Have you been caught off guard by the anger of Jesus?

There you are, peacefully meditating on the Gospels, or flourishing under a favorite preacher. With great comfort, you’re finding Christ to be master of every situation. He wields concrete images, asks perceptive questions, and seems unfazed by conniving opponents.

Then flashes some surprising flare of his holy anger. He makes a whip and clears the temple court. He sighs aloud in frustration. He is reported to be annoyed, even indignant. He “strictly charges” men and women he has just healed. And you recall how often he rebukes, not just demons and fevers, winds and waves, but also his own disciples.

Sweet (and Sovereign) Emotion

We might shy away from the English word rage, but just a century ago the eminent B.B. Warfield (1851–1921) thought it a fitting term in his study on The Emotional Life of Our Lord. Perhaps the word’s connotations have shifted enough today that we reach for other language, but it could do us some good to see what many faithful eyes have dared to see in the life of Christ. And if anyone could rage with a holy, God-honoring anger, would it not be Jesus?

Sinless as he was, Jesus had his manifestly emotional moments as he dwelt among us. Doubtless, he was a man of composure and self-control, but it would be strange to presume he was unemotional when he whipped the temple clean. Or when he wept at Lazarus’s tomb. Or when he prayed, in anguish, with loud cries and tears. Typically, the Christ we encounter in the Gospels is a man of stunning composure — a model of the kind of poise and equanimity, in the face of the world’s chaos, that his people want to grow in by the power of his Spirit. And we may learn, as well, from his holy anger. Even his rage.

Slow to Anger

The children of Israel had celebrated their covenant-keeping God as “slow to anger” (beginning in Exodus 34:6). Slow to anger, let the record show, does not mean without anger. God clearly stood ready to punish the guilty in time. Yet, given the rebellion of his people, which was often outrageous, he was remarkably patient and markedly “slow to anger,” as prophets and psalmists alike would cherish (Nehemiah 9:17; Joel 2:13; Psalms 86:15; 103:8; 145:8).

So too Jesus, in the days of his flesh, was slow to anger. He knew how to keep his wits under pressure, when the moment required it, and he knew how to give vent to his emotions, with self-control, in the proper time and place. Typically, the Christ of the Gospels is conspicuously calm, unprovoked in the face of worked-up foes. Yet the divine Son entered a world of sin and sinners, under the curse — a world in which injustices abound. And it would not be virtue, but vice, as Warfield observes, “for a moral being to stand in the presence of perceived wrong indifferent and unmoved” (50).

Lest we feed a wrong impression, let’s draw on two quintessential Reformed voices for help. If you thought Reformed theology’s appreciation of the mind necessitated the diminishing of emotion, let Warfield, along with John Calvin himself (1509–1564), set the record straight. Sure, some may have skewed anti-emotional in the name of Reformed theology. But they are mistaken. We can hardly find voices more reasonably Reformed than Calvin’s and Warfield’s.

To do so, let’s address several key anger-revealing texts in the Gospels and consider what lessons we might draw as Christ’s disciples today.

1. Jesus experienced our anger.

Jesus, truly man and truly God, was capable of human anger, and this was (and is) a feature, not a bug. This human emotion is an analogue of divine wrath in the image-bearer. As such, it is good, a God-made gift, to help us in a world where we encounter sin, death, and injustice. Yes, indwelling sin corrupts our anger, and anger is especially dangerous because it is such a powerful emotion, by God’s design. But anger itself is not the problem. Our sin is the problem.

In the Gospel of John, the first flare comes as early as chapter 2. Jesus is manifestly angry at those who have made his Father’s house into a house of trade, for material profit rather than Godward prayer. Yet the attribute celebrated here is not called anger but zeal. His disciples remember that it was written (in Psalm 69), “Zeal for your house will consume me” (John 2:17).

Anger rises naturally, even if slowly, in healthy souls. We need not cultivate anger. It comes as a function of some greater love. What we want to cultivate is zeal, for God and his honor, and for others and their joy in God. Christians want to boil with holy affection for Jesus Christ (Romans 12:11). And as God’s word and his people and prayer feed and form our zeal, our anger will flare less at the wrong times, and more at the right times.

We do not typically use the word anger for this more constructive emotion we call zeal. Zeal is the white-hot flame of Jesus’s love for his Father, and so for his Father’s house. Anger is our term for the zealous response toward those who are treating his Father and his house with contempt.

2. Jesus’s anger was without sin.

The life of Christ shows us the possibility of holy, righteous, good anger, even on this side of the fall. Jesus felt anger that was an appropriate response to the sin and evil and injustice he encountered. He also felt anger at appropriate levels of intensity — not too little, not too much, not too frequently or too quickly, and not too slowly or infrequently.

Even as we observe our remarkable solidarity with the Son of God in his sharing in our humanity, we keep in mind that great qualifier “yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). What might it be like to experience the God-given emotion of anger, but without the corruption of sin?

Calvin guards us against any naive attempt to imitate Jesus’s anger without owning up to our own weakness: “If you compare his passions with ours, they will differ not less than pure and clear water, flowing in a gentle course, differs from dirty and muddy foam.” Our anger is not pure and clear like his. If I’ve never done a righteous deed that wasn’t sullied in some small way, surely the same is true with my anger. Yet that should not keep me from doing righteous deeds or from listening to the God-designed emotion of anger, no matter how prone such a power is to the influence of indwelling sin. Every thought, every feeling, every act of sinful humans in this age is sin-infected in some sense, but this does not keep us from doing real good works, pursuing good thoughts, and feeling good, helpful emotions.

Jesus’s pure, clear anger is a summons to us to cultivate Christlike zeal. His emotions encourage ours, and even enjoin them. As Calvin adds, Jesus’s life “ought to be sufficient of itself for setting aside the unbending sternness which the Stoics demand.”

3. Jesus made use of his anger; then he put it away.

Jesus didn’t stuff his anger, and on several occasions in the Gospels, he allowed his anger to become observable. He was noticeably angry. And he made use of that anger: He took its prompting, and energy, to move into justice-remedying action.

But, note well, Jesus did not stew in it. The key moment is Mark 3:1–5. On a Sabbath, he encounters a man with a withered hand. The Pharisees look on, ready to accuse him of Sabbath-breaking. Jesus asks them, “Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?” He’s right, and they won’t admit it. They remain silent, with an evil, cowardly silence. Then verse 5:

And [Jesus] looked around at them with anger, grieved at their hardness of heart, and said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.

Mark tells us Jesus is angry and looks at them with anger. And as we’ll see again in John 11, this holy anger coexists with sorrow. Their hardness of heart both grieves and angers him. But his anger, having come slowly, does its work quickly. It flashes, and he perceives it, is inspired to righteous action, and then puts it away in holiness. It was brief, and then, not suppressed or forgotten, it prompted his next (anger-less) action: to heal. (We find similar examples of brief anger or frustration leading to a fitting response in Mark 7:34; 8:12; 10:14.)

As Paul would charge the Ephesians, so had he heard from the life of Jesus: “Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). Perceive the powerful burst, but let it not move you into sin but inspire righteousness. Which leads to a fourth and final lesson.

4. Jesus wept and raged.

John 11 is famous for “Jesus wept,” for good reason. But the more surprising revelation there is his anger. And it’s not subtle. Uncomfortable translators have tried to take the edge off it, but John is even clearer about Jesus’s anger than he is about his sorrows. Tears we might expect; anger we do not.

In John 11:33, we find a holy soul in holy anger. Jesus doesn’t lash out. He doesn’t bash anyone or say something he will later regret. Tears flow alongside his anger and so offer a revelation about both grief and anger (as we glimpsed in Mark 3:5): Godly anger goes with tears, and tears can flow with anger.

Don Carson emphasizes Jesus’s anger, alongside his grief, in John 11. The word translated “deeply moved” in verses 33 and 38 (Greek embrimaomai) “invariably suggests anger, outrage or emotional indignation” (John, 415). And he insists,

The same sin and death, the same unbelief, that prompted [Jesus’s] outrage, also generated his grief. Those who follow Jesus as his disciples today do well to learn the same tension — that grief and compassion without outrage reduce to mere sentiment, while outrage without grief hardens into self-righteous arrogance and irascibility. (416)

This is a double lesson for us wonderfully emotional and tragically sinful humans. We are not whole if we experience no anger — or only anger. Some need to cultivate the love for fellow man (and God) that leads to holy grief; others need to cultivate the zeal for God (and man) that leads to holy anger. As Warfield captures it,

He who loves men must needs hate with a burning hatred all that does wrong to human beings. . . . Jesus never wavered in his consistent resentment of the special wrongdoing that he was called to witness. (75)

So, with Christ as our one mediator and perfect model, we seek to see our spirit increasingly come under the control of his Spirit.

See the Flash of His Love

Jesus indeed knows the experience of human anger. And we do not yet know the experience of sinlessness. As we watch his righteous anger, and learn the features of our own humanity in looking to him, we do proceed with caution, recognizing the distinctive power of anger, and knowing ourselves to be sinners across all our faculties.

And whether you call it rage or not, see that the root is love. The righteous anger of Christ is a function of his holy zeal — for his Father, his word, his holiness, and his people. For those who are safe in Christ, these flares of his holy anger are full of gospel wonder. He is righteous, and righteously angry with his enemies, because of his great love for his Father and his friends.

How can exercise equip us for the daily fight against sin? Training the body for our joy, mind, and will frees us to pursue every good work.

Watch Now

Jesus commanded us to love one another, but Paul seems to imply that commanding diminishes love. So, which does love prefer — commands or appeals?

Watch Now

What does Spirit-filled ministry look like in a dying world? John Piper shows from Luke 4:16–21 how the church joins Christ in his work of mercy.

Watch Now

I have an image in my mind of the godly old lady I want to be someday: soft-spoken, kind to all, full of wisdom. Having logged half a century under God’s sanctifying sandpaper, I should be well on my way by now. And, taking stock, I can see that I don’t have to rein in my temper as much as I used to, and there’s precious little out there that tempts me to covet. What I am learning, however, is that as I age, I sin differently. Sin is still “crouching at the door.” It just comes in a different form.

I can easily be fooled into mistaking apathy for godly serenity. I might take comfort in the absence of “fiery” sins like lust and anger — yet I may be blind to the pride, selfishness, and slothfulness that have crept into their place. Time can make us lazy, and we’re all subject to its subtle drift. Perhaps the sifting question for the aging Christian is, “Am I killing sin, or have I just traded one destructive path for another?”

The sad failures of David, Solomon, and Hezekiah suggest three solemn warnings for the seasoned Christian who wants to finish well.

1. Beware the temptation to coast.

As a much younger woman, I heard a well-respected Christian leader admit, “I could take my foot off the gas pedal today, and no one would ever know it. But I would, and God would.” From Screwtape’s devilish perspective, C.S. Lewis describes the “long, dull, monotonous years of middle-aged prosperity or middle-aged adversity” as “excellent campaigning weather” (Screwtape Letters, 155). He added, “Indeed, the safest road to Hell is the gradual one — the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts” (61).

This description perfectly fits “the time when kings go out to battle,” as David, coasting “on the roof of the king’s house,” set himself up for moral collapse rather than tending to business (2 Samuel 11:1–2). Then, later in the monarchy’s downward spiral, King Hezekiah, concerned mainly that there be “peace and security” in his own time (2 Kings 20:19), took “the gentle slope” at the end of his reign. Apparently, if he could cruise along in safety for the rest of his life, he didn’t care that Babylon would eventually be the instrument of God’s judgment upon Israel.

With David’s and Hezekiah’s backslidings before our eyes, we might ask ourselves, “And what about me? As I age, will I coast — or will I press on?” Personally, keeping my foot on the gas pedal will look like deep study and preparation for every ministry opportunity, resisting the temptation to whip up a twenty-minute devotional from the scraps of my previous teachings. It will require that I take captive the subtle sins that go undetected by others, listening instead to the voice of the Spirit as he filters every thought, word, and deed. It will mean that I never stop praying desperate prayers for God’s power to carry me and to keep me in the battle against sin and the fulfillment of my calling.

2. Beware the tendency toward cynicism.

By the time we reach midlife, we’ve likely accumulated a fair number of reasons to succumb to cynicism: the disappointment of prodigal or estranged adult children, the challenges of the sandwich generation, the heartache of difficult diagnoses, or even the death of a spouse. It’s all enough to make us join Solomon in singing the blues about the days when “the grasshopper drags itself along, and desire fails” (Ecclesiastes 12:5).

But Jude’s chilling description of “fruitless trees in late autumn, twice dead, uprooted” sends me in search of fruitfulness rather than slothful cynicism in this season (verse 12). If I give in to cynicism, I will find myself unable to enter sympathetically into the world of young family members and friends. Dismissive and emotionally unavailable, I’ll soon forget what it was like to care.

By contrast, the apostle Paul endured every indignity, trauma, and flavor of “church hurt” that we can imagine without bowing to cynicism and taking his hand off the plow. With unquenchable optimism, he never doubted God’s ability and willingness “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think” in people, churches, and situations that he could have easily scorned (Ephesians 3:20).

With our own eyes firmly fixed on the character of God, time may test and try us, but it can also soften us. We’ve lived through some hard things, but we’ve also seen God’s goodness and faithfulness in ten thousand different lights. By grace, we get to choose where our mind’s focus will rest. We can keep listening to the heartaches and challenges of the people in front of us.

We weathered the ages and stages of parenting long ago, but Spirit-fueled compassion keeps us listening with sympathy to the sleep-deprived mother of a toddler. We know for certain that the fate of the free world does not rest on our teen grandson’s failed driver’s license test, but we resist the temptation to apply a quick Band-Aid to his disappointment. Instead, we trust God for the gracious flexibility to enter the teenage world — and the worlds of all other kinds of people we encounter.

3. Beware grasping after youthfulness.

Was David’s moral failure with Bathsheba a symptom of his desire to prove he was still “a ladies’ man”? Was her youthful beauty the trigger that overcame his good sense? When he wrote Ecclesiastes, was Solomon lamenting the effects of the aging process on his joints? Regardless of the answers to these questions, their lives certainly attest to the danger of chasing an eternal springtime.

Our culture also worships youthfulness and fears the aging process, having long ago lost touch with a biblical view of aging well. Gray hair, which Scripture describes as “a crown of glory” (Proverbs 16:31), signals obsolescence or even invisibility to the man or woman whose greatest treasure is found in this world. Certainly, we don’t give in to our changing bodies without a fight. We exercise and eat sensibly — but we don’t listen to bad advice from advertisers who tell us we can stop the clock. Nor do we chase pleasure and make irresponsible choices in an effort to feel “alive” again.

Embracing the gift of years will look like mentoring younger women, partnering with God in creating the next generation of confident disciples of Christ and students of the word. As we steward our experience and trust God with the reality of our waning strength, we will be poised to serve the body of Christ with a depth of maturity that comes only through long-haul faithfulness.

Grace to finish well will come to us through humble, routine habits of holiness, spiritual disciplines that don’t deliver a big dopamine rush but provide a foundation for a faithful life. Regular communion with God through his word, confession of sin, and receiving daily grace for the “normal” Christian life doesn’t look very shiny unless it is seen in light of Paul’s laser focus:

Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:13–14)

The prize is not a good reputation or a stellar legacy. The prize is Christ, and the commitment to pursue his “upward call” produces the benefit of a life well-lived. Thanks be to God for the cross, our sacred starting place and our only hope for a faithful finish.

If consciousness is part of the soul, what are the implications when the brain degrades and dies? Pastor John speaks to consciousness in both life and death.

Listen Now

Why does chasing feelings leave us empty? In this episode of Light + Truth, John Piper shows from Luke 1:26–37 how the Spirit fills us by fixing our eyes on Christ.

Watch Now

Does God do anything in the act of baptism? If so, what is he up to?

When we ask the question from the human angle — “What are we doing in the act of baptism?” — most Christians would share similar answers. In baptism, we obey the command of the Lord Jesus for new disciples (Matthew 28:19). In baptism, we display outwardly the inward work of faith in our hearts (Colossians 2:11–12). In baptism, we profess allegiance to Jesus and, with him, his people (Acts 2:38–41).

But does God work in and through our baptism?

This question matters for Baptists. While emphasizing that baptism is for believers — an act of profession and obedience from faith in Christ — we do not want to miss the beauty of what the Bible says about God’s work in baptism. And for those considering a move away from Baptist circles because they want a more “God-centered” view of the ordinances, Baptists not only have an answer to this question, but we lean on the answer the New Testament, not speculation, provides.

God’s Work in Baptism

For good reason, we take care when we describe God’s activity in baptism. As we discern how God uses baptism for our good, we also identify what God is not doing in baptism.

First, while baptism is a sign of the new covenant, like circumcision was of the old (Romans 4:11), God does not bring his people into the new covenant through baptism — he does that through faith alone (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Second, while being “born of water” relates to new birth (John 3:5), God does not regenerate his people through baptism. Rather, the Holy Spirit is the agent of new life (John 3:8), with baptism serving as confirmation of his decisive work. Third, while baptism pictures union with Christ in his death and resurrection (Romans 6:3–4), God does not unite his people to Jesus through baptism. Those receiving the sign are already dead to sin and alive to God through faith in Jesus Christ (Romans 5:1).

While it might be simpler to avoid the above misconceptions by spiritualizing any reference to baptism in the New Testament or by taking God out of the equation completely, let’s not miss the real grace from God in baptism. Baptism is not necessary or sufficient for salvation, but God gives us baptism as a specially ordained means of bringing us to completion in Christ.

As Hercules Collins (1646–1702) explained, the sacraments “are sacred Signes, and Seals, set before our Eyes, and ordained of God for this cause, that he may declare and seal by them the Promise of his Gospel unto us” (An Orthodox Catechism, 25). Collins doesn’t claim that God uses baptism to seal the new covenant unto us. Along with other Particular Baptists in his era, he prioritizes “the promised Holy Spirit” (Ephesians 1:13), not baptism, as the seal of the new covenant (Second London Baptist Confession, appendix). Instead, the “seal” of baptism relates to the “Promise of his Gospel.”

The grace of God in baptism, then, seals two realities for us: (1) an enjoyment of our clean conscience by faith and (2) a confirmation that we are God’s children.

God Comforts the Conscience

The apostle Peter writes, “Baptism, which corresponds to this, now saves you, not as a removal of dirt from the body but as an appeal to God for a good conscience, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter 3:21). Baptism does not save in the washing itself, but it does save in some sense — namely, as an appeal to Christ for a clean conscience.

When we are baptized as an expression of and from faith, Christ seals our testimony and thus assures us of the new life offered through his death and resurrection. Christ uses baptism as a means of his confirming to our conscience that our sins have been forgiven.

In some sense, just as Paul preaches, baptism washes away our sins as we call on the name of the Lord (Acts 22:16). As Andrew Fuller writes, “Sin is washed away in baptism in the same sense as Christ’s flesh is eaten, and his blood drank, in the Lord’s supper: the sign, when rightly used, leads [our souls] to the thing signified” (Complete Works, 3:341). Faith is like conception, and baptism is like your birth. You were alive from the moment you believed in Jesus for the salvation of your sins, but you are publicly sealed through your baptism — and that sealing of your testimony gives an even deeper enjoyment of your new life.

God Confirms We Are His

When reminding the Galatians that they are children of God, Paul writes, “In Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ” (Galatians 3:26–27). Paul singles out faith as the instrument for sonship, and this sonship is then confirmed in and through the memorable event of baptism. Baptism confirms we are his children through a living picture of being dead to sin and alive in Christ.

Jesus’s own baptism emphasizes this point. Because we are in Christ by faith and the work of the Spirit, the words the Father speaks of Christ prove true of us as well: “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11). As we approach baptism as new believers (and each time we witness a baptism in the future), we can remind one another of this deep truth: We are God’s beloved children, and our baptism serves as a God-appointed help to assure us of this reality.

Christ uses baptism to help remedy the shame of our sin and to bring us into a state of honor by assuring us of our adoption into God’s family. This is why we baptize in the name of Jesus (Acts 2:38; 10:48; 19:5) — that is, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Like a wife taking on the name of her husband in marriage, believers publicly take on the name of Christ, and the triune God, at baptism.

For Assurance of Faith

These realities — spiritual comfort and public confirmation of a believer’s sonship — work together for an objective assurance of salvation. When done in faith, baptism serves as a sign and seal of Christ’s work for us on the cross and in his resurrection. Baptism is not regenerative, but it is powerfully confirmatory.

In other words, we now have visible assurance of invisible realities. That is a true grace from God, mediated through his body, the church, which has affirmed our faith by applying the sign and seal of baptism to us. Faith is like a prince’s ascension to the throne when his father dies, but baptism is like his coronation day, a public sealing and celebration of the reality that he is the new king.

This assurance, while not always subjectively felt by the believer in the ups and downs of life, provides us with an objective pledge from Christ that our sins have been forgiven and that we are children of God. When trials come, or when we give into sin, we can remind one another of both the inward work of God’s Spirit by faith and the outward confirmation of our baptism to strengthen assurance: “Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water” (Hebrews 10:22). Of course, baptism should not provide assurance for those who presume on God’s grace, as Paul warns (1 Corinthians 10:1–6). But it should for those who are seeking to bear fruit in keeping with repentance.

Therefore, as we ourselves come up from the waters of baptism, or as we witness baptisms in the future, we can look to each other and say, “Just like this person, I have taken on the name Christian by faith in the Lord Jesus and obedience to his command for baptism. Through union with Christ, God sees me as a beloved child.” And we pray that this objective assurance then leads to the joy of subjective assurance.

Called to Obey

Not only does baptism remind us of our gracious standing with God, but Paul leads the way in applying baptism to obedience. Should Christians continue in sin? “By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:2). And what does Paul point to as proof that we have died to sin? Baptism: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3).

Again, baptism itself does not bring us into union with Christ’s death. Paul says that believers, who were once slaves of sin, “have become obedient from the heart” (Romans 6:17). Yet Paul points to baptism as objective evidence of this death, evidence that motivates ongoing obedience to God.

So, as we look to the waters of baptism for the first time, or as we look yet again at a new believer passing through the waters, we can give thanks to God that we are his — washed clean of sins and declared his children — and we can look to him for fresh grace to follow Jesus as Lord.

Once, long ago, you prayed for a loved one’s salvation earnestly and often. Now, you still pray sometimes, but you can barely bring yourself to hope for the answer.

Or maybe you once pleaded for grace against a stubborn character flaw or besetting sin. Now, you’ve succumbed to a sort of fatalism about yourself. Some things just don’t change.

Or perhaps you once sought God for a relational breakthrough. Now, though the sorrow stays deep, reconciliation seems all but impossible.

Most of us can think of some desire we once brought before God almost without ceasing. As far as we could tell, the request honored him and aligned with his word. So, we prayed and took our stand, our eyes open for the answer.

But then weeks passed, and then months, and then years, maybe many years. And gradually, we stopped asking so often. As hope faded, so too did our prayers.

Dear brother or sister, however many months or years have passed since you last asked — really asked — God to fulfill some godly desire, I invite you to ask again and keep asking. And I want to do so with some help from George Müller (1805–1898), a friend who has given my own prayers fresh hope.

Fifty-Year Prayers

Müller’s life is, from one angle, a story of answered prayer. At the beginning of his orphan ministry in Bristol, England, he resolved to ask no one for money except God. The result was a life of constant prayer — and constant answers to prayer. “I should not go a particle too far,” Müller said in his seventies, “[that] I have had thirty thousand answers to prayer, either in the same hour or the same day that the requests were made.”

Müller offered that miraculous testimony, however, as the backdrop to a much different experience: “One or the other might suppose all my prayers were thus promptly answered. No; not all of them. Sometimes I have had to wait weeks, months or even years; sometimes many years” (Delighted in God, 193).

In 1844, for example, Müller began praying daily for the salvation of five friends. A year and a half later, the first was saved; five years after that, the second was saved; six years more, the third was saved. But then forty years passed, and the final two remained unsaved. Müller, however, kept praying — every day.

“When once I am persuaded that a thing is right and for the glory of God,” he wrote, “I go on praying for it until the answer comes.” Then, turning to Christians like you and me, he offered a gentle correction: “The great fault of the children of God is, they do not continue in prayer; they do not go on praying; they do not persevere. If they desire anything for God’s glory, they should pray until they get it” (223–24).

When the years wear on, when the answer delays even for decades, what would Müller counsel us to do? Continue; go on; persevere. Keep praying for a breakthrough.

Ask, Seek, Knock

Maybe we wonder, though, whether Müller was right to keep praying for answers that did not come. After all, Scripture gives us examples of saints who are told to stop asking for something: Moses on the edge of the promised land (Deuteronomy 3:25–26), Paul with his thorn (2 Corinthians 12:8–9). So, we might even wonder if persistent prayer for the same thing displeases God. At some point, shouldn’t we take his delay as his decline?

No doubt, a prayer life can become lopsided. We can so focus on one prayer that we neglect many other good prayers. Or we can desire something good for reasons far different from “hallowed be your name” (Matthew 6:9). But if we are persuaded, as Müller says, “that a thing is right and for the glory of God,” and if God’s glory remains the passion beneath our prayers, then Scripture offers plenty of encouragements to keep praying.

Didn’t Jesus tell his disciples parables “to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart” (Luke 18:1)? The widow asked and kept asking till her requests beat down the judge (Luke 18:4–5). The late-night knocker pounded the door till his friend got out of bed and gave him what he wanted (Luke 11:5–8). So, Jesus says, “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Luke 11:9).

As we look at his ministry more broadly, wasn’t it the persistent people who received what they asked for? The crowds shushed the blind man, but he kept shouting for mercy — and got it (Mark 10:46–52). Jesus initially ignored the Canaanite mother, but she kept kneeling before the Master’s table until he gave her a crumb (Matthew 15:21–28).

Teachings and stories like these move us toward the same conclusion the commentator Derek Kidner drew from the Psalms: “God, it seems, prefers an excess of boldness in prayer to an excess of caution” (Psalms 73–150, 319). So, unless you have a compelling reason for why you should no longer pray for some deep, God-honoring desire, keep praying.

Grace in God’s Delays

Maybe you’re persuaded to keep praying. But you wonder, as I do, why God designed prayer to work this way. If God can open any door at any time, why does he sometimes keep us knocking for so long? If God can answer thirty thousand prayers the same day Müller prayed them, why did he wait fifty years before answering others?

Once, Müller and his staff at the orphanage were praying for God to provide money they dearly needed. Finally, when they had no way to pay for the children’s breakfast the next morning, God sent funds through a man who had been staying nearby. Müller reflected,

That the money had been so near the Orphan-Houses for several days without being given is a plain proof that it was in the beginning in the heart of God to help us; but because He delights in the prayers of His children, He had allowed us to pray so long; also to try our faith, and to make the answer so much the sweeter. (Delighted in God, 82)

God surely has many reasons for his delays. But here Müller fastens upon three that help us not lose heart.

DEEPER COMMUNION

First, God sometimes delays because he delights in the prayers of his children. Christian, God loves your humble, sincere prayers. He loves to see your soul knee-bent. He loves to hear you renounce self-reliance and confess that “what is impossible with man is possible with God” (Luke 18:27). Earnest, needy, believing prayers are incense before him, a sweet-smelling pleasure (Revelation 8:3–4). And when the months or years go on, and all earthly probabilities pass away, he delights to find you still praying.

Unanswered prayer can feel like God distancing himself from us. But what if his delays are invitations to draw nearer — to love him above all answers and to believe he can still answer?

STRONGER FAITH

Second, God sometimes delays because he wants to try our faith. We need faith, strong faith, to keep praying for something that has not come — to keep waiting for a sun that won’t rise, to keep knocking on a door that won’t budge. The faith of many has withered in the waiting. It can feel easier to believe God doesn’t hear or doesn’t care than to ask and ask again.

But God does hear; he does care — and he is able, with a word, to end the long delay. So, though we have no promise that God will answer our prayers exactly as we expect him to, unanswered prayer can foster in us the trust of Abraham, who “grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God” (Romans 4:20), fully convinced that God could fill an old woman’s womb — or rescue a prodigal, or bring personal breakthrough, or rekindle cold love.

SWEETER JOY

Finally, God sometimes delays because he wants to make the answer so much the sweeter. God is devoted to making you as happy in him as you can be. And he knows that sometimes deeper joy lies on the other side of a long delay.

God wants you to look at answered prayers like Abraham and Sarah looked at Isaac, this son named laughter. They could hardly hold him or hear his voice without laughing, astonished at God’s goodness (Genesis 21:3–7). But they would not have laughed as they did if they hadn’t waited as they did. Theirs was a vintage joy, strong and well-aged. And so is ours when we pray and wait, pray and wait, and then finally find the answer.

What We Ask or Better

Alongside these good reasons for God’s delays, Müller rested his soul upon another mighty truth as he persisted in prayer: “Our heavenly Father never takes anything from His children” — or withholds anything from his children — “unless He means to give them something better” (Autobiography, 179). If God should never give you what you ask for, dear saint, he has something better in mind for you.

You may struggle to grasp how his no is better than his yes; you may need to wait till heaven to see clearly. But as surely as God gave up his Son for you, he will not give you worse than what you ask for (Romans 8:28; 32). In the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, he has already done the hardest and given the best. Now, the gospel assures you just how willing your Father is to “give good things to those who ask him” (Matthew 7:11).

Persistent prayer dies under the lie that God doesn’t like to give good things. He does like to give good things — the best things, gifts far better than we can ask or imagine. So, take your good desires, your God-honoring longings, and keep asking, keep seeking, keep knocking. Your Father invites you to do so. And if he says no, he will only give you something better.

Paul knows what he wants Philemon to do, but he chooses not to command it. Why? He wants something deeper than rote obedience: genuine love.

Watch Now