The drunk driver came at them like a flash, doing 85 mph down a rural Idaho freeway. He missed a curve. There was a horrific collision. And up in smoke went Jerry Sittser's prayer—the prayer he prayed each day: protection for his family.

    Sittser's four-year-old daughter, wife, and mother perished in a scene that he recalls as "chaotic and apocalyptic, like something out of a disaster movie." He and three of his other children survived the carnage.

    Although that was 13 years ago, Jerry Sittser admits he has struggled with the undeniable question: Why does God sometimes not answer prayer?

    "The traditional response is, 'Well, sometimes God just says no to our prayers,'" Sittser explains from his home in Spokane, Washington. "But that's not a very satisfying answer to people who pray out of genuine neediness and desperation. If you've got an 8-year-old child with cancer and someone says to you, 'Well, you know, sometimes God just answers no,' that's very difficult to accept."

    Although Sittser confesses he has long prayed for God to use him in a mighty way, he insists, "My theology will not allow me to think the accident was an answer to prayer. I don't think providence is exercised in that kind of cause and effect way. That is a misunderstanding of the sovereignty of God. However, I do think God has graciously and providently used those events to accomplish good."

    In the six books he has written—including bestseller A Grace Disguised—Sittser has provided some thought-provoking answers to many difficult questions surrounding the Christian faith. The former chaplain and pastor, who holds a Master of Divinity degree from Fuller Theological Seminary, has been a professor of religion for 12 years at Whitworth College in Spokane.

    In an almost frightfully daring manner, Sittser tackles human issues other theologians avoid like the plague. Consider, for example, this excerpt from his new book, When God Doesn't Answer Your Prayer (Zondervan, 2004):

    "The Bible . . . actually sets us up for disappointment by making grandiose promises that God doesn't always keep—or so it would seem. Consider the outrageous promises that Jesus himself makes! 'So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you' [Luke 11:9NIV]. A simple reading of these texts leads to a simple conclusion: If we pray, God will answer. What then is to be done when God doesn't answer our prayers? . . . If God doesn't respond when we need him most, then why pray at all?"

    Sittser is certain he will receive flack for the undaunted questions he poses in the book. "I follow a deliberate strategy as a writer, to reach out to an audience of people who have been burned by religion before." What's uplifting about him is that he not only knows how to ask the difficult questions; he knows how to answer them. In analyzing those times that God does not answer prayer in the affirmative, Sittser concludes, "But there are reasons for that. Prayer can either turn us away from God in frustration and bitterness, or we can become more seasoned prayers—recognizing that our character needs to change, our requests need to change, and that we need to pray more in line with God's kingdom values and not just for our own selfish interests."

    Sittser insists that if God said yes to every prayer, we would overindulge our fleshly appetites. "I think the 'no' God gives us is almost intended to bait us and draw us deeper into Him. I've learned a ton about prayer by being a [single] parent. I don't say yes to everything my kids ask for, but I don't say no in such a way that I close the door on them, either."

    New Testament scripture doesn't always explain why we need to be persistent in prayer; it just instructs us to do so. Sittser agrees that the worst thing we can do in the face of doubt is to stop praying.

    "The Bible tells us how important it is to be dogged and even immodest in our praying," he says. "I wonder if God's sporadic response to our prayers is intended to reinforce passion in us, to refine our prayers, to give us the greater desire to pursue God and wrestle with God. All of that grows us spiritually, makes us wiser and more sensitive to the things we really ought to be praying about."

    Over the years, Sittser says he has become a better listener and more careful about how he prays. "I can't pray to live a nice, respectable, middle-class life, like I used to," he admits. "Part of me wants to pray that my children are all married by 23, have nice lives, have lots of grandchildren for me, and live within three blocks—but I can't pray that! It's just not right. Prayer is a risky business. My prayers may help my children end up in India, maybe being single and living their lives for the kingdom of God."

    Our human tendency, especially in America, Sittser says, is to manage the world around us through our prayers. But, he insists, if we are open to how the Lord wants to transform us through prayer, then He will bring dramatic spiritual change.

    "We need to learn to pray with greater kingdom vision," he says. "Our prayers set in motion a series of events to help bring about the kingdom of God. And that will set in motion events and circumstances that may go on for . . . hundreds of years. So, we have to be patient and flexible when we pray, because things are going to happen that our eyes cannot see. Prayer is big business; it's epic."

    Sittser is quick to remind us, however, that "instant" rarely applies to prayer. "Often," he says, referring to a Martin Luther quote, "we pray for silver, but God wants to give us gold. Sometimes God has a better idea, a better answer in mind than giving us exactly what we prayed for. But we have to be careful what we mean by 'better.' Better may also mean harder. Better for who? His kingdom? Or us?"

    Sittser delves so deeply that the reader comes away thirsting for God as a deer pants for a stream—and contemplating what it really means to pray. "I'm so profoundly aware of my own inadequacy and finiteness that I pray most of the time out of desperation. I'm just not terribly impressed with me or with our human powers to do much of anything good. That's why I pray a lot through the day," he says. "When I'm preparing for a lecture or going to meet someone, I look at myself and think, 'Now, what can I really do here? I do not have the power of access to the soul of another human being,' and that drives me to prayer."

    May it drive us all to the same place.

—Creston Mapes

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