Dear friend,

 

Today I am seeing the beginning of answered prayer. It's a prayer I've prayed for almost three years. At times it looked like the door completely closed. Other times it cracked open and closed again. But now the door is swinging open and I am walking through it.

 

On Saturday we saw the culmination of an answered prayer. It's a prayer I prayed for the last twelve months. At times it looked like the door completely closed. But this time, it swung open, and I stand holding the knob, scared to step over the threshold.

 

But this weekend we also faced the wreckage of unanswered prayers. I felt, and feel, assailed by doubt and discouragement, grief and pain. How can a heart ache so deeply? A physical heart, the center of my chest, aching so deeply it feels as if it's cracked open? How do wounds like that heal?

 

Discouragement piles from multiple other directions – it all feels like too much to bear, but more than this, it feels confusing. How does one walk in the tension of answered and unanswered prayers? Where is God when I see both His “yes” and His “no”?

I'm living this at the moment so I don't expect to have all the answers, but I can take you on the journey with me. Here is the truth:

 

According to God's Word, which Jesus held as inspired and truthful, God:

God is not arbitrary in His answers. He knows what we do not; His ways are higher than our limited understanding. Further, God has sovereignly set up this world with the ability to choose freely, and He will not override someone's will to choose evil if that is what they want. He will, however, call to them, reach for them, and speak truth to them. How they respond to that is their choice.

 

This is why we can't blame God when our loved ones are not immediately freed of addiction. God offers everything they need to walk His freedom road, but they must take Him up on it. This is why I don't blame God for the loss of our fourth child in January, because He did not cause it. This broken world did. But through circumstances like miscarriage, addiction, relational division, and hurtful people, we learn how to cast all our cares on the God who loves our souls. We learn how to walk in step with Him. We learn His voice better than all voices. We learn to trust who He says we are more than the voices of those who condemn us. 

 

Sometimes the answered prayer takes time. We are a culture of people who do not understand delayed gratification. But Israel was enslaved for 400 years, praying for a deliverance some of them did not see. Why? “In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” (Genesis 15:16) God was working deliverance not just for Israel, but also for the Canaanites. He gave them 400 years of mercy. What looked like an unanswered prayer for Israel was the grace of God for another people in bondage.

 

I wonder, when I look out at the landscape of pain spreading out before me, what deliverance is God working that I cannot yet see?

The answered prayers remind us of God's faithfulness. We look at them as beacons of hope. Our trust is not in the answer; our trust is not in the thing we prayed for but in the Person we prayed to. His character is our anchor. When I begin to drown in the discouragement I can lift up my eyes and take hold of the hope, knowing “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3)

 

Maybe you're cracking and cracked open, but somewhere in this painful landscape there is evidence of His faithfulness. This is why I say again and again to open your eyes to His goodness in the every day; it is there for the taking, there to hold onto, there to stabilize you when other places are still waiting on an answer. The tension of answered and unanswered is really just the tension of faith.