Have you ever wondered if God really hears or answers your prayers? Have you ever asked for something so impossible, and yet, you KNOW God can do anything, so you asked anyway only to be met with a rather uncertain silence? Or on the other hand, have you been given a promise from the Lord through His Word or through other Scriptural means – a vision, a dream, the advice of counselors – and each time those things aligned with Scripture–and yet the promise is still out there waiting to be answered?
Let me take it one step further. Have you read God’s promises on prayer like, “Ask and you will receive” or “Ask what you will that your joy may be full” or “Anything you ask in faith believing you will receive” – only to go ahead an do the asking but the receiving part seems to be missing?
I know, I’m asking some hard questions because I know there are those who have prayed diligently for something – like a friend to be healed or a marriage to be saved and yet the friend dies as does the marriage. And we wonder – “Lord, where were you? I thought you said to ask in faith and we did that!” And some decide because of those types of situations that God doesn’t care about our needs and prayer isn’t worth praying.
May I express to you how deeply I understand those feelings? I have prayed to the Lord since childhood. I had conversations with Him on long walks home from school. I asked Him to send me the right man to marry because I had dated enough to know I wasn’t very good at picking, and he sent me the best husband a girl could ask for.
I asked Him for children, and we lost our first child. Then I prayed as Hannah did, wanting to learn from the loss, and God did some miracles in the birth of our first son. He went on to bless us with two more beautiful boys.
But life hasn’t always been so easy. God was gracious to answer these prayers, for sure, but there were MANY that went unanswered. Many times when I battled and wrestled with a heart’s desire and all I could do was hope and wait. It happened during the twenty years it took me to break into traditional publishing.
And I’m kind of in that place again. There are things in my life I have prayed for so many times I’ve lost count. Years and years worth of prayers. Journals that could fill a bookshelf. Tears that could fill the tear bottle I was given years ago as a gift. Who knew I could actually use it. It would probably be overflowing by now!
What do we do when we are walking in truth with the Lord, keeping our hearts safe with Him, confessing sins we know we’ve committed, and then continued to ask for those heart longings – and the answer does not come? Does that mean God did not hear?
As I have thought on this over the past many months, I thought about some of those promises in Scripture and some of the people I love to write about.
Take Abraham, for instance. I love the verse in Romans that says, “Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”
Abraham was given the promise of offspring twenty-five years before he received that promise. He hadn’t asked God for a child (that we know of), but still, he was given this hope from God Himself and he went on to obey God’s Word. However, what is missing from that passage is – God never told Abraham when the promise would come to pass. He only promised it would come.
Another example is David. At about fifteen-sixteen years of age, David was anointed to become Israel’s next king. I would imagine that when David was called on to play the harp for King Saul and later killed Goliath and Jonathan (the heir-apparant) handed David his symbols of royalty, that David had to wonder if the time was close. Then he married into the royal family and life must have seem pretty good except for the king’s moods.
I truly doubt that David ever imagined he would run for his life and not see himself crowned king until he was thirty years old. God had made Him a promise. But He did NOT tell David WHEN the promise would be fulfilled.
There are times God denies our requests – as He did with Paul when Paul was prevented from going to certain places to preach the gospel. Other times, as with Daniel, the prayer was heard but the answer was delayed because the angel that was dispatched to answer Daniel’s prayer met with opposition from the devil’s warriors and he had to wait for reinforcements stronger than he so he could go on to do the work God had sent him to do.
Daniel might have thought God hadn’t heard. That was not the truth. Joseph might have thought God had forgotten him in the pit, in Egypt, in prison, but when he wore the ruler’s crown, he realized God had always had a plan. It just hadn’t come about the way Joseph would have planned it.
And I wonder, isn’t that true for each of us? A lot of things we ask God for might be simple, some might be deeply important to us and heartbreakingly impossible. So we pray, and we beg and plead, and we wait and cry, and wonder if God still cares. But I think…I think if we stop and remember that the “Ask and you will receive” promise doesn’t have a time stamp, and that the “WHEN” of the answer isn’t something we get to know, maybe we will be as Abraham and “Against all hope” we will hope and wait for the promises we believe based on Scripture that God has given to us will come to pass.
Even the disciples wanted to know “when will these things be?” so they asked Jesus the question referring to the last days. He gave them many instructions, but he did not answer their “when” question. Instead he said this, “But about that day or hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.” He said a lot more about what to look for but He did not get specific.
So when I what to know – when will I hear this news or when will You answer this prayer or when will You grant this desire of my heart? I have to remember that “WHEN” is not mine to know. There might be a long pause between “Ask” and “Receive”. As there was for Abraham. As there was for David.
Some prayers God answers quickly. Some prayers God answers in ways we don’t like – as when a loved one dies instead of sees earthly healing. Some prayers God says no – as He did to Paul – perhaps because He had someone else He wanted to do that task. But MOST prayers He says, “Trust Me. Wait patiently. Keep praying and don’t give up.”
The WHEN is not mine to know. The TRUST is mine to give Him. That’s how we cope with the longing for when. Now if only I could always put that into practice!
~Selah
