When God Doesn’t Answer
“I say to you, though he will not rise and give to him because he is his friend, yet because of his persistence he will rise and give him as many as he needs.” (Luke 11:8)
So if Jesus said that if I keep asking for what I want, He will give it to me? If God hasn’t given me what I asked for, I just need to knock a little harder, do a couple more metanias and then He’ll give me what I want... right?
By misunderstanding of this parable, we take our desires and demand them to be heard. We beg God to give us that one blessing, that one job, that one career, that one boy/girl that will make us the happiest person in the world.
If we can Biblically justify our demands, then that makes them right, doesn’t it? There is much more to it that we all too willingly forget. The path to God is simple, yet we overcomplicate it when we twist God’s will with our own.
Oftentimes, our persistence in prayer is focused on our requests. But to persist in prayer is to persist in thanksgiving, to persist in repentance, to persist to know Him, to persist in making Him the love of my life. Our contentment is found in things above, and not in the distractions of this world. It would be quite unlike God to give us ONLY what we pray for.
Our God is sufficient for every need, and if we persist, He will be everything we want, too. Whatever matters to us, matters to Him. God plants desires in all our hearts so that He can make His Love manifest in our lives. The desires themselves may seem like the goal, but each request can serve as a stepping stone to a life in Christ. In petitioning, we may confuse Christ as the means to reach the request. Persisting, in the answered and unanswered, will see Christ become the end goal, and each request a stepping stone toward Him, and this will always be more than enough.
He says, ask that your joy may be full. Don’t ask for the temporal. Ask for the eternal that never fades. Come boldly before the throne of grace. Why ask for things that don’t matter in the grand scheme of things? We persist for the eternal over the temporal. There may be nothing wrong with what you have asked for, but there’s more He wants to give you.
Every prayer at the point of desperation becomes the source of contentment to the soul in need. Hold tight; the best is yet to come. When we persist in prayer, we stop breaking His door down for what we want in this world, and start searching until we understand the depths of His love, and if that is the goal, whenever we think we know Him, He outdoes Him, time and time again, for His love is boundless. When He tells us to persist in prayer, we persist because we will forever be searching deeper to know His love. Our requests will come and go, but His Love remains.
Often when you’ve been praying for something for so long and God doesn’t
give it to you, this can make prayers dry; it can make prayers fade away. If we persist for the eternal – the imperishable – then we can never be disappointed.
The path to the Kingdom is through a life of thanksgiving, in thanksgiving there are no desires above the One that provides all. Start every prayer in thanksgiving. As for problems, the best kind are the ones that seem completely hopeless. The ones where you feel you have nowhere to turn. The ones that leave you broken-hearted. For it is the broken-hearted whom the Lord heals. It is the poor in spirit that see God. If God is naturally drawn to us in our state of exhaustion and depletion, how much more will He reveal Himself to those that continue to pray while in that state?
May we never allow worldly cares to stop us from true prayer and communion with Christ and all orders of heavenly hosts. Glory be to God forever Amen.