Audio Transcript

The prayer you don’t want answered. Fascinating topic today, coming up because we meet it soon in the Navigators Bible Reading Plan, later this weekend. On May 12, we read Psalm 106:15 together — a text we’ve been asked about by a listener. “Pastor John, hello! My name is Amy, and I live in Lincoln, Nebraska. As I read the Bible, I see that there are times when we ask God for things wrongly, and he mercifully just says no. We see this in James 4:3. And there are times when we ask God for things wrongly, and he says yes. That seems to be the case in Psalm 106:15. Can you explain this verse and Israel’s ‘wanton craving in the wilderness’ in Psalm 106:14? I presume it’s for food. What about this prayer is evil? Why do you think God responded by giving them what they wanted? Why also the ‘wasting disease’?

“I’m confused here, having a hard time understanding the principle, one I find in other texts — namely, in Psalm 78:29–31.” Yes. And I (Tony) am going to add a pair of other texts into the mix here too, and interject them — 1 Samuel 8:7, 22 — because those are verses we just looked at in APJ 2029. “So, can you explain this,” Amy asks, “and tell me whether this should inform how we ask for things today and what we ask for? Are we liable to have a wrongfully asked prayer get answered by God for our own undoing?”

When I lived in Tennessee for a year, I discovered that there were two hiking routes up the back of Stone Mountain. One was about twice as long as the other, but the short one was really rugged and steep. Now, suppose I had a nine-year-old son with me — I didn’t at the time, so I had to imagine this, but I tried both of them myself, and I know what would happen — and we hiked the mountain, say, once a week on Saturday for fun, for exercise. And suppose every time we got to the fork in the path where the two hiking routes diverged, he complained and he complained and he begged and he begged to “go the short one, Daddy. I want to go the short one, because the other one took so long.”

Now, there are two ways that I could seek to teach my son to trust me for my wisdom in this life. One is to say, “No, that’s not a wise decision. We’re going to do the one we can do. So, we’re taking the long route. It takes longer, but we can do this. We can handle that, and you need to learn to trust me.”

“The sinful prayer for a king becomes the means by which Jesus enters the world as king.”

But there is another way. You might choose to teach this kid a thing or two. You say, “Okay, let’s do it.” And halfway up, he’s utterly exhausted. He’s looking at these rocks in front of him, looking like a straight-up cliff, and he’s saying, “I can’t do this, Daddy.” I’m saying, “Yes you can, and you will. You prayed for it; you got it.” That’s the wasting disease, right? This rock face and his misery. And the point is to teach my son, one way or the other, “Trust me, son. You need to trust me. I know what I’m doing when I make decisions in this family.”

Sinful Prayers, Sorrowful Answers

Psalm 106:13–15 says,

[Israel] soon forgot [God’s] works;     they did not wait for his counsel.But they had a wanton craving in the wilderness,     and put God to the test in the desert;he gave them what they asked,     but sent a wasting disease among them.

God had met every need since Israel left Egypt. But these people grumbled again and again and again against the Lord. They were hungry for meat. Psalm 78:19 says, “They spoke against God, saying, ‘Can God spread a table in the wilderness?’” That was how they tested the Lord. They doubted him. They challenged him.

This prayer for what they craved was not a humble expression of trust, which is what good requests are. It was a skeptical expression of anger. God could have kept supplying their needs, the way he was doing all along. That would be a lesson: amazing grace and provision. “Learn to trust me. Trust me.” That wasn’t working. Or he could teach them a lesson this way: “I’ll grant your doubting, challenging request, and misery to go with it.” Lesson: “Trust me; don’t doubt me.”

“God is amazing in the way his providences twist our sins, so that they actually can work for our salvation.”

So yes, I think God does that today. It’s never right today to forget God’s works and then fail to wait for his counsel. It’s never right to think that we know what’s best and become demanding and challenging to God. He just might give us the car we demand, or the spouse we demand, or the rising stock price that we demand, or the child we demand. And then five, twenty years later, those answers might come back with great sorrows in our lives.

Twists of Providence

That could sound fatalistic, but here’s the twist. There’s a twist of providence in this peculiar way that God disciplines us by giving us what we ask for and then misery to go with it. We can see this twist if we look at the other example that I think you mentioned, Tony, at the beginning, with regard to the demand for a king. The twist is that they should not have demanded a king the way they did, and yet God gave them a king and then made their ungodly desire serve his eternal purposes of grace. That’s the twist. And it’s so hopeful for those of us who have made stupid decisions and have asked for terrible things — or asked for things that seemed good, and we were all wrong in the way we asked for them. God can work this for good.

The Sin

So, here’s the way it worked. In the transaction in 1 Samuel 8:5, the elders of Israel say to Samuel, “Appoint for us a king to judge us like all the nations.” Now, that’s the sin: We want to be like the nations. But it says in 1 Samuel 8:6–7, “The thing displeased Samuel when they said, ‘Give us a king to judge us.’ And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Obey the voice of the people . . . for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected me from being king over them.’”

And then Samuel seems to give them one more chance to change their minds by telling them all the miseries that the king is going to bring into their lives (1 Samuel 8:11–18). The king’s going to take your sons and make them soldiers. He’s going to take your daughters and make them perfumers and cooks. He’s going to take your fields and your vineyards. He’s going to take your flocks. And then it says in 1 Samuel 8:19–20, “But the people refused to obey the voice of Samuel. And they said, ‘No! But there shall be a king over us, that we also may be like all the nations.’” And then in 1 Samuel 8:22, God says, “Obey their voice and make them a king.”

Now, here’s three hundred years later. This is Hosea, the last prophet who prophesies before Assyria destroys Israel. Here’s Hosea 13:10–11: “Where now is your king, to save you in all your cities? Where are all your rulers — those of whom you said, ‘Give me a king and princes’? I gave you a king in my anger, and I took him away in my wrath.” So, God answered their request, and it did not go well for them.

The Twist

And I pause and say, “But wait. Wait. There is something else going on here.” In Psalm 2:6, God says, “I have set my King on Zion, my holy hill.” God set his king on Zion, his holy hill. And Isaiah 9:6–7, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder. . . . Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom [forever].” His kingdom forever. In Luke 1:32–33, Gabriel says to Mary, “The Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Here’s the upshot, the twist. The sinful prayer for a king becomes the means by which Jesus enters the world as king to die and rise and forgive the sins that they brought upon themselves by asking for a king. I just think God is amazing in the way his providences twist our sins, so that they actually can work for our salvation.

So, the twist of providence is this. If you are, today, in a situation of God’s discipline in answer to an unbelieving, angry, misguided prayer, don’t despair. Don’t despair. Repent, accept your sin and your guilt, turn to Christ’s mercy and blood, and ask God to twist this situation into something good and God-honoring. I have seen him do this in my life. I have seen him do it. I know he can do it in yours.

Amid the hardest, most grueling trial I have endured, prayer became my lifeline. During that time, a friend sent me a prayer that I ended up pinning to my bulletin board: “Lord, please lighten my load or strengthen my back.” These became the words I whispered to God throughout the day. I needed God to either lighten the burdens I was carrying or give me strength to endure them. God had to bring change, though I didn’t know in what form. I only knew I couldn’t continue the way things were.

I didn’t often pray “lighten my load or strengthen my back” in one sentence. I usually left a large pause after begging God to lighten my load, since that was what I wanted most. I specifically and directly asked for relief — for healing and deliverance, changed circumstances, divine rescue. But if God chose not to heal me, I needed him to strengthen my back so I wouldn’t collapse under the weight of the burden I was carrying. Since I could never be strong enough to hold the heaviness of my trial, I would need to rely on God’s strength.

Lighten My Load

When I scanned the Internet to find a source for my bulletin-board quote, I found no definitive attribution, but I did find many who suggested that it was better not to ask God to lighten our loads. Instead, they said we should just ask him to strengthen our backs. That was an interesting twist on my original quote, and at first it seemed like a more pious request. I wondered if that should have been my prayer.

Yet as I considered that recommendation, it seemed unrealistic and overly spiritual; we don’t often see people in the Bible asking for strength instead of deliverance. Job begged for help (Job 20:20–21). Jeremiah cried out for relief (Jeremiah 14:19–22). David pleaded for rescue (Psalm 69:1–3). Paul persistently asked for his thorn to be removed (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). And Jesus himself entreated the Father to let the cup pass him by (Matthew 26:39). God knows we are dust, and he created us to look to him for everything. So we shouldn’t consider it less spiritual to ask God to lighten our loads. Such a prayer shows we are trusting God with our deep desires, not offering religious words with distant hearts. God knows how great our suffering is.

God wants to relieve our burdens and bids us to give them to him. We are to cast all our burdens and anxieties on him, for he cares for us (1 Peter 5:7). We can come to him when we are weary, and he will take our heavy loads (Matthew 11:28–30). God told the Israelites, “I relieved your shoulder of the burden; your hands were freed from the basket. In distress you called, and I delivered you; I answered you” (Psalm 81:6–7).

“Even in our anguish, we can be assured that if God denies our request, he intends to give us something better.”

Though God knows exactly what we need, he tells us to bring our requests to him. Jesus bids us to ask, seek, and knock. To ask and keep asking. To go to our heavenly Father just as children go to their earthly fathers and ask him for what we want (Matthew 7:7–11). People fell at Jesus’s feet, begging for mercy, throughout the Gospels. Even before they came, Jesus knew what they needed, yet he still asked what they wanted (Mark 10:51). We too can ask specifically for what we want, knowing that God not only hears our prayers but also acts upon them. We are not just offering careless words in case they might help.

So, the prayer “lighten my load” is not a perfunctory one but an earnest desire for God to change our situation. We are bringing him our need, which is all we have to offer. He will do the rest. And when we ask for deliverance and he brings it, we bring glory to God, as he himself declares: “Call upon me in the day of trouble; I will deliver you, and you shall glorify me” (Psalm 50:15).

Strengthen My Back

Yet sometimes there is no deliverance, and God says no. He doesn’t heal our loved one, restore our relationship, or keep us from excruciating pain. We must go through the trial, grieve the loss, and endure the bitter aftereffects. But even in our anguish, we can be sure that if God denies our request, he intends to give us something better. God never asks anything of his people that is not for our best, assuring us that every sorrow will result in our future gain. Nothing that we lose or don’t have could have ultimately been a blessing to us.

This trial we are enduring must have a great blessing for us. Among the many blessings God offers, the most beautiful is keeping us close to Jesus. To that end, God will provide the strength we need in every trial: strength for the battle (Psalm 18:39), strength when we are afraid (Isaiah 41:10), strength when we are exhausted (Isaiah 40:29–30), and strength to be content whatever the result (Philippians 4:13).

Yet strengthening our back does not necessarily make us physically stronger or able to withstand the next trial on our own without God’s help. The strength God provides doesn’t make us self-sufficient but rather enables us to see how much we need God. When God strengthens our back, we know how and where to get help. Our help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth (Psalm 121:2). As opposed to physical muscles, the strength we receive can be compared to muscle memory, reminding us to cry out to our God. We seek the Lord and his strength rather than depending on our own (Psalm 105:4).

Strong in Weakness

The apostle Paul recounted several trials in which he cried out to God for relief. An affliction in Asia laid such a staggering burden on Paul and his companions they thought they were going to die. But rather than destroying them, this trial taught them to rely not on themselves and their strength but on God who raises the dead (2 Corinthians 1:8–9).

Paul struggled with a thorn in his flesh that he pleaded with God to remove. Rather than taking it away, God answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). When Paul saw that God’s power intensified in his weakness, he declared, “When I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

Like Paul, we learn that having the grace to endure our afflictions can be a greater gift than having our afflictions removed. Once we’ve seen and experienced the immense power of God in suffering, we know that God will unfailingly provide all we need, regardless of what happens. With that assurance, we can find joy either in extraordinary deliverance from our trials or in greater dependence on God through them.

God encourages us to cry out to him for whatever we need; he wants us to bring our troubles to him. He may lighten our load and miraculously deliver us, bringing long-prayed-for rescue and relief. Or he may strengthen us in the battle, offering his sustaining grace, the grace that draws us back to him. Both answers turn us to God and deepen our faith, teaching us to trust him through affliction and to glorify him through whatever comes.

Audio Transcript

Good day, everyone, and welcome to this sermon clip Wednesday on the podcast. As most of you know, for a few weeks we have been looking at a two-part sermon series Pastor John delivered in the spring of 2010. Historically, the sermons are interesting because they come in the days leading up to his eight-month leave of absence, away from the pulpit, to work some things out in his own heart and in his own family. We talked about this leave itself, and the lessons he took from it, on the podcast, particularly in three episodes: APJs 138, 220, and 1227. It was a defining season for him.

Leading up to his leave, we get these two interesting sermons. In them, Pastor John explained what makes him tick. Why does he do ministry the way he does? Remember that? We heard the answer in APJ 1769. And then we looked at a related theme. God makes much of us. He does. He really makes much of his children. But why? Why does God make so much of us? That was APJ 1772. And then we looked at how God makes much of us. In six or seven profound ways, God makes much of his children, and Pastor John walked us through those points last time, last Wednesday, in APJ 1775.

And now we return to that theme first brought up in APJ 1772. There Pastor John said this: God “makes more of you when he makes much of you for his sake than if he were to make much of you only for your sake.” That’s a profound point worth thinking about deeply. But it also raises a question in a lot of minds, because if God makes much of me, if he saves me, because he is doing it to make much of himself, doesn’t that remove some of the luster of his love? That’s the question on the table today. It will be answered in both sermons, the one on April 18 and the other on April 25, both preached in 2010. I’m going to put two brief clips together here in this episode. To begin, here’s Pastor John, near the end of his first message.

Now, last question. The final, decisive question: Why does God, who loves us so much, who makes much of us so extremely, why does he remind us over and over and over again — when he tells us how much he loves us and how much he’s making of us — why does he keep reminding us that he’s doing it for his glory? To ruin it? No.

Why does God remind us over and over that he makes much of us in a way that is designed to make much of him? The answer is that loving you this way is a greater love. God’s love for you, which makes much of you for his glory, is a greater love for you than if he ended by making much of you. If he just made much of you as your greatest treasure rather than him as your greatest treasure, if he did everything he could do to help you feel like a treasure rather than helping you feel like he’s the greatest treasure, he would not love you so much.

Hearts Made for God

I’ll tell you why. The reason this is a greater love is that self, no matter how glorified, cannot satisfy the heart that is made for God. I’ll say it again — bottom-line answer. The reason it’s a greater love to love you for his sake, and a greater love to make much of you that he might be made much of — the reason that’s greater is that a self, no matter how gloriously it looks in the age to come, cannot satisfy a heart that is made for God.

“Self, no matter how glorified, cannot satisfy the heart that is made for God.”

If he is to satisfy the magnificence of the human heart, which is made for him, he must make much of himself for you in making much of you. He will not let your glory, which he himself creates and delights in, replace his glory as your supreme treasure. If he did, he would not love you so much.

So, Bethlehem, I’ll be away in a little over a week, and I want you to feel this. I want you to feel massively loved while I’m gone. I intend to feel massively loved while I’m away. And I would like to know that here, because the Holy Spirit is coming down, there’s a tide rising on how much we are loved as a people. That’s what I would like to know.

You, Bethlehem, are precious to God. And the greatest gift he has for you is not to let your preciousness become your god. I’ll say it again. You, Bethlehem, are precious to God. I don’t know if it would be theologically overstated to say infinitely precious, since he paid Jesus — but let’s just say, immeasurably, unspeakably, gloriously precious to God. And his great gift to you, which brings his love to its apex, is that he will not let your sense of being precious to him become your god. He will be your God forever.

Amen. So that was near the end of sermon one. But the topic carries over. So I’ll fast-forward one week later and pick up this same discussion in the beginning of his next sermon. That’s where we pick up right now.

To Know the Love of Christ

Here’s a prayer from Ephesians. You don’t need to look it up; just listen carefully. This is Paul now, praying for the Ephesians — and the way I pray for you, for myself, for my family: “[I pray that you] may have strength to comprehend . . . the love of Christ” (Ephesians 3:18–19). You can’t know it without power. Does that strike you as odd? You should give a lot of thought to that. Why can’t I know what it is to be loved without divine power?

I’ll keep reading that prayer. “[I pray that you] may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” — surpasses the powers of the mind to comprehend and the powers of the human heart to experience. It surpasses our fallen capacities to handle with our brain and to experience with our heart. It goes beyond what you’re able to do, which is why Paul is praying — and why I pray for myself this way and for you this way.

May you have strength to comprehend the love of Christ — soul strength, heart strength, mind strength. May God give this to us now. Now, Holy Spirit, come. This is why Paul said in Romans 5:5, “God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” The love of God pours into you, not by any human agency, but by the Holy Spirit. It’s a divine thing to know yourself loved by God. You’re not able to on your own.

Bottom of Our Joy

Now, the question I posed last week was, Why is it that the Bible reveals the love of God for us, including God’s making so much of us, in ways that constantly call attention to his own glory? Why does he do it that way?

And the answer is this: If God didn’t do it that way, if he didn’t love us in a way that constantly called attention back to his glory as the source, as the essence, as the goal, we would be so much more likely to turn the love of God into a subtle means of self-exaltation. We would use his love to make ourselves the deepest foundation of our joy instead of himself. God would become the servant of our slavery to self. We would take our preciousness to God and make that very preciousness to God our god.

“God himself will be the beginning, the middle, and the end in his love for me.”

But, I argued, God loves us so much, we are so precious to him, that he will not let that happen. We are so precious to God that God, in great mercy, will not let our preciousness to him become our god. Hear this carefully: we will indeed, through all eternity, enjoy being made much of by God. That will be a profound ingredient in our joy in God — that he makes so much of his sons and his daughters.

But he will work in us such a holiness, such a sanctification, such a freedom from sin, that he will protect us from making that the bottom of our joy. The bottom of our joy will always be that he’s the kind of God who delights in us. The bottom of our joy will always be that he’s the kind of God who makes much of the likes of me. This grace, this grace, will be the apex of my joy, the apex of my praise forever. It will never terminate here. It will always go back there. “For from him and through him and to him are all things” (Romans 11:36). God himself will be the beginning, the middle, and the end in his love for me.