There is a version of this series I could have written where every prayer gets answered, and it would have been easier and worse.

Because you already know that some prayers do not get what they asked for. You have prayed one. Maybe you are praying it right now, and you have read six posts about boldness and persistence and you have been waiting to see whether I would deal with the thing you actually came here about.

So here it is. Scripture contains prayers that God refused. He refused them from people He loved, people who were praying in His will as far as anyone could tell, people who asked more than once. And He gave them no formula for fixing it, because their prayers were not broken.

The Apostle Who Asked Three Times

And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I be exalted above measure. Concerning this thing I pleaded with the Lord three times that it might depart from me.

2 Corinthians 12:7-8 NKJV

Thorn is skolops (σκόλοψ), Strong’s G4647, and thorn is a soft translation. The word means a stake, a pointed piece of wood, the kind of thing men were impaled on. Buffet is kolaphizō (κολαφίζω), G2852, to strike with a closed fist. It is the same verb used of what the soldiers did to Jesus during the trial.

Nobody knows what the thorn was, and I think that is deliberate. If Paul had named it, every reader with a different affliction would have written himself out of the passage.

What we do know is that Paul had raised the dead and had not been able to pray this off himself. He asked three times. And the answer came back.

My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.

2 Corinthians 12:9 NKJV

Sufficient is arkeō (ἀρκέω), G714, and Paul writes it in the present tense. Not it will be sufficient someday when this is over. It is sufficient, continuously, while the fist is still landing.

Notice that God did not explain the thorn away and did not remove it. He gave Paul Himself instead, and Paul spent the rest of the chapter arguing that he came out ahead on the trade. I believe he meant it. I also notice it took him three refusals and some years to get there.

The Man Who Was Told to Stop Asking

Deuteronomy 3 contains one of the hardest exchanges in the Bible, and most people have never read it.

Moses has led the nation for forty years. He is standing at the border of everything he has worked for. And he asks, in what he tells us was a plea, to be allowed to cross over and see the good land.

But the LORD was angry with me on your account, and would not listen to me. So the LORD said to me: “Enough of that! Speak no more to Me of this matter.”

Deuteronomy 3:26 NKJV

The Hebrew is blunter than the English. Something close to enough for you. Stop. This subject is closed.

There is no explanation offered beyond the one Moses already knew, and no compensation named. He is told to climb Pisgah, look at the land with his own eyes, and die on the mountain. That is the whole answer.

Now hold that next to something that happens fourteen hundred years later. Matthew 17. A high mountain, and two men standing there talking with a transfigured Christ. One of them is Moses.

He got into the land. Not on the terms he asked for, and not on the schedule he wanted, and he had to die first. But he stood there in the end, and he was standing next to the Messiah when he did.

I offer that carefully. It is not a formula. Nobody gets to promise a grieving man that his particular no will resolve like that inside his lifetime, because the text does not promise it. What the text does is warn us against calling the story finished before God has finished telling it.

The King on the Floor

Second Samuel 12 gives us David after Nathan has confronted him. The child is sick. David fasts and lies on the ground all night, and does it again the next night, for seven days. His servants are afraid to tell him when the child dies, because they think the news will break him.

Then he hears them whispering, and he asks, and they tell him. And he gets up off the floor, washes, changes his clothes, goes into the house of the Lord, and worships. Then he eats.

But now he is dead; why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me.

2 Samuel 12:23 NKJV

I have watched people read that as coldness. It is not. It is a man who prayed with everything he had while there was anything to pray for, and who did not pretend once the answer came. And the last line of it is the only comfort he has, and he takes it. I shall go to him.

The Garden

And then there is the prayer that settles the question forever.

O My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will.

Matthew 26:39 NKJV

He asked three times. Same as Paul. Matthew tells us He prayed the same words the third time, which means the repetition was not a failure of faith and not a lack of clarity. It was a man who did not want to do this asking again in case anything had changed.

Nothing changed. The cup did not pass. The Son of God, praying to the Father who loved Him, in perfect faith, with no unconfessed sin and no wrong motive anywhere in the request, asked for something and did not receive it.

So we can close the file on one bad idea permanently. An unanswered prayer is not evidence of a defect in the one praying. If it were, Gethsemane would be the proof text against Christ Himself.

Nevertheless

Everything in this post turns on one word, and Jesus is the one who put it there.

Nevertheless. Not what I will, but what You will.

Understand what that word is not. It is not the sentence you tack onto the end of a prayer to protect yourself from disappointment. Plenty of us have prayed a bold request and then hedged it at the last second so that whatever happens, we can say we saw it coming. That is not surrender. That is insurance.

Look at where the nevertheless sits in the garden. It comes after the honest ask, not instead of it. He said what He wanted first. He said it plainly, three times, on the ground, sweating blood. Then He submitted.

Ask like that. Tell Him exactly what you want, in words that would embarrass you if somebody heard them. And then say nevertheless, and mean it, knowing that the man who prayed it first got a no and that the no is the reason you are allowed in the room at all.

Going Deeper

Read 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 and Matthew 26:36-46 in the same sitting. Then read Hebrews 5:7, which says His prayers in the days of His flesh were heard. Heard, and still refused. Sit with that one for a while.

Next week the series ends where some of you are living. In the silence.