0:00  
Maybe you've been praying about something for a long time, and you're wondering, Should I keep going? This episode's for you. It's a Why to Christians podcast. Hey, welcome to the show. My name is Mark Dickey. I host the afternoon show on the Bridge Radio Station. My co-hosts are Pastor Josh and Pastor Bert. Guys, have you ever felt like you were praying and praying and just not getting any answers, and you're like, what am I even doing here?

0:29  
Never. It's probably because I have more faith than you

0:32  
both.

0:36  
Josh, has this ever happened to you?

0:38  
Apparently it has. Yeah, I have less faith than Bert, so I, yeah, oh yeah, man, so many times you pray for something and it doesn't seem like

0:47  
anything's happening.

0:48  
Start wondering, like, why, why am I, why should I even continue?

0:52  
That I think that's probably common

0:53  
to most Christians, if not all Christians in this world. Yeah,

0:57  
it's, it's interesting, because, like, we see in the Bible that we're supposed to pray without ceasing, yet I'm really curious to hear what you guys say, because for most of my Christian walk I have kind of associated silence with no, like, oh, God's not answering, maybe I'm just asking a stupid question, maybe it's a cold shoulder,

1:20  
yeah,

1:20  
like, oh, Mark, why would you even, why would you even ask for that? But, like, if we're supposed to keep on praying, how do I know when I'm supposed to take silence as a no, or when? When should I stop praying?

1:33  
Yeah, so funny thing you say that. So now, with where I'm at, my Christian life is, I don't take silences. No, I actually take silence as a continue. Yeah, that's where silence is for me now. So I come in and ask if I'm not feeling anything, I don't see any. I'm going to keep praying about this until the until the Lord speaks clearly through someone, through the scriptures or whatever. But yeah, I've taken silence as a key praying, and there's, and there's reasons for that. I can, and I guess we can start talking about, at least for me, what areas of scripture where I think the Bible means that we should continue praying in every step.

2:16  
Yeah, let's go.

2:17  
Yeah, I think one of the first ones is clearly whatever scripture commands clearly, whatever God commands us to do. So, praying for the salvation of other people, as long as they're breathing. I'm praying, God, please save them. I'm praying for personal holiness and transformation. I think that's a consistent thing that we should pray for. Always praying for wisdom in whatever situation I'm in, always, always doing that, endurance, keeping the faith to the very end, just just all those things that the scripture has clearly come in, and I think it means that we should never stop seeking God about those things, never asking, never stopping to ask Him for strength and for the ability to do that every day. I think another place for two is something that I've come to is to keep praying if I keep feeling burdened by it, and so one of the things I think I've done clearly in the past is if my heart's burdened, oh, I go, "Oh, it's because I haven't let it go yet, and so I should like stop praying about it, like no, now I've moved to the other way, as long as it comes into my heart to keep calling out the Lord about it. I get that from First Peter five, where it says casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you. And so the idea is, so if the burden remains, then I, then I need to keep casting, then He wants to keep hearing, and He's still forming my heart about it, and it's not that I haven't, like, let it go. It's that I am to keep unburdening myself.

3:52  
Well, I think, I think you see scripture for this, though. Think about this: is the action of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane? Right, so Jesus goes, like, he knows he's going to die. He's left last supper, and he says, "You know, Father, if it's possible for this cup to pass, yet not as I will, but thy will be done. And he repeats it like he has to keep praying it. I think that's probably the place of prayer that we want to get to. I so wholeheartedly agree with that, that idea of like I pray, and like until I am able to release it to God, right? Like, until I can say, Lord, your will be done.

4:28  
Yeah,

4:28  
probably should keep praying on it.

4:30  
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's this idea that prayer is not just to, like, I guess discover God's will, but also to depend on God, this place of dependence that I don't have the strength to deal with what keeps coming into my heart, and so every time it comes, I, I need his greater shoulders, I need him to, to, to cast on to, and so it's this idea of just always going back until,

4:56  
yeah, let me, let me ask you, like, I just, what. I would kind of wonder with that, would be okay. What's the line between where I want to release this to you, because it's an area where I'm afraid thy will be done, and saying thy will be done, but almost as a dodge, like I'm saying that because I actually expect you to do anything, you know, I'm saying, like I believe and trust everything to the Lord, but how many times do I pray with no expectation that the prayer actually matters, or how many times have I prayed and the prayer is small enough where if God doesn't do it, I can, you know, I'm saying,

5:31  
yeah.

5:32  
So, like, what, like, what's that line there? I don't know that I have it.

5:36  
That's a solid question. I don't know if I have it either. I think, man. Here's, here's what's coming to my mind. Prayer reminds me of Jesus' parable, where He says, I think in Luke 18, Jesus tells this parable that we should always pray and never lose heart, and the, and I think the context following that is that prayer is for people who realize they are weak, not for those who realize they're strong. So, and so, what I'm getting from what you're asking is, then, yeah, if I think I can, if I think I got this and I don't really need God, then my prayers will will follow that too.

6:26  
Well, I mean, or it's just like, if you ever notice, where you pray minimally or not at all, because maybe you had a big prayer that you were asking God for it, and the answer was no, your heart was broken, so you don't put yourself out there. They kind of expectation or hope, so that you're not disappointed or hurt again. I've known plenty of places like that in my own life, or with people that I've known over the years, and yet the same Jesus who may say no, you know, yet like you referenced that, that passage there, but also like Matthew 77 right? Where you know, ask, seek, and knock, right? And the verb is there in the Greek, probably the translation will be: keep on asking, keep on seeking, keep on knocking, so that you know it'll be given to you. So there, I think I wrestle with this tension a little bit, of like there are times where it's worry. Okay, what I need to do is just trust God with the outcome, and there are other times where it's worry, and God is maybe calling me to ask Him to intervene in the outcome, but I'm afraid of if He doesn't. Does that make sense?

7:38  
Okay, so I prayed about something big. God, God, it was either no or nothing has happened. Yeah,

7:46  
like it's this, either with the idea of the Lord's will, like I believe we should seek God's will, and everything Jesus taught us to do that right. But sometimes what I've learned is my fear will mask saying your will be done as a way to not expect anything to happen. Yeah, sort of, sort of like a fatalistic, well, you know, God tells me in control, so that requires me less faith of me in the moment, because I just feel defeated, or I've been had like my heart broken or whatever, so like, how to like come back to like what's that line there? How do we know when our prayer of thy will be done really is thy will be done, but what if his will is something beyond what I hope for him to do in the present?

8:39  
It, I mean, to me it just kind of communicates that we're not fully trusting God. It's, oh, well, let me let my expectations be as low as possible, so that whatever happens, I'll be all right, I'll be okay, I'm not let down, which I guess works for the immediate, but it's not going to build your faith, and it's not.. it's kind of a bad place to be.

9:07  
Yeah, I would agree with all that too, Mark. And I would say,

9:11  
oh, and I should add, I find myself there all the time. Sure, all the time.

9:21  
Yeah, I mean, I could think of a couple of scriptures that could probably help us there, because you got you guys are not the only ones, I don't know, I don't know, I would say that's probably pretty common, but I think the comfort we find in the scriptures is where is where we find God saying things like that, he already knows what we're in need of before we ask, and that his answers are usually, if not always, more than we could ever expect back. I think also, I think also we're pushed more from God than we are willing. Do I think of, like, James four that says you don't have because you don't ask, and so what it sounds like is that this, this lack of faith that we have, one meets this God who's okay taking faith as small as a mustard seed, and even saying to us, you don't, you don't even have that, but, but I'm willing to work still, and so we have this God who's overwhelmingly willing to care and to love and to answer, even when we don't think He will care. I love her answer.

10:35  
My, my hard part, like the thing that I wrestle with, with that is it's, it's kind of my nature to just accept less, you know, and be like, oh well, we live in a fallen world, it's okay if God doesn't heal my body, yeah, it'll be perfect one day in heaven, I won't have to deal with these medical issues, yeah,

10:55  
man, but I have

10:57  
not, because I ask not, right, it's like, and here are these

10:59  
commands that are like, keep on asking, yeah, yeah, dude, I feel that tension too, and I also kind of wonder with this idea of God's will thing, maybe the unifying factor of all of it is what do I believe about God, particularly like his nature, his his likelihood to respond with goodness towards me in the land of the living, like I was talking with a guy last Sunday, I was visiting a friend's church, and I disagreed with him about some theology, namely his belief that, like, it is always God's will to heal, right, and that if somebody's not healed, that somehow lack of faith on their part or the prayers part. I think such misunderstandings, aside from scripture being like, hey, Elisha died of sickness, Timothy wasn't healed, Epaphroditus wasn't healed, Paul seems to be going blind at the end of his life. These aren't people, David had problems with body heat at the end of his life, like these don't seem to be lack of faith things, and yet God absolutely does feel throughout the scriptures. I think maybe what the confusion point is, and why I just want to bring up, as we talk about prayer, we think faith sometimes is something that we possess within ourselves that we have to drum up or make big, but the mustard seed story is precisely that, that like it's that's not this at all. Faith is not this Sam Storm said, like this: he said, faith is not faking certainty, pretending that you know what God will do. Faith is confidence in who God is, and I think that's an important distinction. Like, I believe Christ to be good, I believe Him to be a healer and redeemer, and to be a provider, and that should affect how I actually believe He is these things, and I wonder, how often, like, when, okay, you know, Lord, according to your will, but the reason I'm saying this, because I don't expect him to do anything now. What is it that I believe about his faithfulness to me? And I think that somehow that can be different sometimes between I'm going to trust, no matter what. I think that is, that's right and good, but just sometimes I find that line to be a dodge, and so I just wanted to, like, okay, like, what is it that I actually believe about God in this situation?

13:25  
What would you say to someone who thinks that they, they missed it in their prayers, and they're like, oh, I, I didn't pray hard enough, and I

13:39  
missed it,

13:40  
like something bad happened in their life, and they're blaming themselves for their lack of prayer.

13:45  
Yeah, so okay, let me paint that picture. So then there's this idea that, like, oh, if I had prayed more, things would have turned out different.

13:52  
Yeah,

13:53  
okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, we look at, we have some pictures of that in, and I think Samuel, I think one Samuel 16, Samuel's grieving over Saul, and God is like, How long are you going to grieve over this? Yeah, this is done. I, I've moved on, I've had other plans and other purposes that I'm working through, and so you're, you're sitting in this space when I'm, when what I hear from God is like, my, my ideas were so much bigger, and I had such another plan, and so in a sense, what that speaks to us is that there's a time where grieving over a closed door shouldn't keep us from obeying the thing he's leading you into, and so there is a time where it's like, oh yeah, could something have happened different, I don't know, likely not, but whether we know or not, no, we just know. Here's, here's, here's where God is taking me now. Yeah,

14:50  
well, no, I just think about, like, with that idea, you know, if I prayed more, something would be different. Was it a thing where the Lord had directed you to a specific amount of prayer? I mean, everybody. Pray more,

15:00  
yeah,

15:01  
like it's

15:01  
me, true,

15:02  
yeah. So, like, that define the more for me. I would just go, like, if you're in that lingering place, that doesn't sound like God to me, unless there's like a clear, you know, the Holy Spirit spoke, and He was telling you, like, you need to keep on praying, and, and don't stop, and that, and you were like, nah, I'm good, okay, that's something else, but kind of like an aimless, unending guilt that nags at you, that you could never get rid of. You can never.. you're not Doc Brown, you can have a time machine, you can't go back and undo it. Like, that doesn't sound like God to me,

15:35  
which in the last episode, shame is not the Lord's voice,

15:40  
yeah,

15:42  
yeah. Okay, great. Well, I just answered my own question. I feel like we've gone into a lot of when should I keep praying, you know, keep praying, keep going without ceasing. When should I stop praying? Yeah, I think there are a couple places where scripture is clear about when, when you should at least change your course of your prayers. I think one is, I think, stop praying when it's really about your desires, what you want versus what God wills. James four is one of the best verses to think about this, is you asking, you not, and you do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your own passions, and so in that sense the people that church wanted something, they couldn't get it naturally, and so they turned to God, like, God, get this for me, so I can have what I want, and God's like, you're wasting, you're wasting your time, like I'm not gonna do this for you, and so

16:41  
James four,

16:42  
yeah,

16:43  
that's what you said, yeah, I'm gonna do my own, yeah, and he actually

16:46  
goes on to call them adulterous people, and it's this idea, it means that their hearts are divided, they're not really after God or after His will, and really what they're flirting with is the world, and what the world, and their own passions, their own pride making themselves big, and so one of the ways I would say to someone is to diagnose your own heart and see if what you ask, if what you're asking for is would be glorifying to God, would be honoring, would be in line with His will, and so some, some, some of the questions you could ask them, if God gave me this. What would I do with

17:23  
it? I'm just thinking of when my kids are like, hey, Dad, you love donuts.

17:30  
I know it is like, you should,

17:31  
you should get donuts this morning for you,

17:37  
you know, for you. I mean, you can get a whole box if you want, that's how we pray.

17:44  
Yeah, I think sometimes we will. Okay, this idea, when do I stop praying? I've known folks over the years who sincerely loved God, and they maybe they had a terminal illness, and their fear was if they prepared for death, it was somehow a lack of faith in God to heal. I think we want to reject that kind of viewpoint. Biblically speaking, there are plenty of folks in the Scriptures who prepped for death, right, like Jacob, like Israel, He prepares his sons. I'm about to go the way of my fathers, and then he blesses all of them. David, same deal, gives instructions for Solomon after he passes, as he's ailing in his body. Paul expects his death to be seen in Second Timothy. Jesus himself even prepares his disciples for his departure. I think you know if we're in a place of being troublesome, everyone to stop, or it's never wrong to not stop asking God to heal, but also practically there may be things that need to be taken care of. I would also just, I want to just reiterate the thing that you said earlier, Josh, with the idea of like, hey, there are times where God has clearly spoken and said no, you can probably stop praying them. Like, I love there's a story in Deuteronomy, it's Deuteronomy three, where, so the lead into the story is Moses, like, most of Deuteronomy is Moses' final address to the Israelites before he dies, right? Like, he's brought them to the edge of the promised land. God has told him you can't go in because he publicly rebels against God, right. And what makes me laugh internally about Moses's final address is after everything that's happened with him, he still doesn't necessarily get it, so like he still blames the Israelites for him not going in, even though he lost his temper and disobeyed God. He's like, because of you, like God said, right. And then, but he gives this little snapshot where you know, like, the Lord has told him you're not going in and. He and that's what he says, like, so the idea is that he keeps going to guys, but Lord, please let me go in right, and in Deuteronomy 326 he says, and the Lord said to me, "Enough from you, do not speak to me of this matter again, like God literally says to Moses, "No more praying, like I'm not doing it, I think, unless we have a clear from the Lord, stop, I'm not going to do it. I'd be more inclined to keep on praying. I mean, again, not on issues where maybe the scriptures have said this is wrong, don't don't ask for this or whatever, but like, if there's sort of an uncertain future, unless there's like a clear Bible against it, I'd probably keep on praying,

20:42  
yeah, yeah, think of like Paul and the thorn in the flesh, right, three times I went to the Lord, masked them,

20:49  
yeah, and that doesn't mean like three individual times, the idea would be periods like he spent seasons of his life asking, yeah,

20:55  
yep, and the response was different from what he had intended, and sometimes I think that's it. It's not by stop praying, maybe to maybe clarify. It might be, it might also mean like change your change your perspective. If God is not changing this thing, then it's not like that He stopped working in it. It's not that like He's done with you, right? He, he has, he has changed his perspective and his goals, and so now you're the one who needs to go to, like, okay, direct me in the path that you're headed to. And so, for Paul, at that time, it was God's response was, "My grace is sufficient. I gave you this thing so that you wouldn't be prideful. Well, that changes his whole attitude of praying, and what he should be thinking about, and so sometimes that's what we need to do. So, when we prayed and prayed and prayed and prayed, and it seems like a clear no. Then, then, Lord, where, where are you directing if this is not changing? What are you doing that that I should be following? Think, I think it's a good way to think about it.

21:59  
Hey, thanks for joining us on this little journey through when should I stop praying? Should I keep praying? Hey, odds are good you should keep praying, unless you got a definite no from the Lord. I also want to encourage you, if there's something specific that you're praying for, do some searches, see where in the Bible that people have asked for what you're asking for in the past, or things like that, and see how God has responded. You might be waiting for an answer that's actually already in the book, waiting for you to find it. So, thanks for watching, and if you have ideas for future episodes, email them to podcast at We Are The bridge.org or email them, or comment them in the comments. Thanks for watching.

22:45  
Thank.

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