Answers For Unanswered Prayer...Continued page 2

1. God has the freedom to answer our prayers in ways that we don’t anticipate or understand. Jerry Sitser reminds us 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.”2 Because of a recent move, his family has been praying for the home that he own in Ohio to sell for more than a year. Then, he finally received an offer, had a contract, and our prayers were answered. While waiting for the deal to be finalized, a rain storm flooded the lower level of his house and now his house is back on the market.
   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 watch our bank account get smaller.
   We become frustrated or resentful (or perhaps even stop praying) in these situations because we believe that God’s promise to answer prayer is our guarantee of a smooth and easy life with no bumps in the road. We trust God and he fills the orders. The reality is that God sometimes responds to prayer by bringing more difficulty into our lives. That 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 like it was for the Hebrew slaves down in Egypt.
   IV. 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 all over the book of Exodus. I like to envision the exodus story as a real-life “smackdown” between God and Pharaoh, not like those of the fake variety that you see watching wrestling on television.
   In this contest, there is first of all a battle of dueling words. In Exodus 5:1, Moses goes to Pharaoh and announces, "This is what the Lord says ? 'Let my people go.'" Then in 5:10, the slave drivers announce, "This is what the Pharaoh says ? "No more straw to make bricks for these lazy Hebrews.'" There's a challenge here ? whose word is going to stand?
   
   The next thing we see is a battle of dueling snakes in Exodus 7. Aaron's rod becomes a snake in front of the Pharaoh, but the Pharaoh isn't all that impressed because his magicians perform the same trick. But then, . . . Aaron's snake eats up the Egyptian snakes. What's the point? The cobra was the symbol of the Pharaoh's power, and the Egyptians worshipped cobra-deities that were supposed to protect them. The Pharaoh isn’t ready to admit defeat, but Aaron’s snake had the first “power lunch” in history.