Published almost twenty years ago, “Ten Prayers God Always Says Yes To” by Anthony DeStefano changed how I pray and how I experience God’s answers to my prayer. I’ll be spending the next few weeks talking about what I got from his book, and how applying the principles in this book to my own life changed me.
Gutting Loss
All of us have been gutted at some point, emptied of every feeling but despair, or grief, or even so empty we simply feel numb and listless. Into this deep shadowy valley it seems no sunshine can reach us. How do we cope with heavy loss? With devastation? With disaster? We can see full well the awfulness all around us, and we wonder if we will ever feel any differently, ever again.
“God,” we might whisper through cracked lips and aching heart, “is there any way, any chance, You could bring good out of this bad situation?” This is possibly one of the most powerful prayers you and I can ever bring to God.
And God will always answer, yes.
Powerful Prayer
But, DeStefano reveals, it is also one of the toughest prayers to pray. The reason is that when you and I are right in the middle of suffering, it is really hard to try to calmly consider all the wonderful things that might come out of whatever is happening.
But the fact is, in a Christian’s life, if it were not for these gut-wrenching experiences—failure, humiliation, tragedy—sometimes the very best experiences would also never have happened. Nothing is truly all bad unless we think it is all bad. For a believer, there will always be something good that God can work out of what is happening to you or to me.
Now, even as I wrote those words, specters of horror began to drift across my mental screen. Natural disasters that destroy people’s homes and lives, death that robs us of our beloved ones, random acts of violence and terror, crime, war, famine, pestilence. Really? Can any good come out of these things? And can we truly say that good could not be achieved without all this? I know, I am asking those questions, too.
It Is Not About Willpower
Overcoming adversity is not simply a matter of willpower. In Numbers 13–14, God had brought the Israelites to the very borders of the promised land, and instructed them to send in spies to scope out the land. It was even more lush and wonderful than they had ever even imagined! But the inhabitants of the land were also fearsome, so the Israelites refused to trust God in crossing into Canaan. They stood resolute.
It was the wrong move.
God saw they were not ready, and told them they would have to remain in the wilderness for another thirty-eight years, until the next generation had grown up and the first generation had died away. The Israelites finally realized their grave error, and they decided to overcome the obstacles all by themselves, out of sheer willpower. Sometimes people can do that, but not always. And, the Israelites could not, either. Many lives were pointlessly lost that day.
The only Person Who can always overcome adversity and bring good out of it is God. God alone has the power to bring good out of bad.
But It Is About Faith
And God promises, to those who ask in prayer and are trying our best to remain faithful to God, that God will bring good out of every single misfortune you and I encounter in life, and will turn every instance of suffering into an opportunity for greater and deeper joy.
The Bible passage this prayer is based upon is found in Paul’s letter to Roman believers.
“We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.
“For those whom God foreknew God also predestined to be conformed to the image of God’s Son, in order that Jesus might be the firstborn within a large family.
“And those whom God predestined God also called, and those whom God called God also justified, and those whom God justified God also glorified.”
Romans 8:28–30 NRSVUE (modifications added)
Now it is time to tackle those prickly questions. How can this possibly be true? How can losing my job be good? How can my house going into foreclosure be good? How can getting cancer, or losing a child, or becoming permanently disabled, or any other hardship be good!?
It Is Not Good
When the patriarch Jacob died, Joseph’s brothers were terrified of what might happen. They had nearly murdered their own brother, then sold him into slavery and for years allowed their heart-broken father to believe Joseph had been torn to shreds by some ferocious wild animal. They let their father believe that sending Joseph alone to check up on them had endangered him. Consider that wracking load of guilt and loss that nearly suffocated Jacob for years. And Joseph knew exactly what they had done to him, and had done to their father.
He would have been justified in finally avenging himself and his father with them. But he did not. Instead, he said,
“Do not be afraid! Am I in the place of God?
“Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people, as he is doing today.
“So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones.”
Genesis 50:19–21 NRSVUE (modifications added)
Joseph’s perspective was not on the harm his brothers had done to him and his father, nor did he dwell on their ill will and evil intentions. Instead, Joseph focused on the way God worked through what they had done to eventually position Joseph to basically save the world through providing food during a seven-year famine.
Maybe the main thing for us to understand, as DeStefano cautions, is that we probably cannot fully grasp how God can pull good out of every bad situation, but we can know that God has already shown that God can do it.
Think about the worst evil that has ever happened. The murder of God Himself, in the Lord Jesus Christ, God the Son. The single greatest crime ever committed, so colossal it takes our breath away. And out of that worst of all wickedness came our redemption, salvation from evil. God did not allow people to remain hopeless and lost in corruption and death but instead brought untold good out of untold evil.
There is a great lesson for you and me in that.
But God Can Bring Good
If God is able to turn the worst kind of evil into the best kind of good, then God can certainly turn lesser kinds of evil into good as well. God can certainly take the bad things in your life and mine, and bring some kind of blessing out of them, whatever that might be
Somehow, some way, God is able to orchestrate what freely happens in our world in order to produce the outcome that God desires without overriding even by one little bit of our freedom to make moral choices. There is no amount of evil, or horror, or terror that can thwart God from accomplishing what God is determined to do. Evil cannot quench grace.
The good that comes out of our tragedies may not always be obvious. You and I may not see it right away. We may not see it for a long time. But it will be there. Our suffering has the potential to, by the divine power of the Holy Spirit, transfigure us from glory to glory. People will have an opportunity to love us and bring kindness and grace into our lives. Others we may never meet will be affected by our willingness to believe God and keep faith with the Lord.
God’s timing will be perfect in bringing the good out of what is happening to you and me right now.
[Cover Image: Photo by Hanny Naibaho on Unsplash]
