Answering Hard Questions About Prayer

Recently, a good friend from my “pastoral past” wrote with some important questions about prayer. Many of us have had the same questions, but they were made much more personal for him through a recent loss and the Lord had not granted our prayers for healing. Questions in such situations can involve both the issue of unanswered prayer and the extent of the promises of answered prayer in the teachings of Jesus. Because I’ve had these kinds of questions in the past, and also recently (after he asked them), I asked for his permission to share them, along with my responses. He graciously gave it.

Here are the verses he asked about:

1. “And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”-Luke‬ ‭17‬:‭6‬ ‭ESV‬‬

2. “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”-John‬ ‭14‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬

3. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”-John‬ ‭15‬:‭7‬ ‭ESV‬‬

4. “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”-Mark‬ ‭11‬:‭23‬ ‭ESV‬‬

These verses seem to offer broad assurances that our prayers will be answered. But then we pray for healing or a miracle, and it doesn’t happen. What should we think? Do these verses mean what they say? Do I lack faith? What is Jesus really saying?

Do these questions sound familiar to you? You may have wondered the same things, especially in light of the claims made by many about these promises.

I took some time to reflect on these passages—more than I originally anticipated. I went to my commentaries and notes to do some study and review and prayer. Here is what I finally wrote back—skipping the preliminary personal words.

You’ve gone through a great loss after praying for healing. These verses would indicate that such healing is possible in answer to prayer, so why didn’t we see it, and why don’t we see it, at least more often than we do? Where are the miraculous answers to our prayers for healing?

You are not alone in these questions, as you probably know. I may not say anything new, but I hope I can help move you to a more positive understanding of what I think Jesus is saying.

Below are the verses you cited. I’ve rearranged them to put the two that use the same illustration together and then the two where Jesus gives permission to ask for big things in his name.

Uprooting mountains and trees.

1. “And the Lord said, “If you had faith like a grain of mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”-Luke‬ ‭17‬:‭6‬ ‭ESV‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

2. “Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him.”-Mark‬ ‭11‬:‭23‬ ‭ESV‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

These verses are two of the three instances where Jesus uses similar illustrations to discuss faith and prayer. The third is Matthew 17:19-20 where the disciples could not cast out a demon. When they ask why, Jesus says, “Because of your little faith. For truly, I say to you, if you have faith like a grain of mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move, and nothing will be impossible for you.”

This passage in Matthew says they failed to cast out a demon because they had “little faith,” and then says faith the size of a mustard seed (a small seed) would move a mountain from one place to another. Jesus said failure was “because you had so little faith”—they lacked any confidence in God to accomplish what they wanted him to do. Jesus had specifically given them power over demons earlier when he sent them out (Matthew 10:8), and they had cast out demons before (Luke 10:17). So here, they had failed to do what they had been able to do before. Perhaps they had begun to believe they had the power themselves and took their eyes and reliance off of God because when they ask later why they couldn’t cast this demon out, Jesus says that this kind only comes out through prayer—pointing to God’s power, not their own (see the parallel account in Mark 9:28). Jesus says it doesn’t take big faith to see answer. Faith, however small, must be in God, not us, or our past usefulness and successes. The father of the demon-possessed boy also showed his lack of faith when he said to Jesus, “if you can.” So, both the disciples and the father struggled to believe that this very difficult case was something that Jesus or the Father could and would deal with.

The Luke passage picks up the same metaphor in a different context, where Jesus had just given the “seventy times seven” instruction on forgiveness. Seeing how hard it would be to trust God to help them forgive when someone is constantly sinning against them, they think they need more faith and ask for it. But Jesus says that it isn’t a matter of the amount (or size) of their faith, but rather having the kind of faith he has been modeling—faith in God, not some supernatural experience that gives them confidence. It isn’t an amount of faith but the right kind of faith. Elsewhere, Jesus says this right kind of faith is in him and his Father—that they can and will accomplish the Father’s will in all things.

The Mark passage doesn’t mention a mustard seed but does talk about moving a mountain. It is when Peter sees the fig tree that Jesus had cursed the day before—it had withered up and died in one day. Peter is amazed, but Jesus says he shouldn’t be. His first words are, “Have faith in God!” Then he goes on to v. 23. Note how he frames it: You say something, you have no doubt in your heart but are sure it will happen (because God wills it so), and it will happen. The next verses apply this to prayer—when you ask in this kind of setting and circumstance and believe it is what will happen, you will receive it. Interestingly, the next verse, as in the Luke passage, links this to the activity of forgiving others. Apparently, having a heart that is always ready to forgive the sins of others is equivalent to throwing a mountain into the sea! It’s a BIG challenge that requires God to act. We know that God wants us to forgive, so we can ask with this kind of confidence for the ability.

Peter is told that if you command a mountain to move with the same kind of clarity that Jesus had about the fig tree, he (Peter) would see the same thing. And Peter and the apostles did, in fact, have many times where they commanded something (healing, or raising from the dead, or in one case a man being made blind for a time), and it happened. I must confess, in my own praying I do not often have the kind of confidence to say, “There is no doubt in my mind that this is what God wants here; therefore, I command it in the name of Jesus…” But Jesus is preparing the disciples to do the “greater works” he had told them they would do in his name (I talk about that below). And when the Bible says something is clearly the will of God, I can have that kind of confidence in prayer.

I also know that Jesus, who had more faith in his Father than anyone else, prayed three times that he wouldn’t die on the cross, and the Father did not give him what he asked. So, faith in the Father that is right and good does not always receive the desired answer to prayer. Notice he didn’t command the Father in the Garden, he asked. Paul asked three times for a thorn in the flesh to be removed, and it wasn’t. Faith in God is powerful, but faith doesn’t guarantee that I will receive what I have asked.

In summary, I think these verses teach us the following applications to our lives.

1. Sometimes, we pray, but our words are not matched with any real faith that what we are saying is something that God can or will do.

2. Sometimes, we think of our faith like a bucket of water with only a little bit in it, and we must put out a fire! We think, “I only have a small amount of water in my bucket, so I need it to be filled. But Jesus says faith doesn’t operate that way. Faith is more like the key that unlocks the spigot. It may look small or insignificant, but it is the right key, and it unlocks the supply. Faith in God is the key that, no matter how small it may seem, “works” because what faith believes in is the God of the Universe doing what he wants done.

3. Sometimes, God may grant a person the kind of faith Jesus and the apostles occasionally exercised to command a thing, which happens just as God had shown them it would. Again, it isn’t possessing a lot of faith, but a faith in God, not a faith in my having faith. No matter how weak our faith in Jesus is, faith in Jesus saves us. But it seems that there are special cases and times when people have what is called the spiritual gift of faith. God apparently can give not just the outcome but the faith to command it. Because that seems to be rare (Jesus, the apostles, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, and Elisha come to mind as the ones we see able to do this at times), and isn’t asking but commanding, I think that this is a unique kind of prayer that stems from that special spiritual gift.

Asking for anything

Now we come to those verses that speak of the ability to ask God for anything in Jesus’s name.

1. “If you ask me anything in my name, I will do it.”-John‬ ‭14‬:‭14‬ ‭ESV‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

2. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.”-John‬ ‭15‬:‭7‬ ‭ESV‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬‬

These assurances must be considered in their contexts to be understood well. First, let’s consider John 14. I’ll need to dig into the context here, so bear with me.

• Vv. 1-7: Jesus is going away to the Father’s house to prepare a place for us. He responds to Thomas’s question about not knowing the way to get to where Jesus was going by saying, “I am the way…” and that knowing Jesus is the equivalent of knowing the Father.

• Vv. 8-11: Philip asks to see the Father, and Jesus says that seeing him is seeing the Father and that it is the unity of Jesus with the Father that enables Jesus to do what he did. In v. 9, Jesus’ question is a sad one—“how is it that you who have been so long with me would not understand my relationship with the Father—how can you ask me, ‘show us the Father?’” And in v. 10, he follows up with another sad question/fact: they don’t believe that Jesus is “in” the Father and the Father is “in” him.

• Vv. 12-14 Belief in Jesus (in who he has just said he is and his relationship to his Father in vv. 1-11) brings the assurance that a person can do what Jesus did on earth, and in some ways “greater works” than Jesus’s earthy works. Now, Jesus raised Lazarus, fed 5,000, and turned water into wine, and it’s hard to imagine doing something greater than that. But the greatness of the coming works is the result of Jesus going to his Father, which is AFTER he was crucified and then raised from the dead. It isn’t what is done but the fact that after Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, the meaning of all these miracles and signs is now clear to all. Up to this point, even the disciples haven’t understood what Jesus was doing and why. But soon, the disciples will be able and equipped to proclaim the truth about Jesus clearly and fully. What Jesus wants is for his Father’s plan to be fulfilled and for the Father to be glorified for it. So, once Jesus has gone to the Father, he wants us to ask for the power to do what he did before on earth so that the Father would continue to be glorified. This means that what we are asking for here is the ability to do the things that show the world who Jesus is and what the Father has accomplished for us through Jesus. The focus is to bring glory to God for salvation. Anything like this is what Jesus would have done on earth, and it’s what he says he will continue to empower after he has gone back to the Father.

What the passage is teaching is not a “blank check” approach to prayer that says we can ask for anything we can think of and expect that Jesus will do it. And we cannot even assume that a good thing or a miracle we ask for is what will bring God glory. Every miracle Jesus did was to show who he was and why he should be believed in as the Father’s Son. Believers are left on earth to continue proclaiming who Jesus was and how the Father’s plan for salvation is now available. We are to pray that God will enable us to do this in any and every situation we face. Jesus will answer those prayers.

The disciples did not take this as granting them authority to raise any and every believer who died—in fact, we have only a handful of people raised through their ministries—Dorcas and Eutychus come to mind. They didn’t heal every sickness they confronted, even though they healed many in certain situations. But they saw the power of God confirm their testimony to Jesus repeatedly—usually by the Spirit bringing faith in their message to those who heard.

Now let’s look very briefly at John 15.

The whole passage is about abiding (living) in Jesus, and all this produces. The gist of the passage is this: the more our lives are under the influence of the words and presence of Jesus in us, the closer to him we become, the more our will is changed to line up with his, and the more our requests will be what he would ask in the situation and what his word causes us to believe. Requests that are from hearts controlled by the Word of God are likely to be what Jesus would ask in the same situation and thus to be answered.

Let me also talk a bit about seeing healing in answer to prayer and what constitutes unanswered prayer.

You mentioned you couldn’t recall anyone with a terminal illness healed in answer to prayer. But you may have and not recognized it. Have you ever known someone who had a terminal diagnosis but then experienced a remission/healing/disappearance of a tumor, etc., that extended a person’s life beyond what medical science would have expected? I’ve seen many such cases throughout my ministry. Now, getting some extra years may not be permanent healing, but then again, every healing here is temporary and postpones something good. The longer we are here, the longer we are away from the existence that Paul says is “gain” and “better by far” than being here. This is the hope of every believer (Philippians 1:21, 23). My own current ministry director had two forms of cancer, both stage 4, and underwent treatment but was told not to expect much. Many of us prayed for her healing. She is now six years cancer-free. Was it the surgeries, the chemo, or prayer? She’d say the latter made the others work, and it was God who healed her, but she doesn’t assume that she won’t ever get cancer again. My brother’s pastor had a highly aggressive brain tumor that supposedly couldn’t be completely removed. They did what they could with surgery, and he did have chemo. He also was prayed over by the church for healing. That was over ten years ago, and his doctors pronounced him cancer-free five years ago.

One instance I think about from my early ministry was when the elders at my church and I prayed for a young woman who was dying of breast cancer. She had become a believer, but her husband wasn’t, and they had a small son. We prayed for her healing, and the Lord seemed to answer—she went into remission for a while. During that time, her husband softened to the gospel, and we became friends. Then, the cancer returned. She called for us again, not for a healing prayer, but a prayer to help her in her dying and for her still-unsaved husband and young son. She passed soon after. After her funeral, her husband came up to me and said, “I finally understand the gospel.” He didn’t actually place his faith in Jesus for a few more years, even though we met regularly. But he came to the church and brought his son. He remarried, and he and his new wife and her son, as well as his, all kept coming to the church until the day he and his wife and sons trusted Christ. In one sense, it was a short-lived “healing,” but one with eternal fruit.

When Hezekiah prayed that God would heal him, God gave him 15 more years, but he still died earlier than his forefathers did. And those 15 years weren’t Hezekiah’s best ones.

Jesus healed many people of their diseases, but they all eventually got sick and died. Even Lazarus had to die again. The same was true of the apostles, and Paul didn’t even heal everyone he cared about (in 2 Timothy 4:20, he mentions Trophimus, a faithful co-worker who got sick in Miletus, and Paul left him there ill—I’ve always wondered why, but apparently Paul didn’t just heal on demand). Prayer for the Christian is always about what we find in the beginning of the Lord’s prayer—the Father’s name being glorified and his will being done on earth.

Finally, I hope you won’t think it is too trite for me to quote something I said in a message a long time ago about prayer.

God always answers our prayers, and he always does so in a way that accomplishes his will and our good. Of course, what is “good” for us isn’t always easy. C. S. Lewis said, “we are confident that the Lord will do what is good, but we don’t know just how painful that ‘good’ might be.”

The answer we want is “Yes” (and usually, we want it to be “Yes, now”).

But sometimes, God says “No” (just like we do when our children ask for something that wouldn’t be the best for them).

Sometimes, he says, “Wait” (again, like we do when our children are impatient and waiting will bring what they really want or need).

And sometimes he says, “Better” (as in, I have something better in mind in this situation).

Maybe all of this still sounds like “cliches”—I hope not, but I doubt I’ve said anything you haven’t heard before. Perhaps just reviewing these passages might bring hope or encouragement to your heart. That’s what I would want most of all.

I’m not in your shoes, and I can’t even begin to guess all you feel in your loss. But I trust God to give what he gave Paul in battling his thorn in the flesh—his grace—as in, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is perfected in you even in your weakness” (see 2 Corinthians 12:9).

I’m sending this with love and continued prayers for you, my friend.