Some things to consider when your
prayers don't seem to be getting answered. You wonder what is happening. What
do you do at these times? The following excerpt from Relevant Magazine by Tania
Harris may be of help here.
“You know how it feels.
You’ve trudged up a lonely mountain,
sat cross-legged for five hours with a Bible in your lap and prayed intently
for answers until your knee joints are screaming.
Or you’ve knelt endlessly at the altar,
read the Scriptures and repeated the prayers; you’ve asked, sought and knocked
during every sermon, liturgy and devotional reading you could find.
You’ve waited in faith
and expectation, shouting hallelujahs, whispering quiet amens and pleading the
Lord’s Prayer in reverent refrain.
And there is nothing. Zip. The heavens
are steely cold. The airwaves are silent. The divine Internet has run out of
data.
What on earth is going on? Why is God
not saying anything?
At this point, one could go into detail
into what the ancient mystics poetically termed ‘The Dark Night of the Soul’ or
how God’s silence is a divine strategy to draw us closer to Him. But though I
love some of the ancient ponderings, we should first check off some other
possibilities that have been tried and tested when God is not speaking in my
own God-Conversations journey.
Here’s three possibilities to always consider when God seems silent:
1. He Has Already Spoken, But I Didn’t
Listen.
This one is probably the most likely.
We don’t listen because we don’t like what He said. It didn’t pull enough punch
or He didn’t say what we wanted to hear. There are times when I’d hear
something from God and maybe even write it down in my journal as an offhand
thought but, in my desperation to hear something better, I’d promptly forget
it. It was only weeks later when my Facebook news feed got boring that I
rediscover it and realise it was worth taking a closer look.
2. I Haven’t Responded to the Last
Thing He Said.
Perhaps we listened, but listening is
not just hearing in God’s economy. Listening means fully
taking in what He has said.
God’s Word is like food: We can’t just
chew it and spit it out, we have to swallow it and digest it until it becomes a
part of us. That takes time and effort. Often it requires action—meditation on
His words, obeying what He said, living out His words in our lives.
“Eat this scroll I am giving you,” God
said to the prophet Ezekiel, “and fill your stomach with it” (Ezekiel 3:3). We
need to let His words fill our hearts before we are ready to receive more.
3. I’m Not Ready to Hear His Answer.
One of the darkest times in my life
took place when I was 27 years old. It was one of those confusing incidents
where it looks like God has failed, where it’s hard to believe He’s good and in
control. Everything I believed about God fell apart.
So I did what everyone else does in
those times and screamed out “Why?” with long and loud emanations. God
eventually spoke, but what He said didn’t answer my question. His message
mirrored Jesus’ words to the disciples during His farewell speech: “I have much
more to tell you, but you are not ready for it” (John 16:12). You
cannot understand my purposes in this. You cannot receive what I have for you.
You are like the third grader trying to understand Pythagoras Theorem. First
you must finish learning your times table.
It was a full year later when God
finally answered my question. By then I was mature enough to understand His
perspective. I was ready to hear what He said.
God’s wisdom means not only knowing
what to say, but when to say it. If God appears to be silent today, be
reassured by your knowledge of His character. His loving kindness is never
failing even when we can’t feel it.
Then check yourself. Are you prepared
to hear whatever He wants to say? Have you responded to the last thing He said?
We may be waiting for Him, but sometimes it is He who is waiting for us.”
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