Failure in Prayer
Perhaps the major reason prayer fails is because we don’t understand faith.
Faith has been heralded for its importance, trumpeted for its outcomes, lionized for its heroes, lauded for its accessibility, and subsequently summoned from every believer—but without explanation!
To commend faith without explaining faith makes no sense. Let's make a little progress now.
God could have made a “feel like” world, promising desirable results so long as we experienced certain feelings. He could have also made a “think like” world, assuring certain rewards once we got our theology right. Then again, God could have made a “do like” world, pledging favorable outcomes on the basis of our good deeds.
But while there is a place for feeling, thinking, and doing, this is not the kind of world God made. Instead, God made a faith world, declaring four times in his Word, “the just shall live by faith” (Habakkuk 2:4; Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38).
Matthew 9:29 suggests the exactitude of faith when it quotes Jesus, saying, “According to your faith let it be to you.” In other words, where we are in our prayer life is exactly proportioned to our faith! And the same is ultimately true with our financial life, our family life, and our ministry. Every dimension of life, in the end, will convey the status of our faith.
Affirming this truth, J.C. Ryle observed: “In walking with God, a man will go just as far as he believes and no farther. His life will always be proportioned to his faith. His peace, his patience, his courage, his zeal, his works—all will be according to his faith.”
Actions, emotions, and cognitions aren’t always reliable predictors, but there is an exactitude that belongs to faith that belongs to no other spiritual quality. Faith, or the lack of it, is the one unerring determinant of a person’s progress in spiritual life.
Since faith is the only way to lay hold of God—in conversion and in every other aspect of the abundant life—we must understand how to make a faith transaction with God.
The Differences Between Hope and Faith
Explaining how faith works requires first distinguishing hope from faith. They are not the same.
Many believers will go through life, as the song says, “wishing and a hoping.” But according to Scripture, hope isn’t the victory, faith is (I John 5:4). This is why distinctions between these two qualities need to be set forth.
The first distinction has to do with time. A.B. Simpson writes, “The difference between faith and hope is that hope is always in the future, and faith is always in the present.”
Hope is expecting; faith is accepting.
Hope believes, faith receives.
Hope inspires; faith acquires.
Hope waits, faith takes.
Many Christians fail to understand why so many Bible promises haven’t been fulfilled in their lives. They believe these promises are true, so why aren’t they being fulfilled?
This question troubles them even more when the generosity of God is further extoled in Ephesians 3:20: God will do exceedingly beyond all that we ask and think.
He will? Thus far, there’s little evidence of that! God hasn’t done even half of what they’ve asked for!
Maybe they were asking with hope instead of asking in faith,
Philippians 4:6 says we are to make our requests unto God “with thanksgiving.” This is an example of faith taking. We are to verbally thank God in advance for answering our prayer requests.
However, we do need to let God “blue pencil” that request first. With a yielded spirit, we should seek his guidance (James 4:3-5)—not wanting to presume, totally willing to amend—before we launch in faith.
Praying Without Faith
An example of praying without faith is seen in the Book of Acts.
Remember Rhoda? We are introduced to her in the book of Acts. The Jerusalem church was in a time of crisis. The head of the church, James, had been executed, and now the authorities had arrested Peter.
Not wanting Peter to suffer the same fate, believers gathered to pray for his protection. They prayed and they prayed, seeking an intervention by Almighty God.
Then a knock came to the door. It was Rhoda who opened the door. And, lo and behold, before her stood the answer to their prayers—Peter!
So, what did she do? She closed the door!
Rhoda couldn’t believe that their prayers were actually answered!
More mystifying yet, she then goes inside to tell the others, it was only an angel at the door.
Only an angel? And she would shut the door in the face of an angel? Really?
Many people pray with an assurance just like Rhoda’s. Their prayer may be long; their prayer may be voiced with great gusts of emotion. But even so, they have no confidence at all that their prayers are going to be answered.
The notion that God answers every prayer with a “yes,” “no,” or “not yet” is a deception that keeps people from learning how to pray. By believing something like this, there’s a ready answer for unanswered prayer. So—poof! —the problem vanishes.
A view like this actually lowers expectation for answered prayer by assuming at the outset that the prayers we offer are often fatally flawed and thus out of the will of God. The exact opposite of this thought is that God will enable us to pray prayers that he will say “Yes” and “Amen” to (II Corinthians 1:20) and thus release Heaven’s power.
There is a biblical component of faith that should be mentioned here because it is so basic to our progress in faith, and has been so since the first day we were saved.
How did we get saved? Romans 10:10 says we believed in our heart and confessed with our mouth. Well, then, keep doing that. Colossians 2:6 says that in the same way you received Jesus, walk in him. You walk by faith when you believe a scriptural promise and speak it.
G.D. Watson reflected the entire testimony of Scripture on this issue when he wrote that “your faith is not perfect until that faith comes out of your mouth.” Watson then declared: “Dumb faith, say-nothing faith, cowardly faith, does not have the respect of God or angels .…”
To further clarify: Our faith is initially exercised when we speak that which we are claiming in Jesus' name. And it is consummately exercised when we keep speaking it—now in praise and not in petition—despite a silent heaven and a bleak earth.
What we actually feel while we speak, or after we speak, means nothing. F.B. Meyer counseled, “We may not feel that we have received. We base our faith on the unfailing faithfulness of God.” He is always faithful to what he promised!
Alexander Maclaren, one of the greatest preachers Scotland ever produced, made a shrewd observation when he said, “The only real calamity in life is to lose one’s faith in God.” Because if the Christian journey is a “faith to faith” enterprise (Romans 1:17) that secures a “grace for grace” response (John 1:16) and brings a “glory to glory” result (II Corinthians 3:18), then the absence of faith, the one quality triggering this sequence, is calamitous.
Instead of “faith to faith,” the replacing dynamic becomes doubt to doubt. And instead of “grace for grace,” the resulting operation becomes self-effort to self-effort. And instead of “glory to glory,” the regrettable consequences are mediocrity to mediocrity, or misery to misery. This is what invariably happens whenever there is a lack of faith.
Once we learn how to pray in faith, our whole spiritual biography will be encapsulated by these wonderful scriptural words: From glory to glory! This is the enviable outcome that comes only to those who learn how to proceed from faith to faith and grace to grace.
