The dilemma of unanswered prayer is particularly vexing for us who pray. We who try to be diligent in prayer know the disappointment that attends prayers that seemingly go unanswered. Why doesn’t a loved one recover from illness? Why can’t family members reconcile? Why doesn’t a prodigal child come home to God? I have no ready-made answer to such perplexing questions. Prayer remains mysterious to me. I know God works cooperatively with our prayers, yet I don’t understand how it all works, or rather, how it doesn’t work sometimes. The Psalms keep us in good company. Consider what the Psalmist prays, “Will the Lord reject forever? Has his unfailing love vanished forever? Has God forgotten to be merciful?” (Ps. 77.9). When we can’t see God working in present circumstances, the Psalmist falls back on God’s faithfulness in the past, “Then I thought, ‘To this I will appeal, the years when the Most High stretched out his right hand, I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago’” (Ps. 77.10-11). Consider what Tim Keller wrote in his book on Prayer, “God will either give us what we ask or give us what we would have asked if we knew everything he knows.” We often don’t recognize God’s answer to prayer because it’s not the answer we’re looking for. In today’s prayer, Henry Ward Beecher (1813-1877) prayed about his struggles with unanswered prayer. I’m intrigued with his comment that if God granted us all our requests in prayer, we would be ruined. It makes me think of a line in Garth Brooks’ song, “Sometimes I thank God for unanswered prayer.”
Henry Ward Beecher
Thou hast called us to Thyself, most merciful Father, with love and with promises abundant; and we are witnesses that it is not in vain that we drew near to Thee. We bear witness to Thy faithfulness. Thy promises are Yea and Amen. Thy blessings are exceedingly abundant, more than we know or think. We thank Thee for the privilege of prayer, and for Thine answers to prayer; and we rejoice that Thou dost not answer according to our petitions. We are blind, and we are constantly seeking things which are not best for us. If Thou didst grant all our desires according to our requests, we should be ruined. In dealing with our little children we give them, not the things which they ask for, but the things which we judge to be best for them, and Thou, our Father, art by Thy providence overruling our ignorance and our headlong mistakes, and art doing for us, not so much the things that we request of Thee as the things we should ask, and we are, day by day, saved from peril and ruin by Thy better knowledge and by Thy careful love. Amen.H. E. Fosdick The Meaning of Prayer.
Rev. Dr. Peter James served 42 years as the senior of Vienna Presbyterian Church in Vienna, VA — 21 years in the 20th century and 21 years in the 21st century. He retired in 2021 and now serves as Pastor-in-Residence at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.
Even as a pastor, prayer came slowly to Pete. Read Pete’s story.