In the
Book of Exodus we read about a diabolical and oppressive government. The people
of the Lord were experiencing tyranny and injustice. The people prayed and
cried out. As I look at closely at the story of the exodus, the children of
Israel prayed, and then things got a lot worse before they ever started to get
better. In Exodus
5,
Moses told Pharaoh, "Let my people go!" The Pharaoh's response was not to say,
"Thank you, Moses, for bringing this gross injustice to my attention. I'll
start the paperwork to expedite their release right away." Instead, his
response was to take away the straw that the Hebrews had used to make bricks.
Moses's career as a labor union negotiator did not get off to a brilliant
start. Pharaoh became more hard-hearted and oppressive than ever. Right before
the ultimate deliverance at the Red Sea, Israel was between a rock and a hard
place — the Red Sea in front of them and the Egyptian army behind them. God
chose not to answer fully and finally until things were as bad as they could
possibly be.
Our
God has the freedom to answer our prayers in ways that we don't anticipate or
understand. In the words of Jerry Sitser that prayer does not normally "send an
arrow straight to the target" but rather more often than not "shoots an arrow
that curves and ricochets and even appears to fall short."
We can
pray for our children to come back to the Lord and they become more determined
than ever to go the other way. We can pray for God to deliver a friend from an
addiction and observe the addiction grip them more tightly. We can pray for God
to meet our needs and then watch our bank account get smaller.
We may
become frustrated or resentful (or perhaps even stop praying) in these
situations because we erroneously believe that God's promise to answer prayer is
our guarantee of a smooth and easy life with no bumps in the road. The reality
is, however, that God sometimes responds to prayer by bringing more difficulty
into our lives. Adversity deepens character, develops faith, and drives us to
more desperately seek God. The difficulty may even become the means by which
God answers our prayers, just as it was for the Hebrew slaves in
Egypt. We need to remember that unanswered prayer is not an
indication of God's lack of power.
The
delay in Israel's answer to prayer had nothing to do with God experiencing a
power outage. God's power is demonstrated throughout the book of Exodus.
In the
contest between Moses and Pharaoh, there was first a battle of dueling words. In Exodus 5:1, Moses went to
Pharaoh to announce, "This
is what the Lord says — 'Let my people go.'" Then in Exodus
5:10,
Pharaoh's response through his messengers was, "This is what the Pharaoh
says — "No more straw to make bricks for these lazy
Hebrews.'"
There
was a battle of dueling powers in the
story of the plagues in Exodus
7-Exodus
13.
The plagues were not merely Hollywood-style special effects; they were carefully
designed polemics to emphasize the greatness of our Lord over the gods of
Egypt. The Egyptians believed that Hapi protected the Nile, and so God turned
the Nile into blood. They believed that Ra was the god of the sun, and so God
turned out the lights. They believed that the Pharaoh was a god incarnate, and
so God took the life of his firstborn son.
Finally, at the Red Sea in Exodus
14,
in a battle of dueling warriors, God the
Divine Warrior, utterly destroyed the Egyptian army. The most powerful army on
earth in that day was no match for the Lord. Pharaoh found out the hard way who
had real power.
Unanswered prayer doesn't void or negate the
omnipotence of God. There is nothing we can ask our Lord, that is beyond his
ability to accomplish, but the greatest demonstrations of His power are often
found in His unexpected answers to our unanswered prayers.
I was
reading about a man named Bob Mitchell who prayed for the safety of five young
missionaries who went to the jungles of South America in order to share the
gospel with the Auca Indians, but Jim Elliott and his four companions were
brutally murdered. Years later, Mitchell attended a conference in Europe and
met an evangelist who was one of the Auca Indians that had murdered Elliott and
the other missionaries. Only God could orchestrate that kind of answer to an
unanswered prayer.
In the
exodus the power of God was not something placed at Israel's disposal with the
flip of a switch or the pull of a lever. The how, where, and when of God's
answer is determined by what brings Him the greatest amount of glory. When God
answered, it was done in a way so that even Pharaoh himself could not deny that
Yahweh was God over all.
We pray
to the same God as these Hebrew slaves. Whether God's answer to our prayers is
"Yes," "No," or "Wait," his answers are always the perfect expression of his
love and power in our lives. "Lord , listen to your children
praying".
In Him who
answers when we pray:
Brown
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