Dear all at IPC,

Does God always answer prayers?

We teach our children, rightly, that God always answers prayer. He says yes, he says no and sometimes he says wait.  That is right and helpful in so many ways. Yet the bible does give us another answer to that question.

I came across a phrase in the Psalms that I’ve not been able to shake off and I have found that it is more prominent in scripture than I thought. 

The Psalmist says in Psalm 66:
‘Come and hear, all you who fear God,
and I will tell what he has done for my soul.
17  I cried to him with my mouth,
and high praise was on my tongue.
18  If I had cherished iniquity in my heart,
the Lord would not have listened.
19  But truly God has listened;
he has attended to the voice of my prayer.’

We see in Jeremiah where the prophet is told, ‘As for you, do not pray for this people, or lift up a cry or prayer for them, and do not intercede with me, for I will not hear you.’ (Jeremiah 7:16). In chapter 11 he says, ‘Though they cry to me, I will not listen to them’.

Zechariah has this devastating refrain, ‘When I called, they did not listen; so when they called I will not listen’ (7:13). Micah 3:4 says similarly, ‘Then they will cry out to the Lord but he will not answer them’. In Isaiah 1:15, ‘When you spread out your hands in prayer, I hide my eyes from you; even when you offer many prayers, I am not listening’. Isaiah 59:2, ‘Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.’

In the wisdom literature Proverbs 1:28-29, ‘Then they will call to me but I will not answer; they will look for me but will not find me, since they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the Lord.’

It is as if God says to his people, who continue deliberately in their rebellion, ‘talk to the hand because the face is not listening’. It is a sobering picture we are given of a God who will not hear.

These verses are using the language of accommodation – where the infinite God speaks to his finite creatures. There is something about God and the mystery of prayer that we cannot fully understand.

We know that God calls on us to pray, that he loves to hear his people pray. We are to pray about little things and big things. Scripture tells us that we often don’t have because we don’t ask (James 4:3). We are to pray all kinds of prayers (Ephesians 6:18). In fact, we are to pray at all times, without ceasing (1 Thessalonians 5:17). Jesus tells us parables with the intention that we might pray and not lose heart (Luke 18:1).

The Psalmist is not saying that God ignores the prayers of imperfect people. We know that when we pray, often our motives are mixed and we don’t know what to pray. Jesus intercedes on our behalf – he is the mediator between God and man. He is our great high priest who prays for us and with us. Prayer is Trinitarian work: we come to the Father through the Son by the Holy Spirit, who helps us in our weakness and intercedes for us with groans that cannot be uttered (Romans 8:26-27). Prayer is speaking with God, pleading his promises, coming before him honestly and he will use our less than perfect petitions to change us and advance his kingdom.

This verse in Psalm 66 cannot mean ‘being conscious of sin’, because all of God’s people see their sins and are grieved by them. God commends us in doing this.

So what do we do with these warnings about God not hearing us? Are they just Old Testament warnings that don’t have anything to do with us?  I do not think we can agree with that.

They are telling us an uncomfortable truth that unconfessed, deliberate, intentional sin means that God will not hear our prayers. It is directing us to examine ourselves, pointing us to the danger of sin of which we won’t let go. If we find ourselves loving a known sin, God will turn a deaf ear. Spurgeon said, ‘You cannot hold onto wilful, unrepentant sins while simultaneously asking God for grace and expecting Him to answer.’

There are similar warnings to Psalm 66:18 in the New Testament. In 1 Peter 3, verse seven states that if husbands do not honour their wives, their prayers are hindered. James 4:3 warns us that praying with deliberatly wrong motives results in us not receiving. In John 9:31 Jesus himself says,  ‘We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him’.  We know that on that final day, religious people will cry to the Lord. But he will not answer them. It’s part of the horror of judgement.

I think we also need to see that when the people of God sin deliberately with a high hand, refusing to let go of their sin – their prayers will be hindered. If we cherish iniquity in our hearts, the Lord will not listen to our prayers.  It is true for both churches and individuals and has been proved throughout church history.

The intention of verse 18  in Psalm 66 is for us to examine ourselves to see if there is any sin that we are cherishing. We will need God’s help to let it go, as the hymn says,  ‘The dearest idol I have known what’er that idol be help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.’ 

The Puritan, Matthew Henry, when commenting on this verse says, ‘If I have favourable thoughts of iniquity, if I love it, indulge it, allow myself in it, if I treat it as a friend, and bid it welcome, make provision for it, and am loath to part with it, if I roll it under my tongue as a sweet morsel, though it be but a heart-sin that is thus countenanced and made much of, if I delight in it after the inward man. God will not hear my prayer.’

The verse functions as a warning that we cannot cherish both sin and God and we mustn’t take some neat theological turn to wriggle out of it. May we as a church see sin for what it is, and never cherish it so that our prayers might be heard.

Your Minister and friend,