Reasons God doesn’t answer our prayers. The standard human responses to that question are that He will answer with either a ‘yes’, a ‘no’, or a ‘wait’. There have been many prayers I’ve prayed that I have not seen the answers I desired to see. Many. Some I have still not reached a place of peace about… either because someone I love died, or because I’m still currently waiting and hoping.
However – there are a multitude of prayers I’ve prayed that HAVE come to pass, though frequently NOT in the package that I’d have asked for – but because of that fact, they have widened my vision a bit to see more of what He is doing.
There have been the clear and simple answers to prayer – like when I desperately wanted a piano and friends of ours needed a place to store theirs – so we had that piano for years of free use until that was later returned and we could buy one.
Simple.
Prayer + desired answer = Happy, grateful Heather.
But what if He’d never ‘sent’ us a piano? Does it mean that He didn’t answer? Does it mean He didn’t hear? Does it mean He didn’t care? Could it mean He was working something that mattered more?
Then there have been the complicated prayers.
Prayers that involve the will choice of another human being. Prayers that involve my own blind spots.
What would the world look like if God granted every prayer involving the will of another? What if someone else is praying something contrary for that person? What if that would make us robots instead of free beings? If two girls are praying for the same guy to be their husband – How’s that going to work?
What if a child is given everything THEY desire? Even if it seems really good to them? Even if it’s in the parents power to give?
Prayer is not a tool for manipulating others – or for getting what we want.
Then there are prayers with hidden answers. How many times do our hearts ache for things like safety for loved ones but because nothing bad happens to draw it into question, we forget to see those as answered? How many times do we never even know what we’ve been protected from?
Then there are what I think of as the dangerous prayers.
Prayers like “Change me”, or the prayers we sing in our worship songs “Lord I want to be more like you, I want to be a vessel you work through, I want to be more like you”.
Those are the scariest prayers I know. They involve pain. They involve Him showing me how my actions have hurt others, or how anothers action that hurt me is to be forgiven – just as He has forgiven me. These are the prayers where I’ve come to know His Father heart most deeply… but through the most personal pain or cost. These are the prayers I still pray but with my heart in my mouth internally reaching my hand up to put it into His like a toddler going for a walk on a dangerous path with her Daddy.
If the fruit of the Spirit come from HIS own self – then He IS the personification of love, joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness, gentleness and self-control, then He is mostly going to need teach me those things experientially. Such as through forgiveness – “he who is forgiven much, loves much”. In my journey I can learn of His goodness through my own faltering steps – as I am given, as His reality rests in me, I can give it in turn to others. No mystic instant impartation. Single steps, amazing love, often big pain to get there.
So sometimes He gives a simple ‘yes’. Sometimes it’s a yes but via something we did not and would not have asked. Sometimes it’s a yes – but it doesn’t come for a very very long time. And sometimes it would be a yes but there’s sin in the way.
Sometimes He gives a simple ‘no’ but we can’t or wont hear it because our desire for that thing is so much bigger than our desire to do or to have or to even recognise His will for us is different. Sometimes it’s a ‘no’ and we can be grateful – not usually immediately but later on perspective and understanding and even relief – come. And sometimes it’s a ‘no’ because there’s sin in our lives – that we are either blind to, or simply preferring the ostrich approach.
Sometimes He has us wait.
And we don’t like waiting.
Waiting is hard… frustrating… lonely… scary… exhausting…
But He’s working whether we see it or not and sometimes down the track, we can see so very many other things that had to shift in order to see the answer complete.
i have personally learned that God cares much more about helping me become more like Him… helping me grow in trusting Him… making me holy… than in giving me everything I can think of asking for. He wants me to KNOW Him and sometimes, like the child with her parent, that means a no now… means something so much deeper later on.
I know we get disappointed in prayer via heavy emphasis in certain parts of the Bible and if not concealing or ignoring – then ignorance of others.
Most simply put by Jesus Himself “yet not MY will, but YOURS be done”.
Finally there are the prayers that seem to be answered with a ‘no’ that leave us shattered and heartbroken. Prayers where someone died, or whose wellbeing was shattered. These are the things that cut the deepest, and these are the things I most long to see through HIS eyes when I get to heaven. Until then, I choose Him anyway. There IS no other way for me… I choose to trust Him anyway.
These days I do pray a LOT less specifically about how I think God should go about something… I’ve seen too many crazy-impossible-to-think-of-asking-for-that kinds of answers to prayer that I simply DO NOT KNOW how He will go about answering so I simply pour out my heart. Often with tears. Often with groans rather than words. But if a prayer has no heart – it isn’t a prayer. Therefore if a prayer is ALL heart, then the words barely matter.
And I know the Scriptures say “ye have not, because ye ask not”, and that, plus other things that I don’t yet understand, both befuddle and excite me because you see, if there’s something I don’t understand then there’s a ways for me to grow, and I do so want to be growing in Him until He comes to get me – for then, and ONLY then, will I “know, even as I am fully known”.
In recent weeks – God has answered a whole heap of prayers for me – some of which have stretched out for more than two decades. I love in the Psalms where it often says “How long Oh Lord, HOW LONG???” – sometimes we wait a long time. Sometimes we never see, but it doesn’t mean He didn’t hear or act. We might just not know it this side of heaven.
But in these last few weeks it is as though God went for a walk through a garden of my prayers and individually chose a whole bouquet to gift to me. Some of those prayer-flowers I’d have never imagined in the same bouquet, yet there they are. I’d also have never imagined the delivery truck they came in, yet somehow He worked something amazing and complicated and disjointed and wonderful and hard and altogether personal – for me. And I love Him.