Title: God Doesn’t Answer Our Way
Intro: When we expect God to show up only in certain ways, we limit our ability to see how he is actually showing up.
Scripture: Matthew 11:2-11
Reflection
Dear Friends,
There is a woman I will never forget. She spent years serving the Lord with joy in her heart. Every morning she would visit the sick, help elderly neighbours with their shopping, and spend hours with people who had no one else. She was the kind of person who made you believe in goodness. Then one day, her knee began to trouble her. The doctors said she needed surgery. Simple enough, they assured her. She prayed. Her friends prayed. Her whole prayer group lifted her up before the Lord.
The surgery failed. Instead of healing, she was left with constant pain and an inability to walk. The woman who had walked miles to serve others could barely make it across her own room. And something else happened too—something perhaps more painful than her physical condition. Her cheerful spirit vanished. In its place came a heavy sadness, a confusion that settled over her like a dark cloud. She felt betrayed. She considered Jesus her personal friend, and friends do not abandon friends, do they?
One day, gathering whatever strength she had left, she went to her confessor and poured out everything—the disappointment, the anger, the sense of abandonment. The priest made a simple suggestion: “Go into prayer. Ask your friend Jesus directly why he has treated you this way.”
She did. She sat before a crucifix, looked at Jesus hanging there, and let her heart speak. “Why, Lord? Why my knee? Why won’t you heal me? I have served you all my life.” And in that moment of raw honesty, in that space where pretence fell away, she heard Jesus speak to her heart: “Mine is worse.”
Mine is worse. Two words that changed everything. She saw his pierced hands, his wounded feet, and his side torn open. The next day, when the priest saw her, peace was written all over her face even though the pain remained in her knee. She had encountered something deeper than healing. She had encountered understanding.
This story connects profoundly with today’s gospel reading from Matthew chapter eleven. John the Baptist, that wild, courageous prophet who lived in the desert eating locusts and wild honey, who prepared the way for the Messiah, who baptised Jesus himself in the Jordan River—John is now in prison. He is locked away in Herod’s dungeon for speaking truth to power. And Jesus, the one John announced and baptised, is out there performing miracles, healing the sick, and raising the dead.
But Jesus has not come to visit John. He has not sent word. He has not used his miraculous powers to break down the prison walls. Did not Isaiah prophesy that the Messiah would “proclaim freedom for the prisoners” (Isaiah 61:1)? Surely John, of all people, should be among the first beneficiaries of that promise.
So John sends messengers with a question that must have cost him everything to ask: “Are you the one who is to come, or should we expect someone else?” (Matthew 11:3). Can you hear the pain in that question? This is John the Baptist we are talking about—the man who declared, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29). Now he is wondering if he got it wrong.
Jesus’ response is fascinating. He does not rebuke John. He does not call him weak in faith. Instead, he points to what is actually happening: “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor” (Matthew 11:4-5). And then he adds this crucial line: “Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me” (Matthew 11:6).
In other words: Yes, John, I am the Messiah. But I may not meet all your expectations. Do not take offence at me. Do not let your unmet expectations become a stumbling block.
Here is what was happening. John, like most people of his time, carried certain expectations about how God should work. The prevailing theology said that if you were righteous, God would prosper you. If you suffered, it meant God had abandoned you. Prosperity was proof of God’s favour; adversity was proof of God’s absence.
But Jesus came to shatter that theology. He came to show us that God’s presence is not primarily measured in material terms but in spiritual ones. Yes, Jesus healed physical blindness, but more importantly, he opened spiritually blind eyes to see God’s truth. Yes, he made the lame walk, but more importantly, he empowered spiritually paralysed people to move toward God’s purposes. Yes, he raised the dead, but more importantly, he brought spiritually dead souls back to life.
There was a blind preacher who used to draw enormous crowds. He would often begin his sermons by declaring with joy, “I once was blind, but now I see!” He meant it spiritually. His physical eyes remained closed, but his spiritual eyes had been opened wide to see God’s glory, God’s grace, and God’s truth. That is the kind of sight that matters most.
We are in Advent now, the season of waiting, the season of expectation. Like John in his prison cell, we are waiting for the Lord to come, to act, to move. And we bring our expectations with us. We expect God to heal our relationships, to provide financial breakthroughs, and to open doors we have been knocking on for years. We expect God to show up in the ways that make sense to us, in the timing that suits our plans.
But what if, like John, our expectations need adjusting? What if God’s primary concern is not making us comfortable but making us holy? What if his priorities are different from ours—not wrong, just different, deeper, more eternal?
The woman with the bad knee learnt this. In her pain, she encountered a God who suffers with us, not a God who shields us from all suffering. She learnt that spiritual peace can coexist with physical pain. She learnt that the presence of God is not proven by the absence of problems.
John the Baptist learnt this too. Jesus said of John, “Truly I tell you, among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). John never got out of that prison. Herod eventually had him beheaded. But John died knowing he had fulfilled his calling. He died with his expectations aligned with God’s deeper purposes.
This is the Advent challenge for us. Can we trust God even when our expectations are not met? Can we believe in his presence even when our prayers seem unanswered? Can we see that what God is doing spiritually might be far more important than what we are asking for materially?
I am not saying God does not care about our physical needs. Of course he does. Jesus fed the hungry, healed the sick, and noticed the poor. But he always pointed beyond the physical to the spiritual. The bread he gave sustained bodies, but he said, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35). The sight he restored to blind eyes was wonderful, but he said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12).
When we expect God to show up only in certain ways, we limit our ability to see how he is actually showing up. When we demand specific answers to our prayers, we might miss the deeper work he is doing in our hearts. When we insist that God prove his love through material blessings, we overlook the greatest blessing—his very presence with us.
“Blessed is anyone who does not stumble on account of me.” This is Jesus’ word to us today. Do not let unmet expectations become stumbling blocks. Do not let disappointment blind you to the spiritual work God is doing. Do not take offence at a God whose ways are higher than our ways, whose thoughts are beyond our thoughts (Isaiah 55:9).
I think of that woman again, the one who could not walk but found peace. She still limps. She still feels pain with every step. But something happened to her in front of that crucifix. She stopped asking Jesus to share her suffering and realised he was asking her to share his. She stopped demanding answers and started seeking presence. She stopped measuring God’s love by what he gave her and started recognising it in who he is.
That is what John discovered too, there in the darkness of Herod’s prison. That is what we are invited to discover this Advent—not a God who always answers our way, but a God whose way is always worth trusting. Not a God who meets all our expectations, but a God who exceeds them in ways we never imagined.
The woman who could not walk learnt to see. And sometimes, that is the greatest miracle of all.
May the heart of Jesus live in the hearts of all. Amen…
