No Doubt

I had no doubt that my favorite show would be picked up for a third season.  (News Flash: White Collar’s been picked up for a third season!) I had no doubt that it would be rainy and cold this morning when I woke up.  I had no doubt that the cat would throw up on something porous while I was at work today.  I had no doubt that my alarm would go off this morning and that the lights would turn on and my car would start.

Every day, I demonstrate faith.  And usually, that faith is placed in completely inconsequential things.  So why do I pray the way I do?

“Wait, what?  How did you make the leap from the weather and cat throw-up to prayer?” you ask.  Oh, just making sure you’re with me. 

James 1:6-8 says:

But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind.  That man should not think he will receive anything from the Lord; he is a double-minded man, unstable in all he does.

Confession time: For a long time now, I have been that double-minded, unstable person.  My prayers, I realized, have been a study in contradiction:  “God, please give me X.”  And then a minute or so later, “Please help me deal correctly with the disappointment when I don’t get X.”  No wonder I haven’t seen positive answers to my prayers!  Basically, I’m saying to God, “I’d like You to please do this for me, but I seriously doubt You’re going to.” 

And as a result, I’m also saying, “All that stuff You say in the Bible about how much You love me, and how You have a plan for me and how You give me good gifts?  I don’t believe any of it.”  I have to believe that one of the reasons I’ve experienced so much disappointment in the last couple of years is because of how I’ve been praying.

Do you pray like that sometimes?  Do you ask God for something while at the very same time bracing for disappointment?  Do you wonder why you experience disappointment more often than you do the joy of an affirmative answer to prayer?

If so, proof-read your prayers.  It may very well be that the first half of your prayer is contradicted by the second half.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with asking God to help you keep your attitude in check, and there’s nothing wrong with asking that His will, and only His will be done in your life.  But when we approach God expecting Him to not do what we want, we not only set ourselves up for frustration, we strip prayer of some of its power.

God is not easily confused.  In fact, God is not ever confused.  He knows what we want before we even ask it.  And God can answer any prayer.  But do you think you’d be willing to grant a friend’s request if she said, “Would you please do this for me?  I know you won’t though.  I really wish you would, but I’m expecting you to say no”?  (I believe the old-fashioned term for this type of person is “wishy-washy”.)

Not only would you most likely not grant the request (if you could even find it in there anywhere), I bet you’d be a little insulted too.  Does your friend think you care that little for her?  Does she think you’re that powerless to help her?  Does she think you’re even friends?

I haven’t asked Him, but I’m guessing God feels the same way when we pray for something, but expect nothing.  It’s no wonder we have so many “unanswered” prayers!   Or, maybe it’s just me…

 

God-ordained failure

A couple of months ago, I had a job interview.  It went really well and I was called for a second interview.  That one went really well too and I was told by some people I knew in the organization that the interview team was very impressed with me.  I had prayed about the job opening before I applied for it and I felt completely at peace about it – like I had gotten the green light from God.  I was excited that I was finally going to have a job!  Imagine my surprise and disappointment when I got a letter a few days later saying that the position had been offered to someone else.  Part of me was able to say, “Ok God.  I trust You”.  But the rest of me just didn’t understand what had happened.  I was so sure this was my job.  I was so sure God had finally answered my prayers (and the prayers of countless other people literally around the world who’d been asking God for a job on my behalf).  But He hadn’t.  And I was confused.

A similar thing happened to the people of Israel in the book of Judges.  Some men in the tribe of Benjamin had committed a horrific sin against a fellow Israelite and the rest of the nation decided to go to war against Benjamin to punish them for what they had done. 

They gathered themselves at Bethel and asked God who should go fight the Benjamites first.  God told them to send Judah first.  So the men of Judah went and were soundly defeated.  The Israelites went back to God, confused and disappointed.  They asked God what they should do and He told them to go fight again.  And again, they were soundly defeated. 

What was going on here?  It wasn’t as if they just went up to fight Benjamin on their own.  They specifically asked for God’s guidance and they did exactly what He told them to do.  And they failed.  Repeatedly.

This story makes me see something I had never seen before.  Sometimes, even when we ask for (and receive) God’s blessing in an endeavor, we still fail.  Our first instinct is usually to throw our hands up in frustration and get mad at God for leading us into a trap.  But look at what Israel did: They went back to God a third time and asked again what they should do.  Again, God told them to go fight, but this time, He told them that they would win.  I see some principles here that we can apply to our own failures and disappointments:

• God’s blessing does not always equal immediate success.  This one is hard to accept, but it’s true.  We’re so conditioned to believe that if we’re following God’s will, life should work out well for us.  The Bible does not teach that and we do ourselves a great disservice if we refuse to accept the truth of God’s word.
• Failure is sometimes ordained by God, and is not always punishment or a tool of satan.  Failure is an opportunity.  We can either react to it with bitterness and resentment, or we can take hold of it and use it to make changes in our lives, to increase our faith and to get a better understanding of God’s sovereignty and faithfulness.
• When faced with failure, our best course of action is to revisit the issue with God to make sure we’re still moving in the right direction.  Perhaps we missed something or allowed our own desires to cloud what we thought God was telling us to do.  On the other hand, we may very well be doing exactly what He wants us to do and we are simply in a time of testing and growing.  But unless we remain in constant contact, we will never know.
• Even after we succeed, we may never understand the reason behind our past failures.  There is no explanation in the Bible for Israel’s defeats and there is no explanation for their final success.  We’re simply told that they prayed, they failed, they prayed, they failed, they prayed, they succeeded.  Nothing more. 

All too often, we see failure as a negative thing.  We see it with finality.  But the Bible doesn’t see it that way.  Failure is part of life and it’s necessary for growth.  It’s not something we should be afraid of.  In fact, for the mature Christian, perhaps it’s something we should look forward to…

What have you learned about failure?  Has success ever ended up being a bad thing for you?