James tells us that “The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
There is no one who was more righteous than our Lord Jesus Christ. And there is no one who prayed to his Heavenly Father more fervently than did the Lord Jesus Christ that night when he was in the garden waiting to be arrested, tortured and crucified. Luke tells us that “being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground”.
Yet we know that the answer to his prayer to his Heavenly Father was “no”. We read in Matthew that he pleaded, “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me.” Before he had even finished speaking, realizing what his Father’s response would be, he added, “nevertheless not as I will, but as Thou wilt”. He knew that all things are possible to God and that God would hear his plea, but he knew what God wanted and was willing to surrender himself and accept his Father’s will. How thankful we are that he overcame!
God hears prayers, and God answers prayers, but, as with those prayers of Jesus, when we pray, His answer is not necessarily the answer we want. He sometimes says “no” to our prayers. Do we sometimes say “no” to our own prayers? In the Lord ’s Prayer, Jesus tells us to pray, “lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil”. In a hymn we sing, “Help us this and every day to live more nearly as we pray”. We pray to God, asking Him to deliver us from temptation, and then we go out and say to the temptation, “Go away closer”. We do not flee from temptation as we should. We approach as close as possible, sometimes examine what we desire from various aspects, and, before we know it, we have fallen into the very temptation we have asked God to deliver us from.
We do not fool Him when we do this. Are we fooling ourselves? How thankful we are for forgiveness! Our God is a loving merciful God who is compassionate towards those that love Him and seek to serve Him. Peter was forgiven for his three denials of his Lord, Paul was forgiven for persecuting Christians, and David was forgiven for adultery and murder. God is also willing to forgive us, and we need to fervently pray for forgiveness every day.
We can take comfort in the assurance that “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer us to be tempted above that we are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that we may be able to bear it.” When we are being tempted, the Lord knows that we can resist it because He will not give us a temptation beyond our ability to resist. We sin when we do not draw upon that strength to resist.
James tells us “Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts”. We can understand when we ask amiss, but many times we do pray fervently for what we believe is a good cause, and those prayers, just like the Lord’s, are also sometimes answered with a “no”.
We have all prayed that someone seriously ill would recover, and then the person dies. It was God’s will, and He does know best, but sometimes we are so full of sorrow that we have a hard time accepting that. We know that we need always to accept His answer as the best even when we do not understand it. We read in the Psalms that “he giveth his beloved sleep”. Often when our prayers are not answered as we wanted them to be, we can, over time, look back and see the wisdom of the Father that it really was for the best. Some things will not be made clear to us until we are in the Kingdom with His dear son.
We are thankful that our Heavenly Father really does care for us and that He has promised that all things will work together for our good. The goodness that God has planned surely is our ultimate goal, so we continue to pray fervently for what we believe would be best and then, with our Lord, we say, “not my will but thine be done”.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One