What Do We Do With Unanswered Prayer
2 Corinthians 12:7-10
Now, it’s been a few years ago now, but I still think most of you may remember a song by Garth Brooks called unanswered prayers. In the story of the song, the main character runs into his old high school sweetheart at a high school football game. He has since moved on and married, but he begins to think back at what had transpired back in the day. Apparently, when he had dated this girl, he had prayed that “God would make her mine.” He had prayed and promised God he would never ask for anything again.
As he searched though the memories and tried to think of the good times, it turned out that she wasn’t as perfect as he thought back then. He began to relish in the fact that he had made a good choice by marrying his wife and not his old high school flame. Then, he breaks into the chorus with this declaration:
Sometime I thank God, for unanswered prayers
Remember when you’re talking to the man upstairs
That just because He may not answer doesn’t mean He don’t care
Some of God’s greatest gifts are unanswered prayers
How many of you can relate to the words of that song. Maybe you prayed that a certain so and so would be your lifelong partner and it did not work out, and now that you look back on it, you can see that God knew what He was doing. Maybe you prayed for a certain event to happen and it didn’t, but you came out OK on the other end. Unanswered prayers are a part of life, but do they always turn out better in the end? Maybe you have prayed for a family member or friend to get well from a disease or ailment and it never happened. Maybe you are praying for a solution to a financial situation that never seems to end. Maybe you have been praying for someone to come to Christ and they just seem to keep getting farther and farther away. What do we make of unanswered prayer as Christians?
First of all, if you struggle with not getting your prayers answered, you are not alone. Just two weeks ago we talked about the fact that David was having trouble getting through to the Father. Moses prayed to enter the Promise Land, but he died just before crossing the Jordan. Jeremiah lamented in the Old Testament that God had covered himself with a cloud and was not responding. Then, in the New Testament, we come across the same problem with the apostle Paul. Let’s pick up his story in 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. Let’s turn there or follow along on your sermon notes.
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made more perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weakness, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.
I would love to make the promise to you this morning that all your prayers will come about in exactly the way you wanted them, but that would not be the truth. David did not have all his prayers answered. Moses did not have all his prayers answered. Paul did not have all of his prayers answered, so guess what? There will be times where your prayers may go unanswered. What do we do when this happens? I believe we can develop a strategy, a plan of attack so to speak, from Paul in this passage to help us survive when our prayers go unanswered. Let’s ask the Lord to bless our time.
Strategy #1: Don’t Give Up Too Soon
There was once a little boy named Timmy who had a brother named Tommy. Tommy was known to torment his little brother Timmy more than a few times. Little Timmy did not get discouraged however. Every night, he would tell his mom he was going to bed and saying his prayers. His mother happened to hear Timmy’s prayer one night. This is what he said. “Dear God. I thank you for helping me make it through another day. And please make Tommy stop throwing things at me. By the way, I’ve mentioned this before. Amen.”
This boy knew some things about prayer that we need to learn! Namely, he knew not to give up praying because something was not happening. If our prayer is not answered right away, we must not get discouraged and lose hope. It’s OK to keep asking God to bring something about or take something away. God wants to hear the burdens of our hearts and He never tires of hearing our voices. Sometimes, we just need enough determination to say, “God, I don’t know when you are going to bring an answer to this, but I am going to keep praying until you do.
You see, sometimes unanswered prayer is just a matter of our wanting things right away getting in the way of God’s perfect timing. God’s perfect timing does not always happen right now. Remember this phrase. God is not always on time, but He is always in time. He may not give us what we need when we think we need it, but he will always be in time to give us what we need when we need it.
Paul thought that the thorn in his flesh would be removed if he was persistent in prayer. Our passage tells us that he prayed three times for the thorn to be removed. If the Lord had not answered Paul by telling him He would not remove the thorn, Paul would probably still have been praying to remove the thorn for years to come. Sometimes, it takes a prolonged period of prayer to bring something about. Just because we want something right away does not mean that God will do it then. After all, I began praying for the salvation of my dad when I was 7 years old. Through years and years of prayer, I saw my father battle many sins and sicknesses, but I still prayed for his soul. 18 years after my first prayer for his salvation and one month before he died, I was able to learn that my father had been saved. I am so glad that I never gave up hope and stopped praying. Don’t give up praying, because the answer may just be another prayer away.
Strategy #2: Wait for God’s Response
A man arrives in heaven, and St. Peter is showing him around. After a while, they pass by a large warehouse, and the man inquires what is inside. “Oh, you don’t want to see that,” protests Peter. The man’s curiosity is piqued, and he demands to see inside. St. Peter opens the door, and they see a warehouse full of wonderful things, stacked to the rafters. “Why didn’t you want me to see this?” the man demands. “It all looks wonderful!” “Well,” says St. Peter, “I thought it might make you sad. You see, those are all the things God had ready to give you, if only you had waited for His plans.”
Let me remind you this morning that God has great plans and gifts for you. It is hard to think of the good things God has for us when we are going through the valley of unanswered prayer, but we must never forget how much God loves us. He has a response to every prayer we pray. He will eventually either say yes or no, and we must allow Him the right to answer with a no. So many times, we pray our prayers and don’t take the time to wait for God’s response because we are afraid He is going to say no. We must realize that when God says no, it is for our best. God is not trying to keep us away from blessings. In fact, He is trying to give us a life full of blessings. We must trust God enough to seek and wait for his answer to our prayers, whether it be a yes or no, and have enough faith to believe that He knows what He is doing.
As we have already seen, Paul prayed three times for the thorn to be removed and it was not. However, he must have taken time to hear from God because he received an answer. God said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made more perfect in weakness.” In other words, God was telling Paul to live with it because God was going to use this weakness to bring about strength. Now, Paul could have become unhappy and kept on praying for it to be removed, but it would have far diminished the effect on the rest of his ministry. When you pray, wait for God’s response, and if God says no, trust Him enough to know He will bring it about for good.
Strategy #3: Be Content With God’s Answer
There was a man marooned on an island who was desperately looking for a boat to come by and rescue him. After many days of praying and asking God to send a boat to rescue him, he sighted a boat and his hopes were lifted. He ran out on the beach, took some shirts, and waved them to get the attention of the boat. But, the boat didn’t see his shirts signaling to them, and they went on by. He was so downhearted and so downcast he began to accuse God. “God, why didn’t you answer my prayer? God, why didn’t they see me?” As he walked back to the hut he had constructed, he saw that the hut had caught on fire and was going up in smoke. He said, “Now, God, what have you done? The boat passed by and missed me and the hut that I’m living in has burned down.”
About that time he heard the boat coming back. When he was rescued he asked them, “Why did you come back?
They said, “Well, we got your signal.”
He said, “No, you didn’t get my signal. I waved my shirts until I was exhausted, you didn’t get my signal.”
They replied, “We saw the fire you built to let us know that you were there.”
This man on the island was furious with what God had done. A boat came by and didn’t see the man, and then his house burned to the ground. What kind of God would do this? The kind of God that was answering prayer. God cared enough to send a boat and signal for it as well, but all the man could see was his own circumstances. We get that way a lot, because we only see what human eyes can see and not what God eyes can see. God has got everything under control, and we really need to start believing that. Since God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-seeing, all-good, and all-everything, shouldn’t we start trusting His answers?
Think back to when you were a teenager. When I was a teenager, I thought that my parents knew nothing when they would not let me do something I wanted to do. As I get older, it is amazing how much smarter they seem to be. They had been through those tough teenage years and had the wisdom to protect me by saying no. God has infinite wisdom, so we shouldn’t throw a fit when he gives us an answer contrary to what we want to hear. Paul did not pout when God told Him no. Paul was content with the answer. Actually, Paul was more than content because the Bible says that he boasted even more about the glories of God. I hope that I can have that type of attitude when facing unanswered prayer.
Strategy #4: Allow God to Take Complete Control
A young boy went to the local store with his mother. The shop owner, a kindly man, passed him a large jar of suckers and invited him to help himself to a handful. Uncharacteristically, the boy held back. So, the shop owner pulled out a handful for him. When outside, the boy’s mother asked why he had suddenly been so shy and wouldn’t take a handful of suckers when offered. The boy replied, “Because his hand is much bigger than mine!”
God’s hands are so much bigger than our own and can handle so many more burdens. Sometimes, we need to stop worrying and allow God to take the situation over. When we have an unanswered prayer in our lives, it is usually best to say, “God, I don’t know what to do, but I am giving this to you.” When we put things in God’s hands, we are going to get so much more than what we would have gotten if we would have used our own. Just like this little boy, we need to allow the one with the bigger hands to dish out the treats.
Paul is such a role model when it comes to unanswered prayer. His prayer was unanswered and he glorified God because of it. He just said, “God, you know better than me. Let your will and your plan be done and that will be enough.” Paul not only endured unanswered prayer, but he delighted in it.
We need to pray to be sustained. We need to go to that prayer closet and pray with thanksgiving, praise, confession and the like. When bigger problems arise, we then take it to our church body to unleash power and miracle. That is great news, and so is unanswered prayer. It means God cares enough to make us rely on his perfect plan to lead us through. Unanswered prayer can be frustrating, but we should never let it get us down. Professor George Sittser put it this way after praying for the lives of his wife and daughter and then losing them on the same day. He said, “Jesus charges us to view life from a redemptive perspective. There is more to life than meets the eye when God gets involved. He works things out for good. We view unanswered prayer from the perspective of our immediate experience and our limited vision, but God is doing something so great that only faith can grasp it, wait for it, and pray for it.” The next time an unanswered prayer comes your way, view it as an opportunity and not a roadblock and ask God, “What great plan do you have for me through this?”
