Sermons at The Good Shepherd Anglican Church

May 12, 2024 - When God doesn’t (seem to) answer prayer

·14 min·1 clip

A priest reveals how his mother's death from cancer challenged the biblical promise that God answers all prayers.

The episode is a sermon delivered at The Good Shepherd Anglican Church, focusing on the challenge of unanswered prayer. It begins with a reading from 1 John 5:14-15, which promises that God hears and grants requests made according to His will. The speaker connects this to Jesus's teachings in John's Gospel, noting that John's letter offers commentary on these cryptic promises. He immediately introduces the core tension: despite this biblical assurance, personal experiences often contradict it, using his own mother's death from cancer as a poignant example. The sermon then outlines three common but misguided reactions to unanswered prayer. First, some stop asking God for things, slipping into a deistic view that can lead to atheism. Second, others use fake language to rationalize outcomes, like calling death 'healing.' Third, some respond by praying more intensely, which masks anxiety and misrepresents God as reluctant. The speaker rejects these paths and offers a corrective based on the Gospel phrase 'not of this world.' He explains that Christians have a new identity rooted in God's life, making them fundamentally different from the world. Applying this to prayer, he argues answers are not of this world in three ways. First, our greatest need is spiritual mercy, not physical healing. Second, God's timing operates on an eternal scale, with some answers only fully realized at the resurrection. Third, the quality of answers differs from earthly expectations, as shown by Jesus's prayer for the apostles not preventing their martyrdoms. The sermon concludes by applying this framework to a current situation, praying for a parishioner in the ER while acknowledging the lack of visible proof. It reinforces that prayer involves lifting earthly concerns to heaven, trusting in God's mysterious, non-worldly responses.

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