisdom when we seek it.
James 1:5: If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him.
As we pray for God, there are so many other things we can pray for. That we would know, love, and honor God more fully with every day of our lives. We can pray that we would grow in the knowledge of God, day by day. We can pray that we become ever greater witnesses to the world of the love and grace of our God.
We can pray for opportunities to reach people with the gospel. And we can pray for our church. For the people. And that we grow as people and as a church.
Those are just a few examples.
Prayer teaches us humility before God. That we are not in control. We are not in control of our own lives. We are not in control of our circumstances. It teaches us that what we go through, we can go through it with God. Prayer is a time to sit with God and bask in his glorious goodness and to reset in him.
Psalm 46:10 says: “Be still, and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth!”The Power of Prayer
Verse 14: If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.
Verse 14 is almost identical to the beginning of verse 13. In both places, the point revolves around Jesus granting requests which are asked in his name. Given what Jesus has said in verse 13, and grounding the reason in the glory of God, he reiterates that the prayer which is made in his name he answers.
And so as we begin to wind down, I think it’s important to remember the power of prayer.
God answers prayers. And the more in tune we are with the will of God, the more discernment we have, I think the more we see God answering our prayers, out of his goodness.
Our God is a good God.
Unanswered prayers
But we must also understand that not all prayers are answered in the way we want. Even some of the good things we pray for. A person healing from an illness, or recovering from an injury. We’re finite. We don’t always know or understand why a certain prayer has gone unanswered.
And those can be some of the hardest experiences we have in life. The world is ultimately fallen. And no matter how faithful we are, no matter how faithful a church is in prayer, there is still sin, and sorrow, and sickness, and death.
Sometimes we don’t get what we pray for. And we don’t know why. And it doesn’t make sense. But again, at the heart of prayer is meant to be a reliance in God. Sometimes a prayer is not answered because of the timing.
In the Book of Habakkuk, there is wickedness and destruction in Israel. The prophet has taken his plea before the Lord.
God says in Habakkuk 2:2-3:“Write the vision; make it plain on tablets, so he may run who reads it. For still the vision awaits its appointed time;
Sometimes a prayer isn’t answered because God will because God’s will was to do something else.
“God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knew.”
Can you trust that? Sometimes it’s hard.
Job said: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” (Job 1:21)
In the book of Second Corinthians, Paul talks about some sort of malady he had been suffering. We don’t know specifically what the issue was. Paul simply refers to it as a thorn in the flesh. It’s generally assumed it was some sort of health issue and not a literal thorn.
But Paul talks about praying for relief.
2 Corinthians 12:7-9: a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. 8 Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. 9 But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
His grace is meant to be sufficient for us. That prayer was unanswered because God would be glorified through Paul’s affliction. And indeed there are immense challenges that we go through in life that are not good, but that God uses them to shape us into who we become. We don’t always know why God does or doesn’t do what we think he should. And explanations that people try to give us often don’t make us feel much better.
In the Book of Isaiah, the Lord says: For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. (isaiah 55:8-9)
Sometimes people can grow cynical towards God because of that. We question why he doesn’t answer a certain prayer. But the reason why he answers any prayer is because of his goodness. We don’t inherently deserve anything good from God.
But he does so much good in the world and for his people.
The greatest problem of our world is not a lack of goodness on the part of God. It’s the sinfulness of humanity.
The story of George Mueller
George Mueller was a British evangelist and pastor whose life encompassed most of the 19th century, living from 1805-1898. He’s probably most remembered for his orphanages in the working class town of Bristol.
Thousands of children passed through Mueller’s orphanages. Mueller famously never asked for money, but relied on prayer for God’s provision. Some of the stories are absolutely incredible.
In his life, he wrote down more than 50,000 prayer requests that were answered by God.
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