I prayed and nothing changed

In this conversation, Ste Casey discusses the challenging topic of unanswered prayer, sharing personal experiences and insights from his book 'I Prayed and Nothing Changed.' He explores the emotional turmoil that comes with praying for change and feeling unheard, emphasising the importance of wrestling with God in prayer and recognising his presence in our pain. The discussion highlights the risks of abandoning faith during difficult times and encourages listeners to seek a deeper relationship with God, even amidst unanswered prayers.

Buy the book here: https://uk.10ofthose.com/product/9781645072218/i-prayed-and-nothing-changed-paperback

Chapters

00:00
Introduction to Unanswered Prayer

08:08
The Experience of Unanswered Prayer

12:20
The Risks of Doubt and Abandonment

17:00
God's Work in Our Pain

21:51
Wrestling with God in Prayer

28:35
Encouragement for the Broken

Creators and Guests

Host

Helen Thorne-Allenson

Director of Training and Resources at BCUK

Guest

Ste Casey

Pastor of Speke Baptist Church, Tutor on the BCUK Certificate Programme

What is The BCUK Podcast?

Equipping churches for conversation and counsel

Helen (00:00)
Well, welcome to our Latest BCUK Conversation and with me today is Ste Casey, pastor, speaker, author and someone who is going to be helping us look at the really difficult topic of unanswered prayer. Ste, welcome.

Ste (00:17)
Helen thank you so much for having me on. We're friends and so it already feels like I'm amongst friends. So I'm looking forward to this.

Helen (00:24)
Wonderful. Well, many people listening will know a bit about you, will have heard you speak. But for those who don't know you, do you want to tell us just a little bit about who you are, where you're based, how you spend your time, who you share your life with?

Ste (00:38)
Yeah, thank you. So obviously I'm Ste, I'm married to Jane. We've got six daughters for the last more than 20 years. We've been leading a small church in a council estate on the south side of Liverpool. We sort of replanted it in the early noughties. And so my normal day job is figuring out how to communicate the wonderful gospel of grace of Christ himself to

our people in our community and see the church built up and equipped for works of service. And then over these, probably the last 15 plus years, I've been quite involved in the biblical counselling movement, initially introduced to that through some ministries in the States, through CCEF, and then further through BC UK. And so I do quite a lot of ⁓ either counselling for brother pastors who refer people to me from their church, people within my own congregation, and I also tutor and teach people.

in the art of biblical counselling, helping people come alongside with the gospel of Christ in the midst of struggles, sorrows and sins. So yeah, that's mainly what I'm most excited about and preoccupied with. ⁓

Helen (01:49)
What a privilege to be involved in all of those things though, I'm sure challenges and exhaustion along the way sometimes. amid all of those things, you've recently written a book. It's entitled I Prayed and Nothing Changed, What God is Up To in the Silence. Can you tell us the story behind that? What was it about that topic that grabbed your heart and thought, yes, I'm going to write a book about this?

Ste (02:16)
Yeah, thank you. And you said I've recently written it. was originally commissioned way about probably about seven or eight years ago back in think 2017, 2018, something like that. And the occasion for that was I'd started to write a little bit because of just a phenomena that I meet in conversations almost inevitably. And I realized I was getting myself quite stuck in it. So I would be speaking with people who were trying to process.

some difficulty that had come into their life or some disappointment that they wish they could get past but felt very stuck in it. And at one point or another, as I'm listening to their story, they tell me about that. My heart would go out to them and I would do the thing that comes most naturally as a pastor, which is I'd offer to pray with them and for them and that they have no more grace and maybe ⁓ move past whatever was... ⁓

was a sticking point or where they were finding this degree of pain. And I just noticed again and again and again, this sort of drop of the shoulders, this hang of the head, this look on their face was as if to say, really, Ste, don't you think I've not tried that already? I'm speaking to you, but this is not the first time I've considered trying to seek the Lord, pray, ask for a change, and the change hasn't come.

Really, Ste, is that all that you've got left? Because I've sort of given up. And so as I was encountering that, and I think it is a ⁓ normal Christian experience, I suspect that most of your listeners now have known themselves in that situation or have tried to come alongside somebody who themselves is in that situation. It caused me to go back to the scriptures because it felt as if...

It was game set and match when somebody is there. There is nothing more to be said. And so I wanted to understand how prayer and the experience of praying and nothing changing, you like, unanswered prayer or seemingly unanswered prayer, how that features in the story. And through that process, I began to realize that it's actually all over the scriptures. We see the perfect example in the life of Job.

Here he is, he's got questions, he's afflicted, things have come into his life that he neither felt like he deserved or he had got any answer to and he is banging on the gates of heaven and yet answer there comes none. And then you've got countless of the Psalms where somebody is pouring out their heart to the Lord asking for something because they feel like there is something that has come into their life or something that they desperately want in their life and it's not there, things

aren't the circumstances are difficult and they feel as if God isn't hearing, God isn't answering. And then you've got the ultimate prayer, the ultimate unanswered prayer I should say, which is Christ himself in the garden and he cries out to his heavenly father in in Gethsemane which literally means the place of pressing and he knows that his father can remove something and yet in that particular story I'm so glad.

that he didn't have his prayers answered, which by the way is the promise that we always will in somewhere or another, that's for another time. And then there's my favourite one which the book is based around, which is just going on a slow, cautious look at the experience of the Apostle Paul when he talks about his experience with the thorn in the flesh and how he had pleaded with the Lord. And it seemed as if he was not getting the answer that he was looking for.

And so I began to discover as I looked into scripture that if you take those moments and those seasons in isolation, it would be very easy to believe that we have sort of fake news about God, that he doesn't care, and he can't be trusted, and he's not as gracious, and perhaps there are reasons why he will not smile upon us. But then when you look more broadly, those moments and those

dark moments of the soul of seemingly unanswered are a vital and crucial part of a broader story. And therefore, how are we going to try to keep our eyes on a broader story when we're right in the midst of the battle? And of course, that's what I set out to write about a number of years ago, and unfortunately, it ended up being much more difficult than I'd anticipated. And my editor joked,

with me once we had finished the task, she was like, Stee, why on earth would you volunteer yourself to write a book on this topic of I prayed and nothing changed and not expect the Lord to have to put you through something that meant you could identify with it? And the result of that was in the end, I felt like I was sort of writing for my own life. So myself, my wife,

people in our family, we face some things that put me on the floor crying, Lord, why aren't you answering in the way that I think you should? And so in many ways, the story wasn't just a theological treatise. The book is more a walk through this experience with moments where confidence that God will come through was low, but also

realizing by the end of the book that there is, ⁓ he is faithful, he shows us more of himself and with the Lord you're never quite done.

Helen (08:08)
Wow, it sounds like you've got a very wise editor, but also it's a painful path to walk that. And as I've read the book, I think we can see glimpses that this has been a hard-thought book as well as a well-thought through book. ⁓ So thank you for walking those paths and being willing to share that with us. I'm wondering if we can dig a little bit into the experience of what it's like to pray and for it to seem like nothing.

is changing. mean you've already alluded to Job, you've alluded to the Psalms there. How would you describe that experience of praying and nothing changing?

Ste (08:46)
Yeah, I think in the book I talk about it as a strange double sorrow. So not only have you got the sorrow of here is my life, it's not going in the direction I thought it would. Here is this thing that has come in and it's dominating my day. I don't know quite how I'm to get through this. Here is this thing that I'd so hoped in and it's not coming into my life in a way that I thought it would. And it feels like a death to me. So not only have you got the pain of that, but then

our interactions with our circumstance and what comes at us. In that moment, when you dare to make yourself vulnerable, turn towards heaven and say, Lord, I really need you now. Please, could you come through? And I've got a very clear grasp of what I think I need. It's this thing. If you could just fix this thing, if you could just make that thing go away.

If you could just, that thorn that is piercing me so brutally, if you could fix that and you open yourself up and you dare to cry out, you become vulnerable and then you feel as if nothing has been given, that's the double sorrow. It's a double pain. It magnifies it. Some people have even said to me they wish they had never even prayed in the first place. And so in...

In that regard, the experience of unanswered prayer really does turn the screw and force us to say, have I believed in vain? We have an enemy of our soul who loves to sort of get those voices on the go. So I was speaking with a dear brother just the other day and he was a former mentor of mine. He's now in his seventies. He's battling a particularly

cruel form of cancer which means his organs are working fine but his skin is on fire and so day by day he's in constant pain and as we were speaking I asked him is the physical pain the worst of it and he said no and I said is it the voices and the worries and the fears that come as you face the pain he's like there it Ste that's it so the pain is like a fang

but it's the voices. Does the Lord really love me? Is this my lot? How am I going to get through? Have I been forgotten? Is he really present? Can I trust his words? Because the situation is screaming at me and my heart puts an interpretation and a voice on that and the enemy piles in all with the intention of drawing us away from the grace of the living God and denying that he really is as good to us as...

we've seen in the cross and resurrection of Christ. we can, that pain in that moment, that pressure leads to despair, cynicism, and the temptation to even just, not just withdraw, but to just give up on God altogether.

Helen (11:49)
I'm sure as I'm listening to you, I can think of seasons of my life where that's exactly where my brain has gone and that's exactly where my heart has gone. Does he love me? Is this worth it? Should I even keep going? And I imagine people who are listening, there'll be many here who are nodding along going, that's where I am at right now. It just doesn't seem right, does it? That heaven should be silent when we are facing ⁓ great pain.

I mean, we've talked about there being a risk of sort of falling away of, can you tease that out a little bit more? What are the risks of leaving these thoughts that God has abandoned us unaddressed?

Ste (12:33)
Yeah, I really appreciate you asking that question because almost under it is sort of, we've got to put in a kind of foundation as to what we really think the Christian life is all about. So if we think the Christian life is measured by, is a God whose job it is to give me the blessings and to remove the pains as I see fit.

and then the circumstances in my life as I pick through the rubble of them it would appear that he has failed in that but we find in scripture that he is a God who has a vision for us to be renewed in the image of and upheld and sustained by the outrageous grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in the days of this life until the time when we meet him

He is working in us to work a kind of dependency upon him and not just for the dependency of what we've got on our script, but a dependency of fellowship with him. So in those moments where disappointment and pain are loudly, we can lose sight of that back away.

without considering the possibility that those are the very moments that though the enemy might mean to draw us away, he is trying to draw us in, that we may once again cherish, wrestle with, press into the realities of his grace to us, which is always greater than we anticipate it to be. And so there'll be some people who are listening here who are on the, they may even be,

speaking like one of the ladies who I vividly remember a conversation with. And when we tried to talk a little bit about what she's going through and how she's processing it, and I asked her whether she could pray, she simply said, me and God, we're not on speaking terms. And in that moment, I was like, no! If anything, the unanswered prayer, or I prayed and nothing changed, is an occasion to press in harder.

not to get what you want, but to get the giver what is it that he's going to be working into our life that we hadn't even realised was available to us.

Helen (14:59)
And that is both deeply beautiful as we think about an intimacy and a dependency upon the Lord that maybe we haven't tasted before. But that's also really hard when life is painful because we're not necessarily talking about small disappointments here, are we? Sometimes we're talking about life tearing apart disappointments and everything within us just shouts, know, just please make it better Lord, please make this feel less hard.

Ste (15:27)
And therefore, at the centre of the book, and I think that the Apostle Paul does this intentionally, as he is writing to the Corinthian Church, which he is when he recounts this testimony, he sees them of having a pretty small world, a world that is shrunk to the size of what they are going through. And I see myself in that. And so what happens as we face pain and disappointment, scripture doesn't minimise that.

but it speaks to us as those who have got a kind of limited bandwidth that when we're finding things hard, it's almost like those, our experience of that crowds out and covers over like clouds the love of God that is present. Therefore, Paul is beckoning them to dare to see the things that God is doing and how he is upholding and how

they have got sufficient grace in Christ at a time when their bandwidth is so jammed up with just trying to get through the day that perhaps they can't see this beautiful vista of the love of God wrapping around them. And so he's inviting us to lift our eyes.

Helen (16:44)
And that's where you go next in the book, isn't it? You draw people's attention to what God is doing. In fact, you give a quite a big overview of all the kinds of things, well, maybe not all, but an awful lot of the kinds of things that God is doing. Can you lead us through a few of those in a bit more detail?

Ste (17:00)
Yeah, but can I do it with a sort of disclaimer ahead of time? ⁓ I don't want as people are listening to this, I don't want them to think of it as a kind of right, I've just got to remember, I've just got to remember, I've just got to remember. Paul speaks about his experience in such a way as he he's had time to be able to process this. It's not where he there isn't any kind of sign that the the thorn in the flesh that he

he faced that floored him, pierced him, had necessarily removed. But he saw a kind of process of the Lord working in his life. And almost as he went through that, there were kind of different moments of confidence, there was a roller coaster of emotions, there was deep disappointment. And therefore, if anybody's listening to this and says, okay, that means I've just got to remember, I've just got to...

We're seeing what is the Lord doing across our journey as part of his beautiful, wonderful redemption. And I suppose you could put it this way, and I think I do partly in the book, and I say, I remember as a young Christian being so delighted at some of the promises of scripture where he said, will conform me into his likeness and all things will work for my good. Not necessarily everything will be good, but it will. And I'm like, bring it Lord, because

I liked the promise, but I had no idea that the process might involve pain. And here is a God who sometimes writes weakness in us that we may taste his strength. And therefore, I'm often speaking to myself and to others at a point where I've been praying, Lord, don't do your process.

But to say that to somebody when...

When tears come very quickly, when sorrow is present, when emotions are swirling, when you simply say, can't hope if this is going to be what my future is like, I want to be really cautious about saying, just remember a few things. It's not. So what we're seeing is we're seeing a movement of how the Lord tends to deal with us. And so what do we see? We saw that the Lord had an intention to work in Paul's life.

even when he didn't realize it. We saw that the intention was directed towards the Lord keeping Paul from that terrible, toxic self-reliance conceit inside of him. It involved him giving Paul some experiences that he wouldn't have wished on his worst enemy. And in the midst of that, beckoning Paul to speak to him, in the midst of that, there is the pleading.

And we find that when Paul has done all of that, the Lord says, I really value you talking to me. But he sort of puts it back and says, will you believe that I am speaking to you? He says, but he said to me, and that's the turn in the story. So who have we got? We've got a God who is speaking to us of his son in the gospel. We find that what he is speaking about is his grace.

is sufficient grace. And I wince at the number of times when I have sort of said, God's grace is sufficient for you. And as I'm speaking to somebody, somebody's gone, yeah, but that's not what I want right now. And so we need to decide whether or not, and it sort of presses us to decide whether or not the grace of God in Christ is sufficient for us.

or whether that is a polite biblical platitude. And then further than that, we have to ask, well, how is the grace of Christ sufficient for us? And then we find Paul talking about how the Lord has abided with him, hung out with him, has been present and dwelling. And so there's just a few of the things that I think just in that little text, we see Paul as he looks back and tells his story. Here were some of the things.

that I was tempted to dismiss as nothing or feel like they hadn't got any leverage over the situation, but actually they were the biggest things in the moment and I had to strive to lay hold of them, trust them. Doesn't mean that it wasn't painful, but these realities were what got me through and at the end of it, all I can, Barney, you went through a horrible situation and at the end of it he said, and I rejoice in my sufferings.

Helen (21:51)
It is incredible, isn't it?

Ste (21:53)
His experience has been transfigured. But he had to go through the experience to experience that transfiguring of the pain and the suffering.

Helen (22:04)
If anyone wants to be looking up this passage later, 2 Corinthians 12, presumably is where you're loitering there. It's a rich, rich passage. But I'm just wondering if I can push in just a little bit to that difference between remembering that this is true, which of course is a good and godly thing to do, to remember what is true about God and the way that he treats us. But actually, rather than just doing that, to actually be dwelling in

the experience of that truth, be acknowledging and living in the light of the fact that God is present and doing good work. I mean, how do you navigate that as someone that's going through horrible things?

Ste (22:49)
Yeah, I think that's an important question. think that sometimes what we can do is we can think that spiritual growth is knowing stuff about the Lord or even merely remembering it intellectually. But it seems that Paul and scripture as a whole models a way that what we do at the most basic level, what is prayer? Some people would say it's a shopping list. Prayer fundamentally is talking.

to the Lord as he reveals himself about what he has said to us. And you see Paul wrestling, you see the psalmists wrestling, you see Job wrestling. So I suppose I would say rather than just knowing it or remembering it, particularly in struggle, the best motif is I'm gonna wrestle this out with the Lord. So it might go something like this.

Lord today I listened to a couple of jokers on a podcast saying that the grace of Jesus Christ is sufficient for me. Lord they don't know what I'm going through and I doubt that you're even mindful of what I'm going through and to be honest with you whatever this grace of Jesus is it doesn't feel like it's enough right now. What would feel like it's enough is this. It feels as if you don't care.

But I want to dare to believe that if you're saying to me that there is something in the totality of what Jesus has done for me that will uphold me and keep my soul when I feel like I'm about to crumble, please Lord would you bring it in because I can't survive without you. Please would you help me to put off my doubts that your grace is sufficient. And please Lord would you help me to be upheld and sustained even in the pain. ⁓

by you just one more day, Lord, please make your word true in my life. So do you see that's a lot bigger than just going, if I just remember, this is the motif is wrestling with God for his glory in faith, clinging on by our fingertips, knowing that he is the God who does his best work when we come to him.

in our weakness and say please would you be my strength.

Helen (25:16)
Wow, I mean that is a very real and raw prayer but it's a very deep and profound prayer as well isn't it? Do we do that on our own? Do we do that with our friends and family or both?

Ste (25:30)
Yeah, I'm not sure whether you're trying to answer your own question that you're giving to me there. I think that we have the honor and privilege of being able to, I want to know people in my family, in my church well enough that to some degree I am in their desperation, sorrow, pain, frustration with them enough that I could pray those kind of things with and for them.

And sometimes what my role is, is to give people permission to be able to pray like that. So what I often find, let's say whether it's in an informal conversation or in a more formal counselling situation, as people find themselves talking about how they are going through what they're going through and what's really at the root of how they're feeling with the disappointments, the difficulties, their own personal sin and failure.

the degree of despair, sometimes the anger at God. They will vocalize that eventually when they feel comfortable enough with me and then I will say something like this to them. I feel so honored that you've been able to say that to me and it's meant something to you, I can tell by you being able to put words on it to me. But how would you feel about the idea of saying those things to the living God? Do you think he's big enough?

Do think his grace is sufficient enough? And they'll look at me as if I've got two heads.

And some of them will be honest enough to say, don't even know whether I can lift my head to heaven to say that. And I'll say, well, can I come alongside you? Can I use your words and speak to the Lord for you, with you, on your behalf? And those are some of the most meaningful times of prayer. And sometimes tears come, sometimes anger bubbles, sometimes indignation comes out. And that's the wonderful thing about the gospel of Christ.

We don't have to put our best foot forward. We don't have to come with the best version of ourselves. In fact, the Lord is most honoured and glorified when we don't try and bring the best version of ourselves. We come as children in need of grace, daring to believe that there is space for the likes of us when we are struggling or when we have failed. And He delights to hear the...

the call and the cry of his children at their point of need.

Helen (28:05)
I'll enter that. ⁓ Ste, we could chat for hours, but our time is approaching an end. Working on the assumption there are people listening right now whose hearts are breaking, whose lives are breaking, and heaven is feeling silent, you've already given us so much food for thought, so much fuel for prayer there. How can you encourage people to take a step towards that today?

Ste (28:35)
Yeah, I really appreciate that. And I think in many ways, how do we trouble our trouble? We trouble our troubles by allowing ourselves to get set in, I've understood what's really happening here. The Lord has let me down. The thing that I say I change in, I can't live without.

I can't see past this problem. And as I am there in those moments, it sort of like sets like concrete. And some people may have set in their sorrow, their pain, their disappointment. And what I think he would be calling us to do is to say, can I doubt my certainty in my sorrow?

Can I let his voice speak a better word over me? Can I dare to say that there can be some wonderful things true, but there is one outside of the situation who has some better things to say to us in that moment? And can I hang on to him for just one more day? Which is very different to saying, fix me Lord. Effectively what we're saying is,

Help me to struggle through this. Help me to dare to believe that you will give me daily bread enough for today. And then I'll wake up tomorrow and the struggle will be there, but you'll give me daily bread for tomorrow. When the voices of despair speak loudly over and say, what's the point? I should give up. Don't look to the end of the story. Look to just tomorrow. Is there grace enough from...

the Lord for me through Jesus for this day. And that will be, you know, journey of a thousand miles is one step at a time. That's the way he deals with us. Can I let you into a quick secret? ⁓ Most of the conversations I have with people when they are struggling and facing difficulty and some of them are very, very deep and have been, they've carried with them for an awful

awful long time. When they come and speak to me, they're effectively or implicitly saying, Ste, please can you get me out of feeling the way I'm feeling and facing life the way I'm facing. And that is the only criteria for success. And I'm like, I wish I could push a button and make it work, but I can't. Our biblical approach, which Paul was pushing,

to facing down the trials and disappointments of life is not Lord I'm a celebrity get me out of here. It's Lord would you meet me in this and help me bear it well for your glory trusting that you are working something good even in the pain. And so what is my expectation for the kind of person you're speaking of right now somebody who's suffering with this some sort of disappointment that feels like a death.

Perhaps it's, Lord I'm not expecting you to lift me out of it but please would you help me to struggle well leaning on your grace and believing what your word says about me. The enemy wants to destroy me and lead me to trust almost anything other than you. Would you sustain me for one more day and then the day after that get me up and help me do it again.

Helen (32:21)
Well, if people want to read any more, Stee's book is called I Prayed and Nothing Changed, What God is Up to in the Silence. It's published by New Growth Press, but available in many good book outlets. But Stee, as we bring things to a close, would you pray for us? Would you pray for those of us listening who are feeling broken, who are feeling as if God is silent, that we would be able to turn back to him in hope?

Ste (32:49)
Yeah, let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we praise and thank you that your grace is more present, more sufficient, more meaningful to us than so often we can see. So often our lives are consumed by the pain and the disappointment of the moment, quite often thorns that have pierced our life that we've had to carry for so long. We can't quite make sense of why they're there, and we can't quite make sense of why certain things are there. But we want to dare to believe, Lord.

that in the midst of all our waiting and disappointment, you are working in order that you may draw us nearer to you, that we may draw down on your grace and confidence in the fullness of what Jesus has done for us, his unending, redeeming love, unstoppable as it is. And we dare to pray, Lord, that you would help us to be able to go one more day, trusting, holding on, even to the point that in the fullness of time,

you would grant to us a story that we just can't help but tell, much like the Apostle Paul, of how you are the God who triumphs and shows his strength in the midst of weakness, weak situations, disappointments. So I thank you for this conversation with Helen, for all those who've been able to listen. Please, Lord, you've said your grace is sufficient. We want to take you at your word, show it to us. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen.