Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Making Sense of Praying With Faith

Few means of grace are so well known and yet so misunderstood as the “prayer of faith” or the act of “praying by faith.” Countless Christians have hopefully (and even perhaps judgmentally) told their friends, “If you have the faith of a mustard seed then… your church will grow, you will get that promotion, you will find a spouse, you will have a kid, and you will overcome your cerebral palsy.”

Though such claims appear to confuse the Lord of the universe with a genie in a bottle, they possess some scriptural backing. Jesus declares in Luke 17:6: “If you had faith like the grain of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.’” Jesus expresses similar sentiments in Matthew 17:20-21, telling his disciples that if they had the faith of a mustard seed they too could move mountains because “nothing will be impossible for you.”

To make sense of Jesus’ teaching and to determine if our suffering can be attributed to some deficiency in our prayer life, we need to locate Jesus’ statements within their biblical context and within the greater biblical narrative, paying special note to the prayers of King David in 2 Samuel 12 and 15. In so doing, we will see that prayers of faith consist of asking God for his revealed promises and in taking our needs to him because we know that he will hear us.

A Quick Tutorial in God’s Two Wills

God’s revealed will concerns those things plainly stated in the Bible. For example, God tells Christians not to steal. The man contemplating whether to defraud his employer does not need to pray for guidance. The Lord tells him what to do in Ephesians 4:28: “Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need.” The man knows God’s will for his life. The same can be said about his sexuality, his parenting, and any other thing that God’s word has addressed.  

But the Lord has not revealed whether the man’s mother will die from cancer. He does not know whether his mother will respond to the drugs. Though God has already determined the day of her death, he has not revealed that information to the man.  As Moses notes in Deuteronomy 29:29: “The secret things belong to the LORD our God.”

The two wills of God profoundly shape how we should pray. Prayer requests that concern God’s revealed will should be prayed with expectant confidence. To borrow language from another sector of Christendom, Christians should name-it-and-claim-it when asking God for the grace needed to stop complaining, to stop being rude, and to stop lusting. To quote 1 John 5:14-15: “And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us. And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him.” As Spurgeon concludes, “Our heavenly Banker is delighted to cash His own promissory notes…He is more ready to hear than you are to ask (Jan 15).”

Conversely, Christians have no such confidence when asking for healing, new jobs, or spouses. They may receive the desired outcome of their prayers. Then again, they may not.

So Mustard Seeds and Mountains?

Though many assume that Jesus’ statements on praying with faith relate to God’s hidden will, the opposite is true. Jesus’ instructions on prayers of faith are tied to God’s revealed will. In Luke 17:6, Jesus locates the moving of the mulberry trees after his teaching on the need to forgive sins. In this passage, prayers of faith do not address miraculous healings tied to God’s secret will but to miraculous expressions of forgiveness that align with God’s revealed will. Similarly, Jesus promises his disciples that they can cast out demons and move mountains in Matthew 17:20 and Mark 9:29 through prayer. Once again, these promises align with Jesus’ earlier teachings in Matthew 10:1 and Mark 6:7. The passages reveal that Jesus had already promised the twelve disciples, “authority over unclean spirits, to cast them out” that the were to pray for in Matthew 17 and Mark 9.   

 And when Jesus curses a barren fig tree for its lack of fruit and then promises his disciples that “whatever you ask in prayer, you will receive, if you have faith (Matt 21:22)” he does so against the backdrop of specific promises contained in his revealed will. Namely, Jesus curses the barren fig tree because all who are attached to him can and will bear fruit by faith. Those who do not bear the fruit of repentance are accursed – outside the kingdom of God. As the parallel passage in Mark 11 notes forgiving other people’s sins is one of these miraculous fruits. This passage on prayer relates to God’s revealed will.

When God encourages his people to have the faith that move mountains, the pinnacles in question are not miraculous healings or projections of financial independence (things that pertain to God’s secret will). Rather the promises concern the supernatural grace needed to confront the rude guy in our small group, to forgive the angry child screaming in our home, and to overlook the unkind mother-in-law who comments on every picture. In other words, to offer prayers of faith in the context of God’s revealed will is to pray expecting God to keep his promises to us.

Prayers and God’s Secret Will

Though prayers should always address elements of God’s revealed will – laying claim to his promises, they should also address concerns related to his secret will. Jesus taught his disciples to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread (Matt 6:11).” In other words, Christians should ask God for spouses, healings, and jobs. But to do so in faith, they need only to trust that Jesus’ hears their prayers. Faith as it relates to God’s secret will consists in the asking and not the results we receive.

In 2 Samuel 12:15-23, David pleads with Lord to save his son with such earnestness and zeal that his servants feared that King David would commit suicide when God refused to grant his request. The author of 2 Samuel writes, “David therefore sought God on behalf of the child. And David fasted and went in and lay all night on the ground (2 Sam 12:16).” But when the child dies, David does not become suicidal. He gets up, eats, and continues with life. He offered the following explanation to his servants, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept, for I said, ‘Who knows whether the Lord will be gracious to me, that the child may live?’ But now he is dead. Why should I fast? Can I bring him back again? I shall go to him, but he will not return to me (2 Sam 12:22-23).” Despite his great emotion and sincerity, the Lord refused David’s request.

A few years later – fearing for his life and the lives of his closest friends while on the run from Absalom’s insurrection, David once again turns to the Lord. With tears and groanings, he prays, “O Lord, please turn the counsel of Ahithophel into foolishness (2 Sam 15:31).” Almost immediately, the Lord grants David’s request. God connects the weary king with Hushi, a trusted political advisor, who is then used by God to undo Absalom’s revolution with bad counsel.  

In both instances, David offered prayers filled with great emotion and sincerity derived from his faith that concerned God’s secret will. One prayer met with rejection and the other with approval. Through David, the Lord reveals that the measure of one’s faith consists not in the Lord’s granting of our request but in the prayer itself. To pray faithfully within the realm of God’s secret will is to believe that the God of the Bible hears our prayers. To quote, John Calvin, “Calling on God like this does not refer to a simple knowledge of his existence but rather that we must be thoroughly convinced that our requests will not fall to the ground, but be receive by him.” When Christians pray in faith, they do not pray to some universal force or to an unknown god. They pray as Martyn Lloyd-Jones says, “to the living, personal God who thinks, who acts, who sees us, who knows all about us, who can answer our prayer and is ready to do so .” In other words, to ask God for relief from the flu, or to pass your exams, or to find a new job because you know God hears your requests is to offer a prayer of faith. In so doing, we confess that our hope lies not in our intelligence or efforts but in God’s merciful providence. With regards to God’ secret will, prayers of faith consist in the praying of the prayer to the God who hears.

Final Thoughts

Without question, believers are called to move mountains and mulberry bushes by faith. But such prayers consist not in gaining new homes or in the healing of terminal cancer. They consist in laying claim to God’s revealed will. These prayers move the mountains of bitterness that sit atop our furrowed brows through confession and repentance. What proves even greater and more exceptional than physical earthly blessing is the spiritual transformation that God has promised his children. Whoever asks for spiritual miracles in faith will see mountains move.

And, Christians should also ask God in faith for things covered by his secret will. But when they do so, they must realize that faith in this setting consists not in getting what they asked for but in the asking. Those who believe that their creator and savior hear their prayers have prayed in faith for things related to God’s secret will. 

May we all pray more and may the Lord bless our prayers.

Peter Witkowski Discipleship

Why I Don’t Talk to April But Pray

When my dear April ceased to breathe, a piercing emptiness settled over my home and my soul. Where once there had been laughter, playful banter, and deep theological reflection now there was only thick, sticky, and suffocating silence.

As my heart broke under the weight of April’s death, I longed to be heard, to pour out my heart without reserve and without concern of time, schedule, or setting. But when I asked aloud, “Where are you, my love?” the air brought back no reply.

Why I Generally Don’t Talk to April

Though some have suggested that I trade my past marital dialogues for a therapeutic monologue, I find the option rather uncompelling if not troubling. I have no idea how April would respond to the experiences, concerns, hopes, worries, and fears that I now carry about with me. I can certainly speculate about how she might react to this or that. But as all good historians know, such speculations prove to be anachronistic and wholly inauthentic. They are nothing more than the manifestations of our imaginations on to reality which by logical necessity distort reality. We cannot project out without either adding to or taking away from what would be real. Such imaginary interactions with our dead loved ones are to reality what orcs are to men.

But even if she were to interact with my ramblings from heaven, she would have little to share with me for she is perfect, and I (as my kids will happily attest to) am not. As Paul notes in 1 Corinthians 13:12, “For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” The struggles, fears, worries, hopes, and desires that I wish to process aloud with her, the things the make me yearn for her open ear, derive from my incomplete knowledge of the Lord and from my sinful frailty. April no longer shares in those things, nor can she relate to my incompleteness for she knows the eternal joy of completeness. She has crossed the Jordan. Even if she could respond to my mumblings, I could no more understand her knowledge than a three-year-old could understand the terminology used to develop rocket science. As Paul noted of his vision of heaven, “he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter.” And what she could share with me has already been shared with me through the Scriptures. As Jesus said in his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them hear them (Lk 16:29).”

This is not to say that April has no knowledge of me nor awareness of what happens in my life or in the lives of our dear children while she awaits Christ’s return in heaven. Scripture seems to indicate some heavenly awareness of earthly things. But while her love for us and us for her remains, we have no meaningful way to communicate. Death has separated us until it will one day again unite us. Until then, I must embrace the reality of her absence.

Why I Pray

But I do not have to embrace the silence. Though I have lost the companionship of my April for a time, I am not alone. My cries do not go unheard. The Psalmist offers all who grieve a glorious hope writing, “The eyes of the Lord are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry.” I still process my life out loud. I cry out to the Lord through the penetrating silence that has enveloped my bedroom, kitchen, car, office, and even the church sanctuary. When I am alone and in need of help, I talk to the God who is there in the silence, bottling my tears as I weep through the night, extending grace to me as I argue with him through the day, and filling my heart with hope as I plead for fresh signs of his goodness and love. In other words, I do not bottle up my emotions but rather audibly process them with the Lord. The Puritan John Flavel who discovered the goodness of this process a few hundred years before me wrote,

To whom should children go but to their father, to make their moan…Did we complain more to God, he would complain less of us, and quickly abate the matters of our complaint.

Oh friends, it is sweet to process one’s life through prayer. Indeed, to talk with God is to commune with him and to experience the truth, love, and grace that transforms our lives.

However, such practices are not unique to widowers or to the grieving. As one theologian noted,

Invoking God, calling on him in prayer, isn’t an emergency measure…something that we turn to in extremity, at the hour of death or disappointment or depression. Calling on God’s name accompanies all of human life and all human activity.

Or to borrow from the apostle Peter, all of us are to cast our cares upon Christ because he cares for us (1 Pt 5:7).

What April Knew

Towards the end of her life as April verbally processed her fears with me, she would at times bring our conversations to a conclusion and kindly say, “I don’t expect an answer from you, Peter.” The comment unnerved me. I was her husband…her best friend…her truest confidant…her pastor. Surely, I should have some answer…some hope to offer…some word to say. But with each passing day, I have come to increasingly appreciate her wisdom in those moments. My shoulders could not carry all her burdens. Nor could her’s carry mine. They were not designed to. But Christ’s could. To Him, she turned.

A few weeks later when I lost my April, my heart shattered into a million pieces like a glass striking a hard kitchen tile. Nothing made sense. Everything hurt and was out of place. But I was not alone. Though he crushed me, my God did not leave me nor forsake me. He heard me. He hears me.

Don’t talk to the dead who cannot help us as they await the resurrection. Talk to the God who hears!  

Peter Witkowski Sermon on the Mount

Why You Should Keep Praying

The ability to love those who insult us, to remain pure when our phones offer us a million pathways to pornography, and to refrain from being hyper-critical of that man’s vegan diet does not naturally reside within the Christian soul. To achieve the lifestyle that Jesus prescribes in his famous Sermon on the Mount, Christians must regularly ask God for help. They need it, and God promises to give it. In Matthew 7:7-8, Jesus begins the conclusion of his sermon with a reflection upon prayer, saying,

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.

No soul naturally loves its enemies or places its hope in God as opposed to riches and bank accounts. Were faith our natural condition, Jesus would not have had to recast the vision for the kingdom for us. Even those souls that have entered the narrow gate still cannot achieve the kingdom ethic in their own power. To overcome temptation and to develop a love for God and neighbor, the Christian must regularly and faithfully pray to Jesus who promises to give them what they ask for. 

Why We Don’t Pray

I suspect many Christians succumb to temptation and make peace with sin because they fail to grasp their persistent need to pray. Just as some people nominally concerned about their health diet for a day or two and then quit after seeing no meaningful results, many Christians pray for a day or two and then quit. They pray that God would give them a love for their coworker. But then Monday rolls around, their coworker makes another off-colored remark, and the hate of last week boils back up. They assume prayer failed and that God is at peace with their irritable nature. It is just who they are. They will call again if someone gets cancer or if a hurricane is headed their way. Otherwise, they are good.

Keep Praying

Essentially, they stop asking, they stop knocking, they stop seeking. Understandably the change they desire never comes. Yet, the fault lies not with little tried tool of prayer but with the practitioner of the prayer. Godly prayer requires perseverance. As the German Reformer Martin Luther noted,

“Since your need goes on knocking, therefore, you go right on knocking, too, and do not relent.”

Jesus clarifies the connection between perseverance and prayer in Luke 11: 5-8. In this passage that heavily resembles Matthew 7, Jesus tells the parable of a man who bangs on his friend’s door at midnight because another friend just popped in to spend the night. At first, the friend in bed tells the man to go away.  But the man keeps on knocking. Fearing the man will wake up the entire house (kids and all) the friend gets up and gives the man some food. Jesus says, “Because of his impudence, he will rise and him whatever he needs (8).”

The point of the parable is obvious. The soul that keeps on knocking will never leave empty handed. As Jesus says, “For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened (Mt 7:8). The teenager who longs for sexual purity will get it through fervent prayer. The tired wife that bangs on God’s door asking God to give her a love for her in-laws will receive it. The angry child that looks for freedom from her anger through prayer will find peace. Those who pray without ceasing will receive the gifts that they need.

Trust God’s Character

To drive the point home, Jesus compares his care for us to how our earthly father’s care for us. Just as children can trust earthly parents to give them bread and not rocks for dinner, Christians can ask God for their spiritual needs, trusting that he will neither manipulate them nor harm them. Jesus says, “If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him (Mt 7:11)!” Jesus does not toss out the analogy to validate human goodness. Rather, he uses it to reveal that if we can trust our earthly fathers who are capable of great evil to do some basic good things, then we should trust God even more. God will not play games with us. Even if we ask God for a stone, he will still give us bread.

Why Didn’t God Heal Susie?

That very promise from God to answer our prayer can also cause us to doubt whether or not God truly is good. Many Christians have prayed for years for a new job, for Johnny’s salvation, and for Susie to recover from cancer. Yet no one calls you for interviews, Johnny still refuses to come to church, and you just learned that Susie died. In light of God’s promise that those who seek will find, many souls cannot help but openly question: “What happened?”

But such questions arise from a profound misunderstanding of the context in which Jesus promises to honor our prayers. As John Stott noted many years earlier, the promises made in Matthew 7 relate to God’s character as Father and not as creator. As creator, God bestows the earthly gifts of family, health, and financial success upon billions of people who never pray. In Matthew 5:45, Jesus credits God with sending rain, “on the just and the unjust.” While Christians should ask God for their daily bread as their heavenly Father is the author of all good gifts, the specify delivery of good gifts cannot be guaranteed through prayer. Moreover, our repeated and earnest asking of God for something does not obligate God to give us the earthly thing asked for. For example, I longed for a red convertible as a teenager and college student. I frequently prayer for such a good gift. To date, I have never owned a red convertible. We should ask him for health and a host of other earthly but should do so with the tagline from James, “if the Lord wills (Jm 4:15).”

But as Father, God answers all the spiritual things we ask of him. Salvation comes not by osmosis nor by splashing water on people’s foreheads. It comes through asking. Paul confirms the foundational role of prayer in the saving process, writing, “For everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved (Rom 10:13).” Sanctification occurs in the same manner. Through asking, seeking, and knocking we grow in our ability to love others, to fulfill our marriage vows, and to promote peace. Spiritual gifts always come through prayer. If we will but ask, seek, and knock, God will give us the desires of our heart.

The old hymn correctly states: What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!

Are you praying?