To pray the same prayer for years and feel that nothing has changed may contribute to a broad range of feelings or emotions. Here are a number of scenarios that a person in that situation might experience.
1) Envy. While your prayer has gone seemingly unanswered, you hear others testify to God's intervention in their life at just the right time with just the right answer. While you want to be happy for them, you feel envy, especially if their prayer requests were similar to your own. Why couldn't it have been you? You may feel that God has his favorites and you're not on the list.
2) Guilt. So then you move from envy into guilt. You feel guilty for being envious and for questioning God's fairness. You feel guilty for obsessing about what you don't have instead of counting your many blessings. You feel guilty when you look at others who are less fortunate than you--those who have seemingly insurmountable problems with no apparent hope. Why are some prayers answered in the affirmative while others are not?
3) Desperation. How do you approach God when you're desperate for change? You may come before God humbly. There may be times that you lie on the floor, face down on the carpet, sobbing in the night as you pour your heart out to God. There may be other times that you shake your fist at heaven asking "Why?"
4) Searching. You relentlessly search for answers. You search all the pertinent scriptures, read every book, and consult every mentor. No one has the answers. As far as you can tell things should have changed long ago. You cringe when someone speaks of "God's perfect timing." From where you've been waiting it seems that he is chronically behind schedule. There is no good reason, as far as you're concerned, for God to move so slowly. There is no good reason for your situation. It seems pointless and senseless.
5) Consolation. So you try to console yourself. You keep hope alive by telling yourself that God intends to change the situation. It just isn't time yet. You repeat the old cliche that God's timing isn't ours and he knows best.
Others may try to console you. Some of charismatic persuasion might assure you that God wants to answer in the affirmative. You just need to increase your faith. "Believe and receive" is the tried and true formula they offer.
More conservative believers insist that you just need to pray according to God's will. You think of Jesus who prayed "not what I will, but what you will" (Mark 14:32-42). Jesus didn't want to be crucified, but he submitted to God's will. Paul's thorn in the flesh was not removed, although he prayed for its removal repeatedly. God had other plans for a higher purpose (2 Cor. 12:7-10).
You may reason that what you're going through is for the good of others, so that either now or later, this experience equips you for ministry. Your suffering may be to benefit others. But you ask if it's fair that you suffer for the benefit of others. Then you recall that Jesus suffered for your benefit.
It could be that what you're praying for depends not only upon God being persuaded, but on other people being persuaded. Would God be overriding free will to make this happen for you, and if so, does he work that way? Is it really God's fault that your situation hasn't changed or are others to blame? But if God could make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the Israelites, can he not intervene and make those who could change your situation favorably disposed toward you? (Exodus 3:21; 11:3; 12:36).
Perhaps your current situation is preparing you for greater things. But you fear the pain of false hope. So many times it seemed that the writing was all over the wall and a breakthrough just over the horizon. So now it's just too painful to hope and be let down again. Does this sound like anything that you have been through?
More later.
I think doubt can come into play as well, doubting whether one truly has enough faith or not. What happens to me, I get afraid to pray "big prayers," for fear that they won't be answered. I'll pray for healing, unless the doctor says it's terminal. I won't pray for rain unless the Weather Service gives us some chance. Etc.
I think that there are times when I'm not as bold in my asking as God would have me be.
Grace and peace,
Tim
Posted by: Tim Archer | January 29, 2007 at 02:19 PM
I've been waiting for this! Thanks Wade.
Posted by: paula harrington | January 29, 2007 at 02:45 PM
Prayer is such an important thing to consider. I appreciate your thoughts on it. I am also reading Yancey's book on prayer as well as putting together lessons for our LIFE groups on the subject. It is so hard to sum up prayer and yet so easy. It is difficult because we are all different and communicate different. We are not cookie-cutter Christians - easily stamped out of the same mold with the same consistency of dough and number of chocolate chips. We are all very different and have very different needs and styles of communication. God is the same but he treats his children very differently (at least for now). It is hard to wrestle with why things happen to different people (for good or bad). Is God not fair? Is He not in control? Or does He just handle us all differently because we are all so different?
But prayer is also very simple because all we have to do is try it. If we don't have the words, that is okay too. We have to come to God with honesty and submission. We come to Him with reverance yet with all of our raw emotions. We approach Him with care yet with the full force of our real life experiences. God doesn't want us to sugar coat our lives. He already knows what it is like. Instead, He wants us to honestly confront our situation and honestly confront Him because He is the only one who has the answer. He wants us to seek Him out and really try to listen for His response. Then we wait. We all wait. Some wait for minutes for an answer. Some will never hear the answer in this life time. That is not easy. Who ever said faith was easy?
Keep them coming. I have really been able to relate and it sounds like lots of other people have as well.
Posted by: Matt Dabbs | January 29, 2007 at 03:52 PM
Wade,
Great post once again.
Here is my advice to anyone struggling with these in their life:
1)Envy is sin. We must get rid of all sin...Confess it before God. Understand that we are free. Understand that we are Children of the Most High. Then He will listen.
2)Guilt. As Christians we should have no guilt in our lives. Guilt comes from Satan. Satan has no right in our lives. No right. God is on our side. If God is for us who can be against us! I can do all things though Christ who gives me Strength! So, say to your self Satan you have no right in my life. I will no longer have guilt because I have confessed my envy before the God and he remembers it no more.
3)The writter of Hebrews tells us that we can boldly appproach the throne of grace with confidence. Bodly. Confidence. Don't pray if. Pray Bodly. Pray with Confidence.
4)Keep on Asking, Keep on Seeking, Keep on Knocking and What will happen? The door will be opened unto you!
5)Consolation. Remember He has given us a comforter. The Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Consolation. Listen to God. He does still talk to us. Yes he does. It does not come in an earthquake or fire but a gentle whisper.
I believe that God is persuaded to act. Time and time again we see it in our ministeries. Someone with cancer gets good news why because the church had prayed and fasted, the person that we thought would never recieve Christ does because God and the Holy Spirit was working in his life, just at the right time God takes care of the need that needed to be met. The hardest thing for us as Christians is to have enough faith and trust to follow God and Spirit's leading in life. Where do you want me to go and do? Where are you taking me on this Christian journey? Listen for the gentle whisper.
Posted by: Preacherman | January 29, 2007 at 04:03 PM
I believe your words, "Perhaps your current situation is preparing you for greater things" sum up the greatness of our lives. Our greatness is rooted in God above and His actions toward us.
I think back to prayers I prayed before and I wondered what would happen if God acted on what I wanted.
Keep those posts coming!
Posted by: Gallagher | January 29, 2007 at 04:32 PM
Preacherman-well said!
Posted by: Vicki | January 29, 2007 at 05:09 PM
While I don't struggle too much with the things you have mentioned (sometimes I feel unworthy to have my prayers answered at all) I certainly have not reached the perfection described by the Preacherman. I know that is the ideal...but I am far from there.
Posted by: Donna | January 29, 2007 at 05:17 PM
I'm just following along.
Posted by: Darin | January 29, 2007 at 06:28 PM
Me too, Darin, and I'm lovin' it! Keep it up, Wade, and everyone else who is chiming in. This has been a very interesting series so far!
Posted by: Lisa | January 29, 2007 at 11:37 PM
Is it possible that sometimes my situation is just not relevant to the big picture? I know that whole sparrows and lilies thing; but, isn't it possible that sometimes my wants aren't part of the tapestry?
AW
Posted by: Don | January 29, 2007 at 11:52 PM
Wade,
Sounds a lot like my experiences. You've obviously been on the peak and down in the valley. So much of the particulars are unkown. Sometimes we just have to say, "I don't know why this is happening and why God seems so unconcerned." And then we get on our knees and talk it out with Him with jagged phrases and broken, wondering hearts.
Blessed are those who mourn. Jesus taught us to have an adult attitude toward suffering, to not try to supress it, and to know that somehow, someway, we are going to be comforted.
Ben
Posted by: Ben | January 30, 2007 at 09:08 AM
Enjoyed post # 2. You know I once knew a woman named Bonnie that came every week to pray with me about her husband who wasn't a Christian. She'd prayed every day all her life. And everytime we talked about it she would ask, "why doesn't God answer my prayers?" I didn't have an answer other than, "Let's not give up ... let's keep praying."
Would you believe when that man turned 72 he started asking questions about church and God. At 73 he came to church for the first time (and the walls didn't even fall in). At 74 I remember standing in the water with him and another man as we baptized him. They had been married for 57 years before he finally became a Christian. Why did he wait so long? I don't know. Why did he finally become a Christian? I think it was a lot of prayer by a Godly, righteious wife.
Posted by: Trey Morgan | January 30, 2007 at 04:03 PM
is it George Muller who chose 5 friends to pray for every day and each one was finally converted, a couple of them after George died....
Posted by: Brian | January 30, 2007 at 04:52 PM
I think sometimes I have asked for God to stop disciplining me, when I had yet to learn what he is trying to teach me. (Heb 12 fits in here). Maybe sometimes God does withdraw the discipline, and as a result I don't become what I might have otherwise. OTOH sometimes God just continues the discipline and years later I see the fruits.
We are the clay. God is the potter. Thank God for his gentleness and mercy. We are in good hands. Sometimes I have to remind myself of that.
Posted by: Alan | January 30, 2007 at 07:49 PM
Great post. I felt a bit awkward when my wife & I conceived our daughter, because we knew a few couples who had been trying for months and even years to get pregnant, but they weren't able to. We wanted to be excited, but it was difficult around those who had been praying for a long time.
Take care!
Posted by: Josh | January 31, 2007 at 01:35 PM