Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts.
―Elisabeth Elliot
Scripture: Psalm 66.19
But truly God has listened; he has attended to the voice of my prayer.
Reflection: In the Face of Unanswered Prayer
The Park Forum
Disobedience can fracture our relationship with God in such a way that he will not answer our prayers. David acknowledges this just prior to talking about answered prayer, “If I had harbored sin in my heart, the Lord would not have listened.”
Yet obedience doesn’t earn answered prayer. If this were the case Jesus’ experience in Gethsemane would have been vastly different.
Jesus obeyed every letter of God’s law with exacting precision and still faced unanswered prayer. “Remove this cup from me” he begged with such intensity the blood vessels under his skin ruptured mixing blood with sweat and tears. Yet the Father had other plans.
Christ would have known this—for, as Hebrews says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” He faced greater battles than we face, yet he was perfect where we fail.
Christ not only prayed to have the cup of the crucifixion and God’s rejection taken from him, he also prayed, “Your will be done.” This is the prayer of a fully surrendered man—a man fully and sacrificially committed to the Father.
Unanswered prayer reveals whether our heart truly trusts God. In this way prayer is different from thinking about God. “To the thinker, God is an object. To one who prays, God is the subject,” observes Abraham Joshua Heschel in his book Moral Grandeur and Spiritual Audacity.
What we receive in prayer is greater than any request we can make. In this way no prayer goes unanswered because all prayer deepens our relationship with God—something worth far more than anything we could imagine.
As for the particulars of our prayers, which are God’s joy to fulfill, “God will only give you what you would have asked for if you knew everything he knows,” says Timothy Keller.
Our intimacy with God is deepened through prayer—which is what we need most. Trust becomes the foundation we stand on when our prayers are unanswered. Our satisfaction in God makes him the object of our rejoicing when our prayers are answered.
Prayer: The Request for Presence
Protect me, O God, for I take refuge in you; I have said to the Lord, “You are my Lord, my good above all other.” —Psalm 16.1
– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.
Full prayer available online and in print.
Today’s Readings
Numbers 24 (Listen – 3:37)
Psalm 66-67 (Listen – 2:43)