Most all of us have prayed to God in times of need, or to “the unseen Power” that we instinctively feel must surely exist.
That is true whether we believe in many gods (usually singling one out for prayer when we are desperate), are monotheistic believers in “God”, are (further) believers in His Son, Jeshua the Messiah, or are agnostic or even momentarily lapsed athiests. Need shakes our status quo. Despair shifts our foundation.
When we are in desperate need of an answer from outside ourselves, we automatically tend to seek a higher power. It is a rare thing at just such a time to truly believe the answer can come from within (i.e., our “self”). We are without resources of our own to take in the deepest fears or grief of this life. At 2 o’clock in the morning, when all the rest of the watching world is asleep and we are alone with our best and worst selves, we sense this to be true, regardless of all that has been said out loud or done to the contrary.
After we have “broken down” and prayed to this higher Power, we strain to see or experience the answers to our prayers. Is He real? Has He heard me? Will He answer? How will He answer? Will He punish me for not coming sooner? Will my sin cause Him to turn away from me and leave me in my confusion, desperation, suffering or sin?
We wait. And wait…and wait. How does one actually see or know the answer when it comes? Perhaps, God has already spoken and I missed it. Maybe he’s not answering. How do I know?
What do we do with the waiting? How do we conduct ourselves in light of our secret or not-so-secret prayer?
Alternative Responses to Waiting on Answers to Prayer
Some have given up hope: “I prayed to God for my loved one to be healed, and God did not answer my prayer. Nothing.”
Many have gone to their grave angrily holding out on faith in God for just such a reason. That is a chilling response.
As an alternative to outright, violent rejection of God, in our despair or bitterness, it is easy to want to turn to “another god”—another religion, another panacea—casually giving up the idea of a god altogether. “All there is in this life is what is in front of me…and myself. It is all on me what happens in my life.” This response clings to life, but shifts worship to a pacifier that will “fill in” for now. When I’m in despair, I want to feel better now. So I’ll look to whatever will answer me now. We are an impatient people.
Therefore, like Scarlett O’Hara in the movie, Gone with the Wind, we can choose to think about God some “other day”. For now, this pacifier keeps me in community with a group of others, keeps me believing in something, fulfills for now the need for worship that I feel within, and give me a lot of promises (or at least “things to do”) to get me by. We don’t need prayer, we just need ritual, or professional counsel, medications, more activity or social activism (“causes”), less activity and mindfulness.
And indeed, God works through all of those earthly activities and helps us out of His abundant mercy, even in our unbelief. As a former older Armenian pastor of mine often quoted Scripture: “He sendeth rain on the just as well as the unjust” (Matthew 5:45). Both the heavy downpours that ruin crops and the rain that blesses the earth and makes it fruitful falls on us all, not just the Jews or Christians! There is great value in all these “helps”!
But what about that prayer I prayed to God? If there is no answer to prayer, then why pray? God is functionally “dead” to me. What eternal good is ritual or counsel or medications or causes or mindfulness if there is no God?
Suddenly, the world—this life—becomes very heavy indeed.
I’m responsible for everything, and yet, strangely, there is no responsibility that really matters anyway, if there is nothing outside of myself, nothing after this life is over. If this is all there is, and if this life I live is really up to me (and I know myself to have a long track record with massive failure), then really there is nothing much left to life but to ‘drift’ as best I can through it all and lose all meaning…or to end this life as one massive chaotic mistake.
Yes, I am taking this line of thinking to its logical end. Obviously, not all entertain this “logical end,” because we generally have an innate desire for life. (Why so?) But some people will and do follow this tragic logic. This is the emergency and crux of the matter: God seems to be intextricably connected to LIFE.
But no God, no (real, eternal) life.
The Problem of Unanswered Prayer for the Believer.
The problem becomes more difficult if one is a believer in the God of the Bible. God tells us that He answers prayer. So…why hasn’t He answered mine?
Certainly, our psalmist in Caph (or Kaph) knew about waiting. God had promised a Savior, a Deliverer, Redeemer (Gen. 3:15) and had created covenants with His chosen people and had brought them through miraculous events. Did God do all this for nothing? It’s not logical.
So still they waited for a Messiah to come and bring meaning to all the waiting—waiting through persecution, through national failure and captivity, through a devastating return to the Promised Land, through weak rulers and hostile enemies–through great national and personal suffering. Truly, our psalmist’s gut-wrenching questions exuded from his inmost core. If you read these verses casually, you have not quite understood the author’s pain.
While the author speaks for his people, this psalm section is deeply personal: the psalmist is under immediate and individual distress from injustice and slander. He is suffering under the press of isolation as well, for whenever we are done wrong we are recategorized and ostracized–we find ourselves alone in our suffering, and to be alone in our unjust suffering increases the depth of the pain tremendously. Are you with me here? Do you or have you felt this pain and wondered where God is in the midst of it? Have you given up hope?
“When will you come to me?” the psalmist cries out to the seeming air.. We would say prayer feels like talking to the ceiling. Do you think this author felt this way, despite his sometimes hopeful words? In my imagination, and in my experience of life, yes. I think he did.
And yet,—And yet! he still directs his cries toward the God whom he sees as silent. That is not doubt; that is faith.
Jesus encourages us here, and I hope that right now you are encouraged, too:
“For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move; and nothing will be impossible for you.”
(Matthew 17:20-21).
Now, a mustard seed is about the size of a punctuation mark: Here (.). That’s how much faith God requires in you and I and all of us, if we’ll only direct it Himward. Is that hard? It can be. But it doesn’t have to be.
Let’s just pause here and consider the problem a little more before continuing.
In our next post, we will look at six ways this psalm models for us that we can respond when we are in the position of waiting on unanswered prayer. Yes, if we look closely at Scripture, God is teaching us in our deepest times of need! He does not want us to be ignorant or confused, even when He is seemingly silent (John 20:31; 1 John 5:13; Romans 11:25-27; 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18).
But for now, let’s just think about our own situation.
- What are your unanswered prayers? I know mine! If you haven’t already, write them out in preparation for our next post.
- Where do you feel God has abandoned you? What has He promised in scripture that you have not yet seen fulfilled in your life of prayer? (It’s okay if you haven’t read scripture yet. . . but that’s a hint that God does promise things about your future!)
I’m not talking about your state of “drift”, I’m talking about where you have literally prayed to God and found nothing to put your foot down upon. Perhaps you even have had a rejection of your prayer (considered at first to be a “No” answer). What then?
- What are your questions? Write them down, too, for we will talk about our questions in our next post.
- What do you still believe about God? Write those down, too.
- What have you done to “help” fulfill your own prayers, perhaps to “help” God along? To whom, or to what have you turned since you have not got a solid answer to your prayers to God? Write those down too.
Come back to see our next post where we answer the question: “How are we to respond in times of waiting for our prayers to be answered?“
PRAYER:
Heavenly Father, I have prayed to You and I have felt numb by Your seeming silence. It is amazing and wonderful, though, that you put these scripture passages in my way today, to just know that You are not ignorant of my pain in waiting. Others of Your people have waited in pain and anguish, too. So I will come back and hear more of what this passage is speaking to us all about waiting, because I really do want to believe and not doubt. I want for You to be real. I need You to be real, for if You are not real, I die inside. And I desperately want to live. I pray (again?) by faith to You Who I tentatively at least believe is there to hear me. Come to me so I can hope again and really live a new kind of life…just for today, Lord, I pray. Amen.
© by ReadPsalm119.com. PHOTO: Caph – Poi’pu Tombola, Kauai, HI 2021, by ReadPsalm119.com.
HYMN: “Lord, I Believe; Help Thou Mine Unbelief”
1. Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief;
Let me no other master know but Thee.
Thou art the Christian’s God, the only King and Chief
Of all who soldiers of the cross would be.
2. Lord, I believe, in mercy grant me grace
To know Thee, blessèd Savior, more and more;
I can do naught without Thee; Jesus, show Thy face
Unto Thy servant who would Thee adore.
3. Lord, I believe the hold of sin is strong,
And stout its heart to pluck me from Thy love;
But stronger is Thy grace; oh, strengthen and prolong
The work of faith in me, my doubts remove.
4. Lord, I believe: help Thou mine unbelief;
Be this my prayer though good report and ill;
Only to Thee I cling; if long my day or brief,
Master and Savior, I will trust Thee still!
— Daniel H. Howard (1814-1884); Tune: LONGWOOD (Joseph Barnby, 1892). Public Domain. The Cyber Hymnal #3729, Hymnary.org.
