What should be our attitude to unanswered prayer?
Last week I spoke about and witnessed to answered prayer in my own life. I may not have made it quite clear enough that I have waited a long time for some prayers to be answered, and there are still some that have not yet been answered.
Or maybe they have but I have been slow to recognise the answers!
During the time of prayer one of the men pointed out that there are prayers prayed by whole churches which have not been answered. So what is the problem?
There are a few things we need to remember about God.
First: He is Sovereign
Second: He has the right to decide how, when and where He will answer prayer.
Third: He has a plan for the whole world, and also for each person individually.
I’d like to give you some examples of apparently unanswered prayer.
A young church in England was both expanding and impacting the local community it was founded to serve. One of the most active and anointed servants of the church became seriously ill with cancer. The congregation prayed for her healing for many months. They held vigils, they fasted, and they prayed around the clock.
All were devastated when the lady finally succumbed to the cancer and died. Many questioned their faith, asked why God had allowed this to happen and the community came close to falling apart.
However an examination of the life of that lady during her time in hospital reveals something wonderful. Her attitude and her faith enabled her to minister to many others in the hospital. Many patients, relatives, nurses and doctors came to know Jesus as their Lord through her gentle and loving witness. Not just through her words and prayers but through her whole attitude, reaction and love for Christ evidenced in the way she both lived and died.
She had been extremely active in the young church and there was clearly no one who could replace her and do all the things she had done. Instead the Lord brought a number of people who were especially gifted and talented in one or other of the areas in which the lady had served. So the congregation ended up with five or six especially gifted and anointed people doing the work that had been done by one person. Thus multiplying the blessing in and through that Christian community.
The next example is one you may recognise.
Nearly 4,000 years ago a nation, a whole nation, began praying for a leader, a king to deliver them from oppression. Today many in that nation are still praying for the same thing. Their prayers have not been answered or so it would seem. That is a long time to wait for an answer to prayer. Many have lost faith in God and given up and taken things into their own hands. But God had made them a promise.
And He kept His promise. Some 2,000 years ago He answered that nations prayers in a very special way. He sent His Son as the redeemer. Gal 4:4
Few in that nation recognised that their prayers had been answered. Why? Because they were expecting God to answer their prayers according to their own dictates as to what kind of king they wanted/needed. In fact they were demanding God to answer their prayers according to their will and not according to God’s will.
So it was a case of not Thy will be done, but my will be done. viz Luke 22:42
This nation is still waiting for their Messiah to come and refuse to accept that He has already come and been and gone and will come again. They are still praying for His first advent. And yet the Old Testament is full of promises God has made to answer these prayers and also a clear indication of the kind of person He would actually send.
God’s answers to both David (for his son’s life to be spared) 2 Sam 12:20,23 and Paul’s prayer for the “thorn in his flesh to be removed” 2 Cor 12:8-9. Were not answered the way they would have liked but they both continued to worship and serve the Lord their God.
So there are a number of reasons why we might fail to notice an answer to prayer.
- It seems so ordinary and everyday. It would seem that God does not always provide His answers to our prayers with a label – “Miraculous answer to your prayers!”
- Our time scale is much shorter than God’s. We are always in a hurry, especially in today’s world of demand for instant gratification. Rev. 6:10-11
- We may be looking in the wrong direction or for the wrong thing. We have preconceived ideas of where it should come from and what it should look like.
- Have we always given God the glory when He has answered our prayers in the past? Sometimes we search for a natural explanation rather than admit that God has answered the prayer.
We are praying for the wrong things. James 4:3 or in the wrong way James 1:6-8
We need to pray as Jesus did in Luke 22:42 Not my will, but Thy will be done.
I can not find nor do I recall any teaching as a doctrine on unanswered prayer in the Bible. All references to prayer are that we should expect answers to prayer and that we should watch and be aware when the answers come and be thankful whatever the answers may be. If nothing happens, then maybe that is God ‘s will for the moment.
Col 4:2
Deut. 33:25 Gives strength for the day
Heb. 13:5 Never forsakes us
Rom 8:35-39 Never forsakes us.