A very hard thing we encounter as we continue to faithfully pray in our waiting, is that we start to feel like our prayers are pointless. Our emotions begin to take over and the questions abound: If God hasn’t answered my prayers yet, is He really going to? It’s natural and human to ask that question. And Jesus answers that question very clearly – continue to ask, seek, and knock. Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”[i] He is specifically calling us NOT to give up. In fact, in Luke 18:1, we are told that “Jesus told His disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up.”[ii]
Not only are we called NOT to give up, we are also called to pray without ceasing. I Thessalonians 5:17 says, “Pray without ceasing.”[iii] Rather to the point right? Again, here is where I wish God gave us an asterisk with this verse that gave us a specific timeline, but He didn’t. He wants us to keep praying without ceasing until the prayer has been fulfilled. No ifs, ands, or buts.
Why does He call us to do this? In the first place, as long as we are praying, we are far less likely to worry about our current situation. We move our eyes off our situations that so quickly drag us down, and onto the Lord who is the only One who can bring our waiting to an end.
In the second place, we see that delayed answers to our prayers are trials of faith used to grow us into more mature Christians. Delays are not refusals of our prayers, but rather evidence that God has a fixed time and ordained purpose for everything in our lives – especially the things for which we wait. So, we let the delays teach us how to be ever more steadfast and persistent in our prayers, letting each prayer build upon the last until we are triumphant.
By the way, the impossibility of our situation means absolutely nothing to the Lord, so we can’t use that as an excuse to give up our praying. God loves to bring answers when all we see are obstacles. Can anyone say “Red Sea”? He is looking at our situation through omnipotent, omniscient eyes while we see them only through human eyes. The impossible situations we are praying for faithfully represent the perfect time for God to do His work.
And the best time for Him to do His work is when we have done everything humanly feasible to solve our problems or change our situation of waiting, and there is still no change. In fact, too often in my own life I have believed that after I prayed, it was then my responsibility to do everything I possibly could do to help the answer along. “Yet God taught me a better way and showed me that self-effort always hinders His work. He also revealed that when I prayed and had a confident trust in Him for something, He simply wanted me to wait in an attitude of praise and do only what He told me.”[iv]
The answers I seek won’t be a result of my actions, and neither will yours. Our big problems require big answers, and that thankfully, is God’s specialty. In Mark 10:27, “Jesus looked at them and said, ‘With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God.’”[v]
I recently just asked the Lord if I need to continue to pray for the promise and the person that He put on my heart as I have been doing so for many years now. Interestingly enough, my devotions on back to back days, after asking the Lord that question, were on continuing to pray even in the midst of my unanswered prayers. So, my plan is to keep on praying. And I hope yours will be too.
[i] NIV Matthew 7:7
[ii] NIV Luke 18:1
[iii] NAS I Thessalonians 5:17
[iv] Streams in the Desert 4/18
[v] NIV Mark 10:27
Patiently Waiting on God 