When prayers are not answered, we still have every reason for hope and faith.
Have you ever given up on prayer or faith? At a low moment have you ever said to yourself that it really does not work, that faith and prayer are a waste of time?
Sadly, that is the situation of most people in most churches. I assume that because according to surveys most Christians barely pray and most do not attend prayer meetings. Anyone who really believes what the Bible promises about prayer will want to pray because the promises are so great.
Suppose when Abraham was 98-years-old you asked him whether prayer and faith work. Had God given him a child through Sarah? No. Did he have descendants like the stars in the sky and the sand of the seashore? No. Did he have possession of the Promised Land? No.
Twenty-three years of faith and what did he have to show for it? A son through Sarah’s servant. And he did not own one square inch of the Promised Land. Yet he is the archetype of faith, exhibit A, the father of all who believe—God’s chosen one.
When Prayers Are Not Answered
All this points to the critical importance of knowing that God fulfills your faith and prayers in his time, his way, and according to his will. If you do not know this, your efforts at serious, specific prayer that expects answers may end in disappointment and even disillusionment.
There are many reasons for this. We cannot control God. He is perfectly good, and so he does only what fulfills the highest good, which only he in perfect love and wisdom understands. Our ways are not his ways. He tests our faith.
So those who mean business in prayer and faith had better dress for the weather, pack for a trip, and bring an umbrella. Shallow, naïve faith will get you little but soggy shoes.
Let’s look more closely at the crucial factors affecting answers to our faith: God’s time, God’s way, and God’s will.
God’s time
In the four Gospels, God acts quickly. Jesus heals people and drives out demons on the spot. One of the frequently used words in Mark is immediately. God of course can and often does answer prayers sooner rather than later, even immediately. I pray and believe for prompt and timely answers.
But I am not disoriented if that does not happen. I adjust mentally and settle in to exercise perseverance. Luke 18:1 says Jesus “told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.”
For instance, by the time Abraham was 100, God had given him the son for whom he had believed, but his descendants would not take possession of the Promised Land for more than 400 years. And as for having descendants like the stars in the sky, that promise is still being fulfilled three thousand years later, for every believer in Christ is a child of Abraham.
There is an appointed time for our faith in God’s promise to be fulfilled. Referring to God’s promise to Abraham, Romans 9:9 says, “This was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I [the Lord] will return, and Sarah will have a son.’”
When you trust the promises of the eternal God, you are dealing with One for whom a “day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8).
“You have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God you may receive what is promised” (Hebrews 10:36).
God’s way
Sometimes God gives us exactly what we ask. “According to your faith be it done to you.” (Matthew 9:29). Other times, however, he gives an upgrade over what we believe and expect by answering our faith in a way we never could have imagined.
The unanswered prayer of Zechariah and Elizabeth
For example, the priest Zechariah and his wife simply wanted a son. God had someone greater in mind. He wanted them to raise the one Jesus described as the greatest prophet of the Old Covenant.
For decades Elizabeth was barren. Their prayers were not answered as they expected; instead they got older and older—until one day near the end of his life Zechariah stood performing his duty in the temple when an angel suddenly appeared to him. The angel promised him an answer to his prayers; he and Elizabeth would bear a son.
Unfortunately this fulfillment of prayer was not unfolding the way Zechariah expected, and he answered the angel with words of doubt. Nevertheless, after being disciplined with muteness for months, he received John the Baptist as his son. None of this did Zechariah or Elizabeth expect as they went through their previous adult years. But God had a plan. God had an upgrade.
Unanswered prayers and assorted surprises
The next time you read the great faith chapter, Hebrews 11, notice the diversity of ways that God fulfilled the faith of his people. Rarely if ever could any of these people have predicted how God would answer.
Certainly the children of Israel who cried out year after year to God for deliverance from Pharaoh and their taskmasters in Egypt could not have imagined the ten plagues, the terrifying Passover, their plundering of the Egyptians, the parting of the Red Sea, the days of hunger followed by the giving of manna, the covenant requirements enacted at Mount Sinai, the promise of entering the Promised Land and inheriting it as their own. In fact they rejected Moses numerous times because God was working in ways they did not understand.
Shadrach, Meshack, and Abednego could not have imagined their faith being fulfilled by being thrown into a fiery furnace, their walking around in the furnace with the Angel of the Lord, and their exiting the furnace with not a hair singed nor a thread of their clothing burned.
Joseph could not have imagined that his dreams would be fulfilled by his being sold into slavery in Egypt, by being falsely accused and thrown into a dungeon, by 13 years passing for him in Egypt until he was suddenly taken into the presence of Pharaoh and exalted as ruler of the land.
Naaman’s way and God’s way
And then there is Naaman, who came to Israel to see Elisha the prophet for healing of leprosy. He had faith to believe that Elisha could heal him in a certain way, but God had other plans. Elisha told him to dip seven times in the Jordan, and he would be healed.
“But Naaman was angry and went away, saying, ‘Behold, I thought that he would surely come out to me and stand and call upon the name of the LORD his God, and wave his hand over the place and cure the leper. Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them and be clean?’ So he turned and went away in a rage.”
Naaman is a picture of many people when God does not do what they expect. We want the answer our way, but God wants to answer his way. We get upset and walk away.
Fortunately for Naaman his servant persuaded him to give the Jordan River a try, and Naaman was healed as he submitted to God’s way.
We need not only to pray and believe; we also need to trust. People of faith must be people of trust in God.
God’s will
Have you ever felt that you might have more success at receiving answers to prayer if you just could say the right words or fast from food for a longer time or intercede more tearfully or pray more times a day or whatever?
Certainly there are biblical principles for answered prayer—yes, emphatically yes—and the Bible commends earnest praying and fasting. But unconsciously we may be trying to control God, and if so, we will probably be disappointed. God cannot be manipulated. He never turns over ultimate control of the world or our lives to us. While he may have mercy on us when we pray this way and grant our requests, it is not because he has been manipulated.
When we think that all we need for answered prayer is the right method, or following the right formula, we are not taking into account God’s will.
1 John 5:14 says, “This is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.”
How Jesus prayed
Jesus famously prayed in the Garden, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).
Although it is possible to pray like this when we have no faith, or when we are afraid to hope lest we be disappointed, that was certainly not the case with Jesus.
What he does in these words is acknowledge God’s ultimate control and his submission to it. It is similar to stating one’s travel plans but adding, “The Lord willing.” (See James 4:13–16). Jesus earnestly prays, but he never gets frustrated with his God or tries to lord it over him. He pours out his soul to try to influence his Father, but never acts as though he knows better how the Father in the end should do things. Jesus never prays in a way that suggests God had better do what he asks, or else…. He displays throughout that he trusts the will of God.
“In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence” (Hebrews 5:7).
Jesus could have pointed to many promises of the Old Testament that supported his request to be delivered from going to the cross, such as Psalms 91 and 121 and dozens more. But God’s will was for Jesus to fulfill many other Scriptures, especially Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and all the Old Testament sacrificial system in which an animal died as a substitute for the sinner.
The nature of a promise
Granted, this gets complicated. When is a promise a promise, and when is it not? When is what seems to be a promise more like a general principle of the way God often works, but not an ironclad way that he always works in every situation for someone who has faith? (See Hebrews 11, especially verses 35–40.)
I do not have a simple answer, but I choose to take a simple approach. If God’s Word says he does such and such, and I need him to do that, I am going to pray for it and believe it. If God’s will turns out to be otherwise and my life fulfills other Scriptures, I will submit to that and glorify God. And if my heart is right, my faith and trust will not suffer for it.
If our faith crumbles when prayers are not answered
If our relationship with God suffers because he has not answered our faith in the way we want, it shows we do not have the right attitude. It is possible we unwittingly have been trying to manipulate God, insisting that he do things our way, in effect acting as though we are God, that we know better how to run the universe.
We may even resemble the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel who cried out and cut themselves to try to get Baal to burn the sacrifice (1 Kings 18). Or we may be like the mistaken Gentiles in Jesus’s teaching who sought techniques to get prayers answered: “When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words” (Matthew 6:7).
Again, we need not only to believe God’s words, but also to trust his will and remember our place.
Takeaway
When prayers are not answered, we still have every reason for hope and faith, for God fulfills prayers of faith in his time, his way, and according to his will. God always remains God.
I believe that those who persist in faith will not ultimately be disappointed. Somehow in this age or the age to come, God will reward enduring faith.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)