Logos users will want to take a look at this month’s free and nearly free books.

Meanwhile, there’s a nice collection Kindle deals to sort through today.
(Yesterday on the blog: Cast Your Burden Upon the Lord)
It can’t be both depending on how we feel
Stephen points out one of the massive contradictions among those who are pro-choice.
New Resolve After 55 Years in My Wheelchair
Joni Eareckson Tada reflects on the anniversary of the Disabilities Act and tells how great a difference it has made in her life.
God’s Plan Was Better Than My Plan
Micheal tells of one of those times when–difficult though it was–God’s plan was better than his own.
How Job Teaches Us to Grieve With Hope
“When deep pain and sorrow come into our lives, we experience a crossroads of sorts. We can either turn away from the Lord—deciding that God is not who he says he is and that he is holding out on us in some way— or we draw closer to God, believing that God’s character is unchanging and is always good”
How Harry Emerson Fosdick’s ‘Open Membership’ Overtook the Northern Baptist Convention
This is a good look at an interesting little piece of church history.
What Your Eyes Have Seen
“The human eye finds no match for its intricacies. High-end cameras still can’t compare to the technology found in this tiny little organ. Photographers who capture gorgeous landscapes must grapple with focus, dynamic range, filters, color consistency, and brightness adjustments to match the scene that lays before them. Our eyes do this all in an instant.”
Flashback: A Picture of Perfect Rest
…the rest God promises and the rest we enjoy comes amid the battle, not outside of it, during the race, not only after we have resigned. It is a rest that comes amid the turmoil, that flows when circumstances are dire, that rises up when hearts sink low.

What does it mean to have faith? What does it mean to believe in God’s promises? What does it mean to have confidence that God is who he says he is and that God will do what he says he will do? What is the nature of that faith, that belief, that confidence?

There are times during this long and wearying pilgrimage when we undergo severe tests of our faith—tests that are often related to our losses and bereavements. Even if we are never tempted to cast off all allegiance to Christ or to throw away all desire to follow in his ways, we may still be challenged to believe—or not believe—that what God says is true—true about life and death, true about earth and heaven, true about time and eternity. We may face the kind of challenge that calls us to live in one way if we believe and to live in another if we do not.
There are days when we believe as an instinct, as the natural impulse of the heart and mind. In such days we easily and immediately regard it as unassailably true that heaven is real, that Providence is kind, that God is working all things for good, that even our deepest griefs will someday prove to be light and momentary afflictions when measured against an eternal weight of glory.
But then there are days when we believe as a decision, as an act of the will. While some days the most instinctual words out of our mouths are confident, other days they are hesitant. Some days we have all the boldness of Peter and other days all the hesitation of Thomas. On some days we proclaim, “I believe” but on others we plead, “please help my unbelief.” Or perhaps the best we can do is pose our faith as a question, a kind of self-interrogation: “I do believe, right?”
While we prefer the former days, we have to learn to embrace the latter, to learn that faith is not passive but active, not always an instinct of the heart but often an act of the will—and to learn that faith is no less real when it comes as a decision rather than a compulsion. Faith is often choosing to believe in the face of grief, the face of adversity, the face even of doubt. Faith is not less than intellectual, but is certainly far more: it is grasping and reaching toward divine promises, taking hold of what God has said to be true, clinging to it with whatever conviction we can muster, and pleading—pleading earnestly—that God will be powerfully present in his grace and comfort.
Trusting God, we learn, is not just a matter of recalling knowledge in a moment of need, but applying the whole heart, soul, strength, and mind to accept and believe it—even when the heart is broken and the soul weary, even when strength is sapped and the mind bewildered. Faith is complicated, not simple, and difficult, not easy. Like so much else in life, faith takes practice and rewards diligence. Faith brings us far beyond the end of ourselves and leaves us utterly dependent upon the goodness and mercy of a loving God.
What does it mean to trust God? It means that in our lowest moments we will resolve to believe that what God says is true. It means that even in our darkest valleys we will determine to take God at his word. It means that even when we don’t know what to do or where to go, we will look to God with faith and, as either an immediate instinct or a deliberate act of the will, anchor ourselves on the One who has promised that his every word proves true and reliable, that he will shelter and protect all those who run to him for refuge.

There are times when it seems like God does not hear us. There are times when it seems like God has become deaf to our prayers and unresponsive to our cries. There are times when we seek but do not find, knock but do not find the door opened. Why is it that God sometimes does not answer our prayers?

There may be any number of reasons, but before we consider a few of them, we need to acknowledge that often God actually does answer our prayers, though either in a way we cannot yet see or in a way we do not accept. He sometimes answers invisibly or imperceptibly and he sometimes answers in a way we simply fail to see or, worse, fail to acknowledge. Then there are times when God gives us not exactly what we had pleaded for but what he, in his wisdom, has determined we need. Either way, we should always take great care before we conclude “God has not answered my prayer.”
Yet there actually are times when he does not answer. This should not surprise us if we have an appropriate assessment of our own finitude, our own selfishness, our own sinfulness, our own simplicity. We know that God has power that is vast, holiness that is perfect, wisdom that is complete, and plans and purposes that encompass all of time and space. Our lives and the world around would be in woeful condition if God was beholden to each and every one of our petitions.
Our confidence, then, is not in God answering every one of our prayers just as we have prayed them, but in God hearing those prayers and determining if, when, and how to best respond. If God is truly who he says he is, if he is truly our good Father and we the children he loves, we can be certain that if he does not answer, it is only because this is better for us. He is not cruel, nor arbitrary, nor apathetic. Hence his inaction must be for our good, not for our harm.
So what are some of the ways God expresses his love and his goodness through unanswered prayer?
God may not answer our prayers when to answer them would be to rob us of a blessing. This is especially true when we pray to be relieved of suffering or delivered from a burden. The Bible and our own experience makes it clear that God often works mightily through hardships, not apart from them. This being the case, to deliver us too quickly would actually be to rob us of a blessing. It would be to take away the very circumstance through which God is conforming us to his image. There are some flowers that can be plucked only in the depths of valleys and only on the peaks of mountains, and there are some blessings that can be gotten only in adversity. God will not rob us of experiencing blessings by lifting us past the means through which they can be ours.
Then, God may not answer our prayers when they are selfish. If we pray in such a way that we account only for ourselves and not for others, God may not grant our request. God’s mind is much greater than our own and his plan much more expansive. He always accounts for all of his children and will hardly do injury to one in order to bless another. Whether our prayers are knowingly selfish or ignorantly selfish, God may not answer them if giving a blessing to us would prove a sorrow to another.
Of course God may not answer our prayers when what they request is sinful or when we ourselves are living in unrepentance. God will not grant prayers that demand what he has forbidden or that reject what delights his heart. He will not grant prayers to those who are living in unrepentant sin and are rejecting the prompting and pleading of his Spirit. God may close his ears to our pleas as a means of fatherly chastisement that is meant to awaken us to our sinfulness, soften our hearts, and steer us back to him.
Then there are times when our prayers are unanswered only because they are delayed. The God who sees the end from the beginning is not refusing to answer, but is simply waiting until the time is right. We may not yet have character that is prepared or circumstances that are appropriate to receive what we have prayed for. Just as a child cannot take advanced mathematics before he has mastered the basics, we may need divine preparation to be able to receive and appreciate some of God’s blessings. Many who plead for success would be ruined if they received it, so God lovingly delays until their hearts and lives have been made ready.
Then, it could also be that the blessings we want have not yet been fully prepared. We may plant an apple tree and immediately pray for it to bear fruit, but it will take many seasons for it to grow and mature and only then will it satisfy our hunger. And this is true of many of the blessings we long for. There may be a long time of preparation in which we need to wait patiently as those blessings are readied by his hand. God’s silence does not flow from apathy or indifference, but love. He is not refusing to grant us the blessing, but simply preparing it, nurturing it from seed to sapling to fruitfulness.
Where we so often go wrong is in failing to believe that God truly means to bless us, failing to believe that his motives are only and always love, failing to wait for his timing to be right and his answer to be perfect. Our task is to trust him—to trust him in what he will give and what he will refuse, in what he will grant in a moment and what he will grant only in time. Our task is to pray and wait, pray and trust, pray and watch for him to do exceedingly and abundantly beyond all we can ask or even imagine.

Inspired by The Hidden Life by J.R. Miller