Unanswered Prayer

March 6, 2021

One of the most common reasons we give up on prayer is that it doesn’t seem to work. We find ourselves facing cancer, a wandering loved one, a financial catastrophe, and we pray—hard. But the cancer devastates, the marriage gets worse, we enter bankruptcy. “God hasn’t heard, or if he did, he doesn’t care,” we reason. After all, if roles were switched, we would move heaven and earth to answer those prayers. The sick would be healed, the tears would be wiped away, the rescue would come.

But it doesn’t happen, and we give up. It’s understandable, but regrettable. Isaiah wrote to a nation going downhill fast. He and other prophets had been warning Israel for generations, to no avail; when momentarily they turned back to God, it lasted only as long as the prosperity held out. Israel was discouraged, so Isaiah wrote...30:18–“The LORD will wait, that he may be gracious to you.” 

We want God to act NOW, but perhaps unanswered prayer is sometimes the only way he can give the grace we really need. It’s in the extremities of life that we discover both our strength and our need of strength. On the one hand, we see God’s hand, on the other, our need, but only the trial exposes either. Love untested cannot know the depths of love. Untested love can only imagine the depths. 

It isn’t enough to pray that those I love be spared from sorrow and disappointment. Such prayers are unrealistic. I must pray instead that in the calm their faithfulness helps prepare them for the inevitable storm, and that in the storm, they remain strong in Christ.