Audio Transcript

We start this new week off with a tough email. There’s no great way to introduce the topic other than to read the story that came in from a listener, a woman named Belinda. “Good day, Pastor John,” she writes. “I find myself in a place of confusion about life. And my question is whether there’s a point to praying for God’s protection over our lives — for example, protection from accidents when going on a car trip, protection from a disease or from criminals or from being injured in athletics — when we know that this earthly life is full of suffering and hardships.

“I’ve been reading that God isn’t in the business of intervening in every event in our lives. I used to believe that my family and I were generally well protected by God. I would sing over my young children at night the benediction — ‘The Lord bless you and keep you . . .’ — and life was pretty good. When my almost five-year-old daughter died by drowning in our swimming pool a few years back, I stopped singing that song. And since then, I feel insincere praying for the Lord’s protection. It didn’t help my faith when we were robbed of our valuables at gunpoint three years ago either.

“I do still actually pray numerous times for God to keep my family safe and healthy, but I don’t know if there is a point to these prayers. He didn’t protect my daughter from drowning. He didn’t protect us from criminals. My elderly parents have been burglarized and scammed, and I have no guarantee that my family and I will be spared trials in the future. What, why, how should I be praying regarding the topic of protection when it feels so utterly pointless?”

Well, let’s start with those three questions. What should I be praying regarding protection? Why should I be praying for protection? How should I be praying for protection? All three of these are, she says very explicitly, under the emotional shadow of this statement: “What, why, how . . . when it feels so utterly pointless?”

I’m going to come back to that statement of feeling pointless at the end because that’s a shadow that is shaping everything. But she did ask what and why and how, and I’m going to take them one at a time.

What Protection Should We Pray For?

What should we be praying regarding the topic of protection? We should be praying that God would protect us from any test of our faith that would exceed the grace he promises to provide for the endurance of it and the ability to grow by it and glorify him in it. And I say that because of the promise in 1 Corinthians 10:13. And I’m going to translate this by replacing the word temptation with test because they’re exactly the same word in Greek, and I think it has this broader sense.

No test has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your ability. But with the test he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.

For example, when Paul asked for protection and deliverance from his thorn in the flesh, which caused him pain, the Lord refused to protect him from it or take the thorn away. He had another kind of protection in mind — not physical protection, but another kind. He said, “My grace, Paul, is sufficient for you in this test. My power is made perfect in your weakness.” And Paul responds amazingly, wonderfully, gloriously: “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so the power of Christ may rest upon me.” That’s 2 Corinthians 12:9.

What we pray is, “Don’t let anything happen to me that would exceed the sufficiency of your grace to help me endure it, grow in my faith by it, and glorify your grace in it.” If God removes his protection in any area of our lives, which he regularly does, these are the purposes: to help us endure, to increase our reliance on him in loss, and to glorify the sufficiency of his grace to carry us through — even with joy — in the loss.

So, if I were with Belinda, I would ask her — I would ask you, Belinda, as tenderly as possible, “When you say, ‘It didn’t help my faith when we were robbed of our valuables at gunpoint three years ago,’ why is that? Because that was God’s purpose in it.” Hebrews 10:34 says, “You joyfully accepted the plundering of your property, since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.” Paul said that he was crushed to the point of despairing of life, and that was God’s purpose. It was God’s purpose to make him rely not on himself but on God (2 Corinthians 1:9). That was the design of the crushing.

“God is your Father. He is sovereign. He is good. It is never pointless to ask him for what you need.”

And so, I would ask you, “Do you have a biblical view of suffering? Do you embrace the whole Bible as the way it guides you and teaches you how to handle the crushing experiences when God lovingly — yes, lovingly — removes his protection?” So, what we pray for is that God would protect us from everything that would undermine our faith or his glory in our lives. And that assumes that we have a biblical understanding of his sovereignty in our suffering.

Why Should We Pray for Protection?

Second question: Why should we pray for protection?

1. Because he tells us to. “Pray then like this: . . . Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil” (Matthew 6:9, 13). In other words, “Protect us from soul-destroying evil.”

2. Because the biblical saints prayed for protection. “Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; protect me from those who rise up against me” (Psalm 59:1). Paul asked the Romans to pray for his protection in Jerusalem so that he could make it to Rome and then Spain (Romans 15:30–32).

3. Because there is protection we will not have if we don’t ask for it. “You have not because you asked not” (see James 4:2).

4. Because God intends for us to work with him by prayer to bring about his purposes in our lives. Prayer is a precious gift, and God uses it to accomplish his purposes in more ways than we can imagine.

5. Because God is our Father. We pray for protection because God is our Father, and he loves to give good things to his children who ask him (Matthew 7:11).

How Should We Pray for Protection?

Third question: How shall we pray for protection? Well, I’ll tell you how Noël and I have done it. We have prayed in this house where we live now — and before that, of course, but we’ve been here for 41 years. We have prayed for protection on this corner in this neighborhood with rising and falling urgency as we have felt threatened. And we always feel threatened. Satan exists, right? We pray for four s’s — the letter s — to help us remember. “Lord, protect us from sin and from Satan and from sickness and from sabotage.” We pray them in that order, starting with the most serious.

We believe sin — our sin, not other people’s sin — is our greatest enemy. That’s the only thing that can damn us, right? Nobody else can. Nothing else can. Unforgiven sin. Sin in God’s face. “Protect us from damning sin.” And then come satanic attacks. And then comes sickness. And then comes sabotage — somebody breaking into our house or setting the house on fire. The greatest danger in life is that we sin against God, that we distrust God. And so we start there.

Are My Prayers Pointless?

So, those are my answers to the three questions: What and why and how should I pray for protection? But Belinda’s root issue, it seems to me, is the shadow under which these questions have fallen for her. “What, why, how pray for protection,” she says, “when it feels so utterly pointless?” And the key word there is feels. Belinda’s feelings have been deeply shaped by the tragic loss of her child. Who can imagine? The burglary, her parents’ trials — these profound disappointments, these jarring experiences, these fears are making prayer for protection feel pointless.

Now, as with almost everything I say on Ask Pastor John, in a sense it’s presumptuous of me from my distance to look into your heart, Belinda, and know what’s there. I can’t. If I were there, if I were your pastor and I knew you better, I might speak differently. But I hope you are surrounded by wise, loving, Bible-saturated friends in a healthy church. It makes a huge difference for recovering from these crushing things.

But since you asked — and you did; you wrote and asked me, so what can I do? — here’s what I would say about your feelings that prayer for protection is pointless. Here’s what I say: These feelings are based on a falsehood. They are what the Bible calls deceptive feelings. It’s not true. It is not true that your prayers for protection in the past or the present or the future are pointless. It’s not true. And you need to put truth over against your feelings and reshape them.

You mentioned four really significant heartbreaks, heartaches in your life where you didn’t get the protection you hoped for, and all of us have experienced that kind of non-protection. But I want to remind you that for every one of those, there have been a thousand — yes, this is no exaggeration — a thousand acts of God to protect you from sin, from Satan, from sickness, from sabotage. God has protected you in thousands upon thousands of ways.

No, you can never prove this. Skeptics will always say, “Well, right — it wouldn’t have happened anyway. So when you say you pray for it not to happen, it’s pointless to pray because it might not have happened anyway.” Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. But it’s not pointless. It’s absolutely not pointless. God is our Father. He bids us pray for his protection. And when we do, there are thousands of answers that we can know now by faith and know someday by sight.

You do not pray for protection in vain, Belinda. You don’t. It’s not pointless. God has wise and good and righteous reasons for why some thorns are not taken away and some children die. But the very fact that you are alive and that you have written to us means God has protected you in thousands of ways to bring you to where you are. He is your Father. He’s sovereign. He is good. It is never pointless to ask him for what you need.