Unanswered Prayers

I’ve had a prayer journal for the last 8 years or so. I used it faithfully for the first 3 or 4 years but then slowly stopped because life got busy which I know, is not the best excuse. But if you’ve ever owned a prayer journal, you may know the feeling of writing down a seemingly impossible prayer request wondering if your prayer would make a difference at all. Also, you may distinctly remember the excitement and joy of an impossible, long awaited prayer request checked off after years of praying. Then there are those prayer requests that almost seems possible for everyone else except for you or whoever you’re praying for.

Some of us have been praying the same prayer for the last decade, maybe two. Hoping and waiting for a miracle. There is always a glimmer of hope when a new year begins. We think to ourselves, ‘Maybe this year, it will be different’. But as the months slip by, we reach November only to be reminded nothing has changed. To make things worse, it looks like we have been in this same place for the last decade. Sometimes you can’t believe you have been praying for the same thing for more than 20 or even 30 years.

It almost seems like God doesn’t hear or somehow your prayers are hitting the wall. At one point, you thought it was possible, but now, after all this time, you wonder if God is even listening?

The end of the year can make a lot of us feel like we have failed or succeeded. It is not easy to reach this time of the year while holding a dream in our hand that is beyond our control. There are certain things that only God can do for us. It is in these places we hope, we dream and we pray with all our heart. Hoping the God of the universe, the keeper of our hearts is listening to our prayers.

The Psalmist tells us that God holds our tears in a bottle.

“You keep track of all my sorrows. You have collected all my tears in your bottle. You have recorded each one in your book.” Psalm 56:8 NIV

None of our stories are the same but God knows each of our stories and cares about our lives so deeply. And yet, some of our prayers feels like they go unheard.

Even if it has been years of praying the same prayer, don’t let your unanswered prayer become the reason you stop going to church or believing in God’s goodness. It might be your greatest desire but if you really look around, you will see the goodness of God in so many other places. You will realize that God has been protecting you and keeping you, sometimes from the very thing you have been praying about.

But then there are those prayers that we know is in God’s will like salvation, and deliverance of a loved one. We wonder why God delays such prayers? I don’t have much answers, but I find solace in knowing that there are prayers that have gone unanswered in the Bible too.

Great men of God prayed and did not receive the answer to their prayers. Moses prayed for God to allow him to cross the Jordan River with the Israelites, King David prayed that his son would not die, Paul prayed for God to take away ‘the thorn in the flesh’, Jeremiah prayed that Jerusalem would not be destroyed, and Elijah prayed for God to take his life. Jesus himself prayed that the cup of suffering would pass from him, and the night he was betrayed Jesus also prayed for the church to be one and united in love. And yet, the church is more divided than ever. There are many more prayers that were prayed that went unanswered.

Prophet Jeremiah cried out “You have covered yourself with a cloud so that no prayer can get through.“ Lamentations 3:44

I have prayed for things that were not in God’s will for my life and now when I look back in hindsight, I thank God he did not answer those prayers. That job would have kept me stuck, that friendship would have taken me further away from God, and that master’s program I wanted to do, that would have taken me in a totally different direction than what God had intended for me. Was it painful at the time to hear a ‘no’ from God? Of course, it was. But it is when we look back, that we feel grateful for the prayers God did not answer. In hindsight, we will see the blessing of unanswered prayers.

Philip Yancey in his book ‘Prayer: Does It Make Any Difference?’ asks this question, ‘What would happen if God would answer every prayer? By answering every prayer, God would in effect abdicate, turning the world over to us to run.’

Prophet Habakkuk prayed for deliverance from the Babylonians but his prayers went unanswered, and concluded at the end of the book, that no matter what did not happen, he will still rejoice in the Lord and be joyful in God. “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” Habakkuk 3:17-18

What a statement to make. Today if you’re sitting with an unanswered prayer and you feel discouraged, trust that God still loves you and cares for you.

Questions to consider:

Can you think of a prayer that went unanswered that now in hindsight, you feel grateful God didn’t answer that prayer? Try to identify a blessing you found in the pain of the prayer that went unanswered. Look around you and look at all the prayers God did answer. If you have some time, list them out and you will see all the little miracles around you.