A mom reached out to me on Instagram as she was processing disappointment with her child after something they had prayed over just, well, didn’t happen. She ended her message with this statement – why do I keep praying when God has other plans? And I was like, yeah, I so get it!
There is not a mom I know who has not carried the heartache of our kids’ disappointment in them like a wound. And for praying moms it’s a double whammy, right? Because we are at the same time teaching our kids about God and about prayer, wanting to foster faith in them. And let’s be honest when the disappointments (read – unanswered prayers) start stacking up, it shakes our faith, and erodes our resolve to keep praying and Lord God with respect, it makes You a bit of a hard sell. Don’t we all just deep down want a God who will do what we want? There are few things in life that expose our misshaped views of God than our response to unanswered prayer.
We come to everything in our lives with biases and agendas, including prayer, which is simply the nature of being human in a fallen world. And the question, why pray if God does what he wants anyway, speaks to a core lie we believe about what prayer is and who God is. Here’s how Oswald Chambers puts it:
Our common ideas regarding prayer are not found in the New Testament. We look upon prayer simply as a means of getting things for ourselves, but the biblical purpose of prayer is that we may get to know God himself.
Oswold Chambers
Here are 4 truths about prayer that can really help us:
- Prayer is about relationship more than requests. You will not have a good relationship with someone that you only ever ask stuff of. We hear it all the time, communication is the key to good relationships. That involves not just speaking but also listening. Have your learned to listen in prayer, not just speak?
- Listening in prayer is about reading the word and allowing God to inform and guide your prayers. It’s about getting comfy with silence, making space for God’s spirit to minister to you. And that means it’s about planning and patience too! These things do not come naturally to us but they are all a vital part of building our relationship with God through prayer.
- Prayer is transformational – Prayer is not about bending God’s will to ours, it is about Him shaping our will to His. Prayer is about partnering with God. Yes, God is sovereign, He will do what He chooses, but scripture is full of examples of how God chose to work through the prayers of His people. Scripture and hopefully even your own life, has examples of how God brings about His purposes through our prayers.
- Prayer is about love. We often pray as though prayer is about convincing God of something, twisting his arm to be on our side. This reveals much about what we think He is really like. What if we started praying not with the conviction that we will get what you want but with the conviction that He knows exactly what we need? And then trusting that? To me that in itself seems like it would be transformative.
The late Timothy Keller said something once that has always stuck with me. “God will only give us what we would’ve asked for if we knew everything He knows.” I know right? Read that again! Here is what I always comfort my kids and myself with:
We don’t know everything but God does. And He loves us perfectly. And He is trustworthy. There is comfort for us in light of unanswered prayers or disappointing situations in knowing that the God who knows everything knows what is best for you or me better than we do.
Additional help here:
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Sometimes it feels like our prayers are hitting the ceiling. Here’s what you do then!