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[jimwalton]

Prayer is the greatest obstacle to vibrant Christianity and the cause of more people walking away from faith in frustration. You have been taught wrong. Read on.

As I read the Bible, digging for teaching on prayer, I found that almost everything the Bible says about what God does for us has to do with salvation. Almost everything. So I looked harder: Other than salvation (forgiveness, redemption, justification, etc.), how does God help me through life? Here's what I found:


1. Comfort in time of mourning (Matthew 5.4; 2 Corinthians 1.4; 7.6); rest (Matthew 10.28), and peace (John 16.33; 14.27; Romans 5.1; 15.13; Philippians 4.7, 9)
2. May answer some requests in prayer (Matthew 7.11; James 5.15-16)
3. Gives me words to say at martyrdom or oppression (Matthew 10.19)
4. Teaches me about Himself:
a. Gives knowledge of himself (Romans 1.19-20; 1 Corinthians 4.1; 2 Corinthians 4.6; Ephesians 1.17)
b. Gives knowledge of his kingdom (Matthew 13.11)
c. Makes his righteousness known (Romans 3.21)
d. Gives knowledge of his will (Colossians 1.15) and equips us to do it (Hebrews 13.21)
e. Gives knowledge of salvation (Hebrews 2.4)
5. Gives me the Holy Spirit
a. teach me about God (John 14.26) (see 4a above)
b. helps me in my weakness (Romans 8.26)
c. intercedes for me in prayer (Romans 8.26-27) (see #2 above)
d. gives me spiritual gifts to use in ministry for Him (Romans 12.6ff; 1 Corinthians 12.4ff; Ephesians 4.11)
e. seals me for the day of redemption (Ephesians 4.30)
6. God is always at work to mold us and make us into his image, which is possible through any circumstance. (Romans 8.28; 2 Corinthians 2.14; 3.18; Ephesians 1.4; Hebrews 13.21) He is renewing us day by day (2 Corinthians 4.16) and making us righteous (2 Corinthians 9.10)
7. Gives me faith in differing amounts (Romans 12.3)
8. Plays some role in installing and deposing governing authorities (Romans 13.1-5).
9. Gives me strength, endurance and encouragement (Romans 15.5; 1 Corinthians 1.8; 2 Corinthians 1.21; 4.7, 11, 16; 12.9; Colossians 1.11; 1 Peter 4.11; 5.10)
10. Gives a spirit of unity (Romans 15.5) among Christians
11. Gives us joy (Romans 15.13; 2 Corinthians 8.2)
12. Enriches me in every way: in speech and knowledge and good works (1 Corinthians 1.5; 2.13; 2 Corinthians 9.8, 10-11) (See #4 above)
13. Provides a way of escape from temptation (1 Corinthians 10.13)
14. Gives me grace (2 Corinthians 9.14; 12.9; Ephesians 4.7; James 4.6)
15. Blesses me in the heavenly realms with spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1.3)
16. Disciplines us for our good (Hebrews 12.10)
17. Generously gives us wisdom (James 1.5)
18. He comes near to us when we come near to him (James 4.8)
19. Cooperates with doctors and medicinal treatments to bring healing to the sick (James 5.15)

It's fascinating that we see almost nothing here about God changing our circumstances. Almost everything in the New Testament (at least 98-99%) of what God does for us internal, spiritual things. Almost none of it, if any, pertains to our external lives, our circumstances, our money, our possessions, our health, our relationships, or anything else. In contrast, probably 98% of our prayers are about our circumstances of health, money, possession, relationships, and jobs. Hm. Working inside us for our spiritual welfare is God's normal pattern of working. No wonder people get so frustrated with their prayer lives and God not answering their requests for a change of circumstances. It's not that God doesn't care about our circumstances, but his interest, by his own revelation, is in our souls.

I have to try to keep this brief here, but I have a lot to say.

A reading of the Old Testament shows us the stories of the times when God did intervene, but frankly, when you add them all up, by and large, they hardly amount to a hill of beans in most people’s lives. How many sterile women have there been in this world, and we have the story of four of them who had babies. Four out of all of history? We have a story of a time when a prophet called a bear out of the woods to devour his oppressors —one incident in all of history. The sun retreated in its path, once in history. There was a famine in the land, and God fed Elijah by ravens. What about the other hundreds of thousands of people in the land at the time? God did not intervene in their circumstances, and many of them died, as we learned from the story of the widow of Zarephath. The evidence is overwhelming.

People so often get angry at God because he doesn’t intervene or help them. Is it justified? No—He never taught them that He would intervene, or ever promised intervention. People misunderstand what God is up to in the world and what His normal course of action in it is. What God is up to in the world is creating a holy people for Himself, and by his own revelation he does that primarily through work inside the soul. Does this lead us to despair, or to feel like the victims of circumstance? Absolutely not. Circumstance from cause and effect is a reality, but we’re not fatalistic victims. The Bible never teaches that we are victims of fate.

God, for the most part, and under normal conditions, is remarkably uninvolved in the circumstances—the events—of our lives. For the most part, and sometimes completely, he does not do anything to change the circumstances of our lives. Many people probably go their whole lives with God doing hardly anything for them regarding their circumstances. Some people get to see him do one or two things that are undeniable in their lives. But we must understand the hard truth that it is against the character and nature of God to interfere in our circumstances, and he hardly ever does it.

The Bible is a record of the times when God has intervened, and most of those are because he absolutely had to to bring about his plan of salvation. So the Bible is full of examples of God intervening in spectacular ways, but a closer reading shows that he normally does no such thing. We also must realize that when in the Old Testament we see a record of God’s intervention it’s almost always with kings and prophets and almost never with common people. Their lives go on as they normally would have, full of whatever successes and failures, pleasures and suffering that the course of events would normally bring them. God doesn’t stop anything; he doesn’t change anything. Even in the lives of the prophets and priests, his interventions are minimal. There are maybe four times in the life of Abraham when we see such interventions; maybe seven in the life of David. What is shocking is that these interventions are recorded for us as an abnormally large number. There are a lot of interventions in the life of Moses, but that was a very special time, just as the time of Jesus, and the book of Acts. Those are not normal eras in any sense of the word, and they are not to be taken as normative.

What does this say about life? That God created life to run by cause and effect, and it does. Life takes its course. Do we have a problem with that? Many do, but we need to learn not to. Life happens, and that’s that. It’s God’s design. If you want the circumstances of your life changed, it most likely isn’t going to happen. What does this say about God? It makes clear that God’s interest is in spiritual things, not circumstantial ones. His actions are within the heart and soul far more than within circumstances. He will intervene in circumstances when it suits His purposes, and the Scripture is full of what, in reality, are the isolated examples of that. People’s lives also contain limited examples of God’s direct intervention – but those are very limited. Does it mean that God doesn’t care? On the contrary, He cares greatly about our souls, and he works within any circumstance to make us into His. But change the circumstances? Hardly ever.