A Few Thoughts on Unanswered Prayer

If you know me, you know that I talk a lot about answered prayers. Sometimes I feel like I’m bragging, but I promise you, I’m not. Not bragging about myself, anyway. If anything, my astonishment at answered prayers is a sign of the smallness of my faith, not the largeness of it: If I truly had great faith, I wouldn’t marvel every time I see tangible evidence of God working in my life and in the lives of people around me. 

And if I truly had great faith, I wouldn’t stumble over unanswered prayers, wouldn’t suffer over them the way I do; I would simply continue to believe, or I would accept that the thing I am asking for is not God’s will. 

Nonetheless, God helps my small faith along by giving me the encouragement of answered prayers, and I am starting to see that even unanswered prayers are part of His plan for the ultimate good of His children. 

According to my observation, unanswered prayers seem to fall into a few different categories: 1) unanswered prayers having to do with people’s hearts; 2) unanswered prayers having to do with our own hearts’ desires; and 3) unanswered prayers for healing, ending in a person’s untimely death. 

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Unanswered prayers having to do with people’s hearts

These include prayers about strained relationships and problematic marriages; prayers about wayward children and people who, through their own choices, are hurtling along a path toward self-destruction; and even prayers about people who use and abuse and hurt others. 

I’m going to be bold here and say that I believe all of these prayers will be answered, eventually, in one way or another. The Bible says that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. I believe that it is His will to restore relationships and to save people from destruction. Sometimes restoration doesn’t happen in the way we imagine; a broken marriage, for instance, may not be restored, but the individuals involved may find healing and forgiveness and a kind of reconciliation. 

But often, we have to wait a long time before we see any results from these kinds of prayers. 

When I was young, I remember hearing a preacher say that “the Holy Spirit is a gentleman.” The context had to do with 80s Christian headbanger music, but I think the statement is true in a different sense: I think that, most of the time, the Holy Spirit deals very gently with the human heart. 

With many of us, God deals with us slowly, almost imperceptibly; we wake up and look back and see a great change, though we didn’t see it happening at the time. Other times, we wander in wildernesses for years and years and then, like the Prodigal Son, we come to our senses and run back to the Father, and our hearts are changed in a moment.

With still others, God knocks them off their horses, blinds them, and changes their lives around, almost without their consent, as in the case of Saul of Tarsus. 

The key is–when praying for our loved ones–that we continue to pray, and that we don’t give up, though it seems like the wait is long.

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Unanswered prayers about our own hearts’ desires

Scripture says, “You ask and you don’t receive, because you ask amiss,” meaning that you ask selfishly. 

But scripture also says “Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart.” 

Sometimes it seems that there is a fine line between the two; I can’t always discern whether a desire of mine is a poorly conceived (selfish) one, or whether it was placed in my heart by God so that I will ask for it and pursue it. 

I think that, in the waiting–in the suffering–there is a purifying, clarifying process going on. I think that God uses the frustration of our human desires, sometimes, to teach us to desire higher things. 

The people whose faith I admire the most seem to have many stories of having to wait for the things they most desired. In the waiting, they learned to be faithful to God regardless of the circumstances; and when their prayers were finally answered, they got to experience something powerful–even miraculous. 

But what if God ultimately says no?

How do I cope with the pain and the disappointment? 

I think that, when you’re beating your head against a brick wall praying for a desire of your heart that isn’t being answered, it is good to include in your petition to God a prayer of relinquishment and surrender. If you can’t change the situation with your own effort (which is a whole other topic, actually), perhaps you can find peace if you let it go and let Him decide. 

“Your kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” 

“Nevertheless, not my will but Yours be done.” 

I’ve found that when I’m in this situation, it helps to pray for contentment. Contentment isn’t resignation; it is a kind of happiness. It is enjoying what is. I think that often we miss out on the blessings around us because we are fixated on something we don’t yet have. 

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Unanswered Prayers for Healing, Resulting in an Untimely Death

I’ve asked God many times about the untimely deaths of people who, it seems, could have done much good in the world if they’d lived a few more decades. 

In my prayers about this, I’ve been led to Isaiah 57, which says, 

 The righteous man perishes,

and no one lays it to heart;

devout men are taken away,

while no one understands.

For the righteous man is taken away from calamity;

 he enters into peace.

In other words, sometimes people pass away in order to be spared some calamity, some suffering that they might otherwise have experienced had they lived.  

Jesus Christ himself only lived to be 33 years old, and in that short amount of time, He was able to accomplish the work He came to do. This doesn’t make it less of a tragedy when people die young; it just helps me to think that the quality and meaning and impact of a person’s life is more than a number, an age. 

Perhaps–when praying for the sick and dying–we should pray that God would not let this person slip into eternity until he or she is ready to meet God and has completed his or her life’s purpose. 

I would love to hear any thoughts you have on unanswered prayer. 

Thanks for reading.