That God desires to answer our prayers, but there are reasons why they may go unanswered. It begins by highlighting Jesus' teaching in Matthew 7:7, "Ask, seek, knock," as a foundation for approaching God. The passage then explores various hindrances to answered prayer, including a lack of faith, unconfessed sin, disobedience, and praying with selfish motives. The message encourages listeners to examine their hearts and lives, to persist in prayer, and to trust God's wisdom and timing, even when the answers are not what they expect. Ultimately, the sermon calls for a deeper, more sincere relationship with God, where prayer is a genuine expression of dependence and trust.
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Matthew chapter seven was part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, a very much neglected part that we're gone. I lost this when I was a young fellow. I grew up among the folks who said this was all Jewish. Actually, I didn't believe as much of anything, but this was supposed to be all Jewish. It wasn't anything for us at all. So I just lost the whole thing. To come here later, a very able teacher by the name of Mr.
C.F. Hawke was in this country from England. I heard him give two weeks on the Sermon on the Mount, and if he gave it back to him, I thank the Lord for your sake. Amen. The Sermon on the Mount has been called Pages from Our Lord's Diary. It's the way he lived. The way he likes to have us live. And we don't do it. One of the things stressed in this lovely talk of his was prayer. He gives a patterned prayer in this section. It's still a patterned prayer.
Never was intended to be recited like a bunch of parents just saying the words over and over. But it was in him that there was a past, and we do well to pay heed to it. We learn how to pray. We learn how to put God's things first. In Matthew chapter seven and verse seven we read, Ask, and it shall be given you, seek and ye shall find knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveeth, and he that seeketh findeth, and to him that knocketh, it shall be opened.
For what man is there of you, whom if his son asks bread, will he give him a stone? Or if he asks a fish, will he give him a serpent? If ye then deem evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father which is in heaven give good things to them that ask him? Therefore all things, whatsoever ye would, it may be due to you, do ye even so to them. This is the law of God. Ask and it shall be given you. Seek and ye shall find, not, and it shall be opened unto you.
You notice, of course, that the first letter of those three phrases spelled the word ask. Ask, seek, and knock. The Lord wants us to come to him to ask. I don't believe that that is the sum and sum of prayer. I believe that prayer includes a great many things beside asking. I believe that our communion with God ought to include a lot of things, but this morning I want to confine myself to a problem that most of us acknowledge exists in our lives.
Why are my prayers not answers? And there isn't any use to rationalize the thing. I refuse to be dishonest about this and say, well, probably it was answered, but I just didn't recognize it. I got things to know whether a prayer of mine has been answered or not, and some of my prayers are not answered. There are people who say to us, whether you know is the answer, the same as yes, and wait is the answer, But I tell you that I have some prayers, which I've been praying for years, and I've never gotten even that kind of an answer.
The Lord has never told me no. He hasn't even said wait. He just hasn't said anything. And we ought to face this honestly. We ought to find out why, when we come to God in prayer, our prayers are not answers. I don't suppose that I'll satisfy everyone here. I don't suppose that I'll have the answer to all of your problems, or I don't have the answer to all of mine. But I have found a few reasons why our prayers are not answered, just as I have found a few reasons that I tried to give you last night, why Christians suffer.
We have to acknowledge that these things are true. We're faced with a real dilemma, and sometimes we're caught in with this by unconverted people. We have a nice work going in Colorado Springs among the Japanese war brides. We just baptized a couple more here recently. We've seen quite a number of them saved, and we have a special Sunday school for them and their families on Sunday afternoon because it's very difficult for them to sit in with an English-speaking class. Some of them know so very little English, they have to have a special class for them, and it's easier for them to bring their children at that time.
The last count I had, I think there were sixty-five there, that special Japanese class. And we have, one goes, a girl who was brought up in Shintoism, but who lost her confidence in the gods of her people. prayers to her ancestors and so on, and became an absolute agent. And she got married to an American soldier from Georgia. He wasn't a Christian, but he was religious.
His folks had taught him to pray. And so when they were married, they came to the table. He said, now I'm going to pray. and she taunted him all the time he prayed. She'd talk out loud. She'd say to him, go ahead, go ahead, ask your God. Maybe he said his whole lot of groceries, huh? Go ahead, ask him. Pray, why don't you pray? And she just hit her and share a little Japanese boy. She would just taunt him when he tried to pray for anything. Well, of course the Lord wasn't answering his prayers. He wasn't even a Christian. And she had something there.
Oh, finally, the Lord did say the echo as well as Lucas. And I had the privilege of baptizing both of them along with the mother. And I thought to her a while back, did you think God answered prayers? And she said, Most of the time, Look at the Bible, you're going to be dishonored. I'm glad you weren't. If you claim that God answered all your prayer, you're dishonored. You know we are. Now I believe in prayer. I've been in the position for the last twenty-five years where if I could go to God and ask for me, I don't know how we'd have gotten along.
We've had the responsibility for hundreds of children. When you've got fifty boys and girls or more, and the adults necessary to take care of them, sitting down to the table three times a day, and you don't have any tasks on any rich men, and you don't have any sponsoring agency, and you have to look at God to supply even the daily bread, and sometimes the bills and the money comes in the same mail, And you get a heart failure and open the middle verse.
When you've been facing things like this, you have to pray. And you have to be convinced that God hears an answer, pray. You can't say that this thing has been a coincidence. There's just too many coincidences in our house. It just couldn't happen like this, unless there was a God's back of these things. But our prayers have not followed an answer. Now, our Savior said ask, and it shall be given. Is that an unqualified promise? I don't think so. I don't think it's fair.
I don't think it's honest to take one isolated passage and build up a doctrine on it. The other night I came to, from California on a plane, and we stopped in Salt Lake City. I preached in Salt Lake, and you saw Father's Day. And I know that there is a great religion built up there. bounds like an upended pyramid on its point, resting on one verse of the Bible. They built this whole great big thing on one verse of the Bible.
An isolated text that is neither honest nor sensible. And neither are we honest or sensible. If we build up our ideas about prayer, on any one thing. Let me show you what I mean. In an old people's home near Colorado Springs, there were two old sisters. I believe they both knew the Lord. They didn't know him very well, but I believe they both knew him. And they often called me to come out and and solve some of their problems for them. I never solved any because I never got a chance to talk.
I never used to go out there and spend my time with them. They just did all the talking. First they started getting the gold ticket because I hadn't been there. I said one time, if you don't put gold in there, I won't come to talk. They scolded for not being there before, and then they proceeded to tell me all the different things, and then they would thank me for coming out and helping me so much. Maybe one day I'll pay a psychiatrist twenty-five dollars for thirty minutes in that. Maybe it wasn't enough, I don't know, but I never was able to help them very much. I went out to see them one day, and one of them with a very firm lips said to me, you've got to explain something to us. I said, what's the matter? Well, she said there's a verse in the Bible that says, If two of you shall agree on earth, touching anything, she shall ask, It shall be done for you, as my father which is in heaven.
And my sister and I agreed, and we asked her, God didn't do it. I wouldn't know why. Some are others, she figured that I was a personal representative of his, and I had to give a count for the things to be done in heaven. So I said to him, well, let's look at some other scriptures. Don't cloud up the issue with any other scriptures. That's what the verse says. And he didn't do it. You know, I never got to read any other scriptures. I could have read them several others. I would have shown them why. But that's what the verse says, and the insistence of taking that one verse as an answer to all my problems.
We agree, and God didn't do it. I wonder if he wouldn't deal with that. I have. I have isolated the text at times, and then I expected God to do what he never promised to do at all. He never promised that he would do anything, that any two people agree to ask. You take that isolated text and you might prove that to be the case. But no scripture is of any private interpretation. That means you've got to take all the scriptures on any given subject and lay them out together. I find that's a good way to study the Bible.
You want to understand baptism? You take every passage in the Bible that relates to baptism. Don't you leave out the one in Peter either. You get all of them down, lay them all out together, and go over them prayerfully. And the Lord will show you what that means. He'll do the same thing with prayer. He'll ask him, we have the time this morning to read every passage that relates to prayer. But I think we can go at it negatively this way. We'll say, What are the hindrances to pray? Well, let me suggest, first of all, that you make sure that you have a right to pray. Now, I know that the statement in John nine by the blind man was the statement of man who didn't even know whether Jesus was a good or a bad man.
And therefore, it can't be taken too seriously. That poor blind man, just receiving his sight, says, We know that God hears much sinners. Well, I happen to know that God does hear sinners. He said that from his observation and from the teaching of the same God. But I say from my observation and the teaching of other passages of Scripture that God does hear sinners. God does answer the prayers of unconverted people. For many years of our trying to get around it, some of us remember when we did get our prayers answered, and it's okay to say that probably some Christians were praying for the same thing, the Lord answered his prayer.
That doesn't bother me any. I don't try to analyze that since I'm a Christian, and I didn't try to analyze it before. God does answer the prayers of unconverted people. We have ample evidence in Scripture of people who did cry unto God. I'll tell you a little story in the connection. Two men were in college together, one of them was a Christian, and the other one called himself an atheist, or an agnostic at least. And the Christian said to him, Well, you don't feel any need for God now, but someday you will. And I don't want to give you the scripture. And he gave him this verse from the Psalms.
Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not. No, I'm mixing two scriptures. Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will answer thee, and thou shalt glory by me. So the man became a druggist. And he lived up over the drugstore at five to his quarters, and one night in the middle of the night, the emergency bell rang, and he went down, and here was a little boy, and he had a prescription, he wanted to fill, and the man was disturbed, and over being disturbed, and he said, well, what do you have to bother me this time of the night for?
And he said, well, I'm sorry, but the doctor said, Mom, I have to have this right away. So he put up the prescription, turned the boy out, failed to make a record of the name and address, went up to his room, and suddenly it hit. What did I do? He went down and checked and he had put poison in the prescription instead of the drug call for him. And he thought, what can I do? He dashed the door and crossed the street and deserted the little boy already going home. And he thought, what can I do? If that woman takes one nose to that, she'd be dead. And then he thought of that scripture. He hadn't thought of it since he was not at all.
And he dropped on his knees and he said, Oh God, I'm ashamed to come to you and taste like this, but I'm desperate. I can't do anything else. And oh God, there is a God help me. This is what the Bible says. And then he heard the bell ring again. And he went to the door, and the same little boy, and he was crying, and he was apologetic, I'm sorry, the body again, but I dropped the bottle and broke. And the drunken call to do it to describe the little boy that was going tall. And put the prescription up right, and then when the boy was gone, he got down on his knees, and acknowledged to God that he'd been wrong on what kind.
Now, there is that side of it. We just as well be honest about it. But there's another side to it, and that is that God has promised, especially the blessed gold. I think if you cry to God in your need, he will hear. I never tell unsaved people to pray, but I sure don't tell them nothing. wouldn't do any good. When they get to where they need God, they're going to pray. It may be a pothole prayer, like during the Second World War and all, because there were no atheists in the potholes, and then they forgot their prayers as soon as they're high as the cold.
I'm not talking about that kind of thing. I'm talking about the feeling of sincere need. But let's come back and face this thing now from our standpoint. Am I sure that I am really God's child? If I'm not getting my prayers answered, if I'm not getting any of them answered, or not very many of them, if I haven't seen brass to me, if I find it difficult to talk to God at all, maybe I'm not his child. almost every place that I've gone for a series of meetings. Somebody taking his place as a Christian, remembering the Lord with the duties, I found out that he wasn't a sinner at all.
I baptized a man in Colorado Springs a while back who had been remembering the Lord in various assemblies for twenty-three years. He'd been in our meeting, came to us with a letter. He'd been in our meeting for about three years. He realized that he wasn't saved, but he thought maybe he'd get it straightened out without having to recall it because he'd been a hypocrite all that time. But one night, we were having special meetings there, and his little daughter said, Daddy, I just got to get this out of the night.
She was about twelve or thirteen. She said, I want to be saved. Will you go with me? What she meant was, will you take me to talk to the preacher? But he thought what she meant was, well, I see through you a big hypocrite. You can get saved. That's what he thought she meant. No, he just broke down and started crying. He said, yes, I am. I'm going to get back to you. I'm very confused with the little girl to say the least. But they did both go and talk to his brother, and they did both get to the Lord. Now, it means it's to say that man that had his prayer problem previously that time.
He couldn't even talk to God. He was so ashamed that he couldn't face God. Well, let's say that there's no problem with you. You know that you belong to him. Now, what is the problem? I wonder if it could be that there's somebody here like those that lay in the tree. Remember what was wrong in Laodicea? Look at the third chapter of Revelation. Revelation chapter three. And Because thou said, I am rich, and increase the good, and have need of nothing.
And no is not, but are wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked. I counsel thee to buy thee gold-tried in the fire that thou mayest be rich, and white ravens that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedest cannot appear. And in the north thine eyes, as I said, that thou mayest be. I am rich, and of course rich people don't ask. They just write a text. I am increased with goods. I don't need anything. And all the time we were so miserably poor that the Lord was on the outside, knocking to get in, and they didn't need anything.
Remember this was the church. I know there are probably false ones among them, but he says, As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten, be zealous, therefore, and repent. So there were some of them, at least, who knew the Lord. Imagine a Christian, or a group of Christians, who say we're rich, and we don't be as rich. They tell the story about Mr. Donald Wallace, one of the early day preachers among our people. He was asked to visit a certain place. He never had been there.
He wasn't very anxious to go, but he insisted on his coming and saw that he went. He sat down in the meeting and everything was as efficient as if they had an efficiency expert in charge. Everything just ran like clockwork, right out of the line. Everything was just like turning your crank. The whole meeting just went along so smoothly. Everybody knew his part. Everybody got up and recited his little part at the proper order. And then when they reached the point where they broke the bread and they were all ready for ministry, they all turned into one man and looked at him and smiled.
Everybody knew that was what ought to be next on the program. And the old man wasn't very easily deceived by appearances. And he got up and he said, I've been observing your wonderful order, and they all look at each other and smile, along with mutual complimentary society, and they were pleased that he had joined. But he said, You're reminding me of a duck sitting on rock made. Your position is perfectly correct, but your condition is terrible." And he proceeded to show them that God wasn't in the whole thing, just a matter of running it off in an acceptable manner.
And he said, I never was invited back again, but of course I wasn't disappointed. rich and increased is good and in need of nothing. Brothers and sisters, let me say this kindly, but let me say it plainly enough so that every judgment here will get it. I'm a judgment, and I know you have to say something pretty plain. Let me say something to you, and I want you to get it. I'm not saying it unkindly. There is a movement coming out of Chicago that we're not awfully careful. That thing is going to turn us into Christ the same truth, Lord has said. It's going to standardize everything where it will all be just so.
And we can feel very contented with ourselves. We are now numbered among the elite. We have now reached a place where we don't need to be ashamed of being poor or small or weak. We will have this thing all set up so that we can be proud of it. I attended an opening of a new building in Colorado Springs at the invitation of the preacher there. He was a man who had been kind to me, and we bought their old building from them, and I sort of fell obligated until I went down and endured the thing.
They were having a dedication service on Sunday afternoon of their new building, and they had a... A big man come out from headquarters, and his sermon had twelve points to it, all of them equally tiresome, and all of them ending with this little refrain, and that is something of which the mentioned denomination may well be proud. And everybody nodded their heads and grinned, toothy grins at each other, and we are all proud of the devil, Lucifer. And then another one.
And then we may all be well deprived of that. And they all know that we give. We're all to be proud. God help us. If we're getting to the place where we want to be proud, where we no longer want our young people to have to suffer reproach, why they say, let's take a name that we can all be proud of. Let's be the Christian assemblies of America, CAA. I do not. Let's all have the nicest buildings that we can get. I've been going a while back and haven't got any classes.
It's ten percent of your work. It costs about hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars for that cathedral. And listen to me, all you have to do, To make it accessible from the Roman Church is to move the table back against the wall and put it up like this by it. That's all I need to do. I'm not against having decent buildings, but I am against this kind of thing that is expected to turn us into a self-satisfied bunch of land of seeds. And the answer is not setting up million dollar funds. The answer is getting on our faces before God and acknowledging we have no power.
The Spirit of God alone can use us. The Spirit of God alone can energize us and make us what we ought to be. We are dependent upon God and we don't know it. That's true of individuals. Is that true, dear Katie? Well, look back over your life. When did you not know your faith before God and said, O Lord, O Lord, I must have thy heaven? What have you done? He said, I've got everything figured out. I don't have to do that. I've got a head still around me.
I've picked things up so that all I have to do is... I see. That might be the reason. I have prayers and not answers. But let me suggest another reason. In the eighteenth chapter of Luke, the Lord taught us in fourteen. We're going to assume now that you have felt the need. It has been a very definite need, and you have gone to God in tears. Oh, Lord. Please do this.
He made a parable of events that lived in, that men ought always to pray and not to faint, saying there was a city a judge which feared not God neither regarded man. There was a window in that city, and she came under his wing, avenged me of my adversary, and he would not for a while, but after it he said within himself, Though I fear not God and regard man, Yet because this widow troubled me, I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she wearyed me. And the Lord said here what the unjust judge said, And shall not God avenge his only elect, which cried day and night unto him, though he very long with him. I tell you, that he will avenge them speedily.
Nevertheless, when the Son of Man shall he find faith on the earth. And you're going to go out and you just thought, this must be done. This is surely God's will. I can surely ask this for His sake. This is something which I feel I need so desperately bad. And then the next day you've forgotten our love. Do you go back and pray about it anymore? Don't tell me you haven't been killed yet. We are just plain lazy. in our prayer. We don't persist in our prayer.
My father was saved a month before I was born. He began immediately praying for his brother. My father died when I was eighteen years of age, and his brother got saved the following year. For eighteen years, Every day of the eighteen years, he told me he didn't believe he'd ever missed a day, prayed for his brother to get saved. And he went home to heaven without seeing and saved. Have you ever prayed for anything, for eighteen years, or even eighteen months?
Or eighteen days? But in times when I have felt that this must be God's will, I will hold on to God for this. And I forgot all about it. And the Lord taught us in opportunity. Now let me make a little suggestion here. Get yourself a prayer note. Oh, I don't mean by the one with words in it. By the one with no words in it. Get yourself a little bit. And be systematic about this thing. Put God on one side of the page, the things that you're requesting of God.
And you have an appointment with God to talk over those things. Don't be afraid of being methodical. We're so unmethodical. We're so careless and indifferent about these things. And then on the opposite side of the page, put down when you get an answer to that. A yes, no, or wait, or any kind of other answer that you get. Put it down. It will encourage your own faith. At the end of the year, you'll be able to look back over many, many requests, and you'll become a more thankful Christian. And we don't do that. How long do you pray for a person who says, remember me at the throne of grace?
For three days? For three weeks? There again, it would be so much easier if we had a list. There was a little man whom God used as a real shepherd, or he had a shepherd's heart, and he got too old to get out. He used to kneel daily. His wife said with that old man, up to his age, He used to spend five and six hours a day on his knees. She used to take people in to see the place where the rug was worn out, in front of the chair where he always needed.
He had a book which he showed to people. Down the middle of that book, there was a dirty street where his finger had followed these names, and the names were almost disfigured. He'd get on his knees, and he'd move his finger down, and then he'd shut his eyes, and he'd pray for that. Then he'd move his finger down to the next one, and then he would pray to God for that. And he went over those people. Well, I tell you, it would be a great honor to be on a prayer list like that. But where are we today? Why are not those who take the lead among God's people persistent in their prayers for the lands of the flock and the sheep of the flock?
Or just too late. James chapter one. James chapter one, verse six. Verse five, Many of you like wisdom, let him ask of God, that give us all men liberally, and not great is not, and it shall be given. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering, for he that wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven with the winds and so, or let not that man take it, and he shall receive anything from the wind.
One of the hindrances of prayer, he said, wait a minute, we don't believe God. I don't misunderstand me. I know that we all have doubts. There are some who never admit to them, but honest people admit that we have doubts. We have had doubts, anyway, at various times. But that isn't what he's talking about here. He's talking about an unanchored wave. This isn't anything to keep that wave from going any way the wind blows. And there are some people like this. They don't get settled down to where they really believe God. Paul said to those on the ship, when everything looked black, twenty-one days without seeing the sun, he said, Sir, I believe God.
And he didn't believe God. Do you believe God? Do you believe God when you can't see the sun for twenty-one days? You believe God when circumstances are all against you. Whatever good of news you get on the subject by which you're praying is bad news. It's easy to believe God when things begin to brighten up and you can see a little change. That is to really believe in God. He said, if you do not believe, let not that man think that he shall receive anything. But you say, I can't help it.
That's the way I am. I don't want to disbelieve God, but all right, confess it as a sin. That's the first step. Confess it as a sin. Don't call it a weakness that you inherited from your family. Just say that this is a sin. I don't believe God. And when you don't believe God and you acknowledge it as a sin, then do the next thing. Go and get some more faith. He said, that's what happened. Why? Well, he says faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. It's all right here. When you read God's word, your faith increases. When you don't read God's word, you get weaker. That's all. Just that simple. Spend all your time reading other things and watching TV, enjoying sports, I'm not against all these things.
I'm just against them because they're robbing God's people. Our faith is weak because we are not feeding them. We are not reading the Word of God. Sometimes I'm going to get up the nerve to ask a congregation like this, how many of them read the Bible through last year? I think it's a disgrace for a Christian not to read the Bible through once a year. But then my dad started up out on that when I was only nine years of age. I've been brought up that way. But I find Christians who never read the Bible through, not even once. They just read favorite passages. Well, you don't know what you're missing.
And it's the entrance of thy word to give a light, not just little pieces that are here and there. Well, if it's unbelief, let's do something about it. While we're right here close to Jews, look at the little verse in the twentieth, I think the twentieth verse, the book of Jews. Yes, verse twenty of Jews. But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, not praying for the Holy Ghost. You don't pray for it, you pray in the Holy Ghost.
One may have used the illustration of Noah, praying for the Ark. He was busy and busy, but he was praying for it every day. And then the time came when the ark was completed, the Lord said, come on in. He went in, and God shut the door, and he prayed in the ark. There was a time when Christians were told to pray for the Holy Ghost. But to pray for the Holy Ghost now would be ridiculous. Might as well pray for Jesus to come and die for us. It's already an accomplished fact. The Holy Spirit is here. You're not told to pray for the Holy Spirit at all. But you are told to pray in the Spirit.
That is, in the conscious enjoyment of his presence. In the conscious submission to his leading. And making sure that he is not greedy. Ephesians four, thirty. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby you're sealed under the day of redemption. If you find it hard to pray, it may be that you're getting a cart before the horse. It may be that you're making requests when the first thing you ought to do is to confess things that are not right.
Amen. I find that it isn't even worthwhile for the text to read the Bible without, first of all, making sure that anything in my life, unconfessed, is set right. And you ever read chapter after chapter and got nothing out of it? That's probably because the Spirit of God was green. And he couldn't show you Christ, all he could do is tell you about your own needs. And if he's confessed your sin, judge yourself in his presence, then the Spirit of God would not only teach you, but he would help you in prayer. We're told in Acts chapter Romans and verse twenty-six that we don't know what we ought to pray for, as we ought.
But the Spirit Himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." And that's a mighty handy thing, too, when you can't say words and to know that the Spirit of God is interpreting those groaned in the prayers. You've never been to where you couldn't say words when you pray. You haven't really prayed yet. When you get to the place where you can't even say words, you just kneel before the Lord, you just say, Oh, the Lord. And the Spirit of God translates those groans. He makes intercession according to the will of God.
But you see, that's not going to happen in your life, in the Spirit of God's greeting. You don't know what's greeting. You just... Ballow me to ask, God will be glad to show you what there is in your life. It's grieving. And it may come as a great surprise to you how many things there are. Or it may surprise you how small and insignificant the things seem to be. You say, well, surely the Lord will agree with a little thing like that. Well, sin is sin, as far as he's concerned. And the Greek Holy Spirit is often the reason why we're not getting our prayers answered.
I look at James again just a minute. This time, the fourth chapter, In the reading of verse one, From which come war is in fighting among you? Come then on hence, even of your lust, of war in your members. Ye lust and have not, ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot be. Ye fight and war, yet you have not, because you ask not. Ye ask and receive not, because you ask amidst, that you may consume it upon your lust. Now, one of the things we've got to learn is that our Father knows more than we do.
We just read together back there in Matthew seven that if any man who is a father have a son that asks you bread, will he give the soul? Of course, obviously the answer is no. No father is going to give his son a stone when he adds some bread. Dear old Mr. Tom Brady, some of you older ones may remember, a very unique person, had a way of putting everything he was going to say into the first sentence.
And he stood up and read that text one time in the conference. And then he looked all around over the audience and he said, the trouble with us is we don't have sense of nothing, no bread from stones. And that was the gist of his message. That's what he was getting at. You pray to God for bread, you say, Lord, this is the bread I need, and the Lord said, you're mistaken, son. That's not bread at all. That's a stone. Here's some bread. You say, oh, no, don't give me that. That's a stone. But he said, I have a better than you do. That's your bread. It looks like a stone. That's your bread. That will feed you. That will do you good. You let me choose for you.
Have you ever prayed that way for God? For God, have you ever prayed, Lord, choose what's best for? Amen. I don't know what he said. He can give me something I don't want. Well, if he does, there's something wrong with your walk. He knows. He loves. He cares. Let's don't doubt it. Let's trust it. And let's say that if we do not get what we pray for... Let's say to him, Lord, if I've been wrong in asking for this, please show it.
And help me to be willing to take something else in the place of it, or to be without it. When he said, I know that this is right. Do you? Some of you may be praying for your children. A couple of years ago a man came to me and he said, my heart is broken. He said, I've reached a point where I can't even call on God. I said, what happened? He said, my boy was taken home. That we had our whole lives wrapped up in my boy, twenty-one years of age, the Lord took him home.
I said, did he take him home? Oh, yes, he said he loved the Lord. He had such a bright future ahead of him that seemed so devoted to the Lord. And the man just broke down with, and I saw that it called for drastic measures, and I'm not known for my gentleness anyway, and I said to him, well, I sure like trade places with you. He said, what? I said, I'd like to trade places with you. Well, why in the world would you say that? I said, you've got a son in heaven. And my son is out in the world, and he has denied God, although he took the place of being a Christian.
He said to me, Dad, I don't see anybody's intelligence. You seem to believe there is a God. That's worse than death. My wife and I have prayed for him now for three years. Why doesn't God answer that prayer? I don't know, except that I know that he's given us some bread out of this. They've learned God in the way we've never knew it before. It isn't easy. I'm not going to be hypocritical not to stand here and tell you that it is easy.
It isn't. But we've learned some things. And we may have a lot more to learn. Are you willing to trust your Heavenly Father? Are you willing to leave it with me? Are you willing to say, Lord, if I've asked a miss? Sure. First John chapter three. First John chapter three. Verse twenty-one, Beloved, if our heart condemn us not, then have we confidence toward God.
And whatsoever we ask, we receive obedience because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight. that disobedience can be a hindrance to answer prayer. Why? I'm not a legalist. I don't believe that God gives people good things simply because they are so worthy. I don't think that answers to prayer in my own life have been anything to gloat about.
But I do think there is a very direct connection between these two. This verse seems to indicate that sometimes our prayers are not answered because we can't ask in confidence. We are not obedient children. I used to withhold some things from my boys when they didn't behave. I never sent them to bed without their suffering. We don't leave that children's home because they need their suffering. But I have taken away some privileges. I have kept them from going swimming with the rest of the crowd because nobody needs to go swimming.
them should feel you can't do it, because they're unappreciative, disobedient, they need to be taught a lesson. I think my father has kept some things from me your business what the word or what was involved, but that's between him and me. I know he knows. And this thing is true in your life. If he hasn't shown you, he'd be glad I showed you. And we could go to him in prayer to find out why, Lord.
One more or two. You're not going to get over the whole list, but that's all right. I never make a complete list anyway. John chapter sixteen. There's great danger of making a complete list of saying, now these are all reasons why God doesn't answer prayer. Then you put those all down in your notebook. You think you've got them all. Nobody's got it all. You keep studying the words. God has shown you a new reason. And that's often necessary in our own individual cases. God will tailor this thing to his journey. He'll show you, if you're honest about this, he'll get before you in the prayer.
He'll show you in your case why your prayer life is so futile. But you have to be sincere in warning. John, verse twenty-three. And in that day, Jesus said, You shall ask me nothing. Verily, verily, I have said unto you whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name. He will give it to you. Now, this is not a verse that's intended to teach us that we can't address the Lord Jesus in prayer. It's a verse that's intended to teach us that we're no longer on the same basis as the disciples were, who were walking and talking with him and living with him day by day and could turn to him at any time and say, Lord, I'm hungry.
Or, Lord, show me the way to go. From now on he said, you will address the Father, because I will be with the Father. I will be gone from you. I'll be in heaven, but the Father will hear in my name. And he did that in his name. He said, yes, I always put that on the end of my prayer. I don't think that's what this means. I don't object to your putting on me in your prayer. Put it on the front, in between, if you want it. Nothing wrong with saying, in Jesus' name, or in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Nothing wrong with saying. The trouble is we don't always mean it. Amen. The trouble is we do not always ask in His name. What does it mean to ask in His name? It means simply this. God permits me to come into His holy presence and ask for the sake and the worthiness of the Lord Jesus. That's the only reason I have any right to ask. I can't walk into the First National Bank at Minneapolis and say, I would like a hundred dollars. The lady would smile at me and say, so would I. I can't go in there and ask for a hundred dollars.
I can't say, you know me, I am John Walden. I like a hundred dollars. How interesting. And they call to the man the Little White Coast. They can't pay me money in the First National Bank because I'm John Walden. But if I can take a check in there, signed by a man who has me out in that bank, I don't care if that check is for ten thousand dollars who proper identification. I can get that money, but I get it for his money. That's the only way you'll ever get anything from God. You don't deserve a solitary claimant, and you might as well face it right there.
Whatever rights you had have all been sent to life. But our blessed Lord deserves it all. I'll check your prayers by these. Can I ask this for His sake? Can I ask this because it will honor Him? Can I pray for this and expect God to do it because His Son will be honored? When I pray for my boy, I can't say, Oh God, for the sake of my boy, or for my sake, or for His mother's sake. reach this boy. I can't do that. There isn't anybody in the Walton family. That includes Jay's friends of the family.
There isn't anybody in the Walton family that deserves anything, God. But his own dear son deserves the best. Maybe do a good thing if we go over our prayers and the presence of the Lord and find out whether we're really praying for the sake of the Lord Jesus. Now, I've got to close with this. Look at James chapter five. Hallelujah, so there's some of you more there than all that I said this morning. because the entire element is the great problem in most people's unanswered prayers.
If I could go to each individual here and say to you, do you expect God to answer those prayers? You would say yes. I trust that he will.