When God doesn't do what you want - Midweek Message 19th August 2020

 

Dear Friends,

For the LORD God is a sun and shield: the LORD will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly. (Psalm 84.11 AV)

At one point during the (Zoom) Men’s Breakfast last Saturday, we were discussing prayer and someone mentioned the personal and painful challenge of coming to God to ask for something in relation to something or someone precious to you, and doing so, recognising that what you want and are asking for may not coincide with God’s plans and purposes. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with a situation where God might not do(or hasn’t done) what we ask (or asked for), what we want (or wanted)? It’s a very live issue for anyone who has ever prayed and worth thinking about a little further.

I was reminded of the response of George Muller to that kind of experience in his own life.  Muller was a German Christian from the 19^th century who, early in his adult life, came to live and work in England. He was a man who took God, his Word and prayer very seriously. He is best known for setting up and overseeing 5 orphanages in the Bristol area which, during his lifetime, cared for 10,024 orphans. In financing all that, Muller never conducted a fund-raising campaign, never took a salary for himself, never took out a loan, never went into debt and never asked anyone directly for money. He simply prayed and asked God to supply and He did, often in remarkable ways. Muller was not being reckless in this. He did all this with a very a particular goal in mind. He wanted to encourage Christian people that God could be trusted. He stated his primary goal in setting up these orphanages and financing them in the manner he did, in these terms:  ‘The first and primary object of the work was that God might be magnified by the fact that the orphans under my care are provided with all they need only by prayer and faith, without anyone being asked by me or my fellow labourers so that it may be seen that God is faithful still and hears prayer still.’ He wanted to provide a tangible demonstration that God was there, and he heard and answered the prayers of his people.

So here was man of prayer – a man who saw God answer countless prayers over so many years and thus encouraged others: ‘Be assured, if you walk with Him and look to Him, and expect help from Him, He will never fail you.’  That is what makes his response to one particularly painful episode in his life so significant. George Muller married Mary Groves when he was 25 and they were married for 39 years. They loved one another deeply. He described his love for her in these terms: ‘Were we happy? Verily we were. With every year our happiness increased more and more. I never saw my beloved wife at any time, when I met her unexpectedly anywhere in Bristol, without being delighted so to do. I never met her even in the Orphan Houses, without my heart being delighted so to do. Day by day, as we met in our dressing room, at the Orphan Houses, to wash our hands before dinner and tea, I was delighted to meet her, and she was equally pleased to see me. Thousands of times I told her, “My darling, I never saw you at any time, since you became my wife, without my being delighted to see you.”’

You can therefore imagine his pain and heartache, when her doctor diagnosed rheumatic fever in Mary and warned him to fear the worst. Instinctively, he would have turned to God in prayer to ask for her healing. She did, however, die and he was indeed heartbroken and yet he described his immediate response in these terms:  “I fell on my knees and thanked God for her release, and for having taken her to Himself, and asked the Lord to help and support us.” Then a few days later, he preached at her funeral and in the sermon, in effect explained what had enabled him to respond to her death as he did and to trust that God had not failed:

‘The last portion of scripture which I read to my precious wife was this: “The Lord God is a sun and shield, the Lord will give grace and glory, no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” Now, if we have believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we have received grace, we are partakers of grace, and to all such he will give glory also. I said to myself, with regard to the latter part, “no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly”—I am in myself a poor worthless sinner, but I have been saved by the blood of Christ; and I do not live in sin, I walk uprightly before God. Therefore, if it is really good for me, my darling wife will be raised up again; sick as she is. God will restore her again. But if she is not restored again, then it would not be a good thing for me. And so my heart was at rest. I was satisfied with God. And all this springs, as I have often said before, from taking God at his word, believing what he says.’   

In other words, he took seriously God’s promise contained in that verse from Psalm 84.11: no good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly but at the same time recognised that he had to allow God to define what was ‘good’.  He adopted the same trusting frame of mind and spirit that Job displayed when he suffered pain and loss: The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised." (Job 1:21); that Eli displayed when he heard from the young Samuel that the LORD was to remove the priesthood from his family: He is the LORD; let him do what is good in his eyes. (1 Samuel 3:18); and which the Lord Jesus supremely displayed in the Garden of Gethsemane when the full horror of his impending death reduced him to trembling tears and he prayed, Father…. take this cup from me but then continued, …yet not what I will, but what you will." (Mark 14:36)   In each situation there was a submissive and trusting willingness to allow God in his wisdom and eternal purposes to determine what was good in his eyes and by implication to answer prayer accordingly.

Muller recognised, as Jesus in Gethsemane exemplified and taught in the Lord’s prayer (see Matthew 6.10), that prayer was, and is, an instrument, not primarily for us to get God to do what we want, but rather for the doing of His will, his good and perfect will, which is always ultimately and eternally in the very best interests of His people. And wherever we are struggling to accept the goodness of God’s will for us, then let me encourage us to go back to Gethsemane and see Jesus struggling with the prospect of the cross but yet embracing God’s will for him in relation to it. As we witness him there remember that cross -  God the Father’s will for him -  was for us and our eternal good.

God can be trusted that whatever he gives in answer to prayer and whatever he withholds will ultimately work together for good for those who love God and are called according to his purpose (Romans 8.28)

Yours in that confidence,

David

PS if you would like to know a little more about George Muller then have a look at this address about him, which is where I found much of the material relating to him (click here)

PPS If you would like to think a little further about praying for God’s will to be done in your life have a listen to this song by City Alight found here