Does God Really Answer Prayer?

The big news this past week was the death of Ruth Bell Graham, wife of Billy Graham. I just recently heard an interesting quote from her. She said, “If God answered every prayer of mine, I would have married the wrong man seven times.”

I was taught in Sunday School as a kid that God answers every prayer, but sometimes the answer is 'No' and sometimes the answer is 'Not now.' We colored a picture of a traffic light with the green light marked 'Yes,' the yellow light marked 'Wait,' and the red light marked 'No.'

In the movie, "Bruce Almighty," Jim Carey's character is given God's powers for part of Buffalo. This includes hearing and answering prayers. Bruce finds out quickly that there are a lot of people in Buffalo that pray an awful lot. Still being somewhat self-centered, he worries that "this is going to suck up my whole life!" so he simply answers everyone's prayers, "Yes." Soon there is rioting in the streets. And with good reason. (By the way, I avoided seeing this movie for a long time, because it seems to me that Hollywood makes enough fun of religion, and because I think Jim Carey has a bad tendency to go way overboard with his characters.)

There is a quote going around something to the effect that you must be gullible if you believe that God answers prayers, even though he only answers .001% of yours, and the rest of the time, 'it just wasn't God's will.' I think that it's easy to scoff at such things, when you are predominantly looking at quantity, rather than quality. I will admit that most of my prayers are of the "Please let that light stay green until I get through it" variety. And most of those, the answer is a resounding, "No!" Big deal. It's easy for me to look at situations like that and say, "Well, that just wasn't God's will." It's harder, when a loved one is severely sick or injured and one prays for a healing, and the person dies anyway. At the same time, this world would be really overcrowded if God only let people die that nobody was praying for. On the other hand, it's really exhilarating when the doctors have done all they can do, and the church joins together and prays, and that person walks out of the hospital. Granted, that's generally not what happens, but when it does happen, it becomes hard to deny that God answers prayer.

We have a man in our church who, several years ago, had heart problems. His doctor got him on the list for a heart transplant, but it looked like it was going to take awhile. The doctor tried not to talk about what his chances were, but it was pretty clear that the doctor didn't think that he was going to live long enough to get a new heart. We prayed for him as a church. After his next examination, the doctor took him off the transplant list. He said his heart was fine.

I've been healed, myself. I don't really talk about it, because it's kind of silly. To be honest, I was being kind of stupid. But, anyway, here it is: I grew up a very nervous individual. I learned to direct my nervous energy into things that were socially acceptable; things that most people wouldn't find annoying. One of my nervous habits was chewing on the insides of my cheeks. By the time I finally made my personal commitment to follow Christ, I had a line of scar tissue down the insides of both cheeks. One day, I accidentally took a chuck out of my right cheek, about the size of a dime. I suppose I could have gone to the doctor about it, but I was afraid that He was going to pull together the edges of the hole and stitch it up, leaving me with a deformed cheek. Of course, I knew I couldn't just put a band-aid on it. So I prayed about it. The next morning, I woke up with a mouth full of blood. So I prayed some more. And the next morning, I woke up with a mouthful of blood. So I prayed even more. And the next morning, I woke up feeling that something was different. It didn't register right away, but there was no blood in my mouth. When I did realize that I wasn't bleeding, I checked the inside of my right cheek. It was perfectly smooth. Not only was there no hole, but all the scar tissue was gone. I actually tried to convince myself, at the time, that I had not been healed, that I had just healed. After all, it's been three days. But there was a hole there the night before, and it wasn't there that morning. And that wouldn't explain the scar tissue being gone either. It occurred to me that the scar tissue has had years to heal, so I checked my left cheek. The scar tissue was still there on that side of my mouth. Now I know I've been healed. I prayed a little bit more, just telling God that I felt stupid with scar tissue on one side of my mouth. A few days later, the scar tissue on the left side of my mouth disappeared.

So, okay, it's kind of a silly story, it's not nearly as impressive as the guy waiting for the heart transplant that suddenly didn't need it anymore, but this happened to me. How can I doubt that God answers prayer (even if the answer to most of my prayers is "No.")?