How do you process your unanswered prayer? Do you still pray for a miracle?
By Rachelle Keng
When you have been haunted by unanswered prayer, you don’t really believe miracles will happen to you.
We are taught that if we have the faith to believe we will move mountains. But what about those with chronic illness? An injury that has now become a lifelong barrier? Disability that will not ever be healed in this life? What if we have unanswered prayer? What if we never get our miracle?
I followed the rules of the Christian walk, but my prayer has not healed my non-verbal daughter. And so I have asked the tough questions:
Is unanswered prayer the rejection of God? Has God abandoned me?
My heart says no, of course not!
But my prayers (and lack thereof) says otherwise.
I have not been expecting that miracles happen for me anymore.
When my prayers did not heal my child, I stopped asking. However, this created a paradoxical relationship with God. I submitted myself to His plan so that I would accept the lowest branch of fruit as the most delicious thing I’ve ever encountered. It was a defense mechanism to cope with God's answer of "No." But it wasn't a healthy relationship. Because I stopped communicating with my Creator.
My heart had become cynical to the goodness of God. I was supposed to be okay with His answer even if I did not like it, right? And so I shut down in my prayer life, that is, until I began an honest dialogue with God again.
My unanswered prayer brought up His question for me:
Was my sacrifice on the cross already enough?
Your unanswered prayers were answered 2000 years ago on the cross.
I did not see that one coming. It was a deeper answer than what I would have received from the miraculous healing of my daughter.
God pursued us, coming in the form of a human human being,
taking on the hatred of the world,
because His love was greater than our doubt.
Jesus conquered death and ascended to heaven to show us the true end of our story.
The gospel was my answer to my prayer all along.
Forgive me, Lord.
I assumed the worst about Him rather than the best about Him.
Convinced that obedience was a quiet submission to His will, I stopped asking for miracles.
But now I understand the true miracle:
1) God’s world has a very different definition of goodness. As our values become more in line with what God values, we will see His goodness even in our unanswered prayers.
2)The enemy wants us to feel rejected by God so that we do not even ask anymore. His motive is to destroy relationships. His best weapon? Plant a seed of doubt in God's love. He wants us to doubt God's love rather than claim it.
3) God wants us to ask for the miracle. Sometimes we get the answer we want and sometimes we don't. But we ask anyway. As we ask, our definition of the miracle may change. The change of our hearts may be the miracle in itself.
4) God's answers are motivated by love. He has not rejected us. Instead, He was rejected to show His love for us.
And as I marinate in these truths, I now see all of the miracles in my life:
I got a miracle yesterday in answered prayer. I was spared from neurosurgery. An army of prayer warriors prayed for a miracle when I did not have the strength to pray for one myself. God showed me that He still has surprises for me in His goodness. And even when I assume the worst of Him, He is merciful anyways.
I have a miracle in the unanswered prayer for my daughter. Because I do not look at the treatments of this world to fix my daughter. I look at the cross to save my daughter from her true disability of sin. One day she will speak to me in a new body that does not trap her mind. He has miraculously changed my heart about disability.
Ultimately, He has done a miracle in my heart.
He is faithful even when I am faithless.
He loves me even when I doubt Him.
And He saves me even when I don't think I need to be saved.
Perhaps that is the greatest miracle of all.
If we are unfaithful,
he remains faithful,
for he cannot deny who he is.
2 Timothy 2:13
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