What if I don’t feel like God is answering my prayers?

Ask the Pastor with J.D. Greear

J.D. Greear

Religion & Spirituality, Christianity

4.8 • 630 Ratings

🗓️ 30 March 2020

⏱️ 11 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

During this uncertain time, Pastor J.D. addresses a common question Christians have about prayer. He makes it clear that God not only hears our prayers but moves as a result.

A glimpse inside this episode:

Here are some false answers:

Maybe prayer is about changing me? Not true. Lewis. Not, ask and you’ll be changed, knock and the experience makes you different. The parables (Luke 13, Luke 18) about how God answers those who persist in prayer.
Or, people wonder, maybe it’s all predestined? AA Hodge: “Eating is the pre-ordained way God has set for living.”

What should you do?

First, Many have felt this way in history (Job; Psalms; Jeremiah in Lamentations)
God rewards persistence: in this way, it does change you.
1. It is good to wait on God.
You don’t know all that God is doing:
1. John Piper: at any given point, God is doing 10,000 things, you are aware of only three of them
2. Example: Tapestries at Biltmore House
None of your prayers are wasted—God uses them all.
1. Sometimes overruling your answer for a better one!
2. The Spirit intercedes for us. Revelation: God collecting these prayers at his altar.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Lifeway Leadership Podcast Network.
0:07.0	Hey, before we jump into Ask Me Anything for today, I want to tell you something that might interest some of you.
0:11.0	We know we have a lot of you that are in new churches or church planners and you're listening to this and launching a new church or campus.
0:17.0	That's exciting work.
0:18.0	I've been a part of it several times myself, but it can also be hard work,
0:26.1	and the details can quickly become overwhelming. Getting incorporated, for example, how to build a launch team, how to coach them through tough times, how to find a location, how to market the launch.
0:30.2	There are so many different things to do. When you partner with portable church, they help you
0:34.5	navigate all of the gear that you'll need so that you don't have to get
0:37.6	bogged down with the logistical details or to deal with bad systems and the bad effects of those.
0:43.0	They're going to free you up to focus on what God called you to do as the pastor, which is to put
0:48.1	forward the mission and to steward the moment of pastoring his people. They exist to serve pastors.
0:54.4	And so if you are in a place where this might be helpful for you,
0:57.0	I would encourage you to go to portablechurch.com slash Lifeway
1:00.5	and check out what they offer.
1:02.5	And now I hope you enjoy.
1:03.9	Ask me Anything.
1:23.6	My name is Matt Love, here with J.D. Greer.
1:26.9	Appropriately six feet apart.
1:28.1	Yes, appropriately. We're doing a lot of social distancing right now. You can't tell.
1:31.4	But now, J.D., we got a question today that as I was reading is pretty interesting. So we actually
1:35.8	asked this question on our assessment for church planners for summit. So if you're a church planner,
1:41.8	you should be paying attention to this. So we actually ask them how they would respond to this question.
	...

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