Unanswered

Jesus says, “whatever you ask for in prayer, you will receive… if you have faith.”

Now I don’t know about you, but I have asked for plenty of things and did not get them. I have asked for outcomes to “outcome” a particular way and it didn’t happen the way I asked for it to.

Did I have faith during these times? Faith that God had the power to answer my prayers in particular way?

Yes… always.

In fact… the faith I have in God, (that He can accomplish anything we ask) is seen in conversations I have had with Him when prayers were not answered according to what I had asked.

Conversations that went somethign like this…

Lord, I know you are capable of doing/providing ___________________________ (fill in the blank). And I have asked for it, with faith knowing you can. The question I now have is why didn’t you answer the prayer in the way I asked for it? This is very disturbing to me. Please help me understand.

After all that fits the description of whatever… right?

(Now at this point if you haven’t listened to the sermon Truly 14 you may need to do that before you go any further in this post, you can down load it here)

Now I have a lot of “preacher” answers for this. In fact I am willing to bet that you have already thought of some of those “preacher” answers while reading this post.

Here’s the deal with those…

Do any of those really answer your question concerning unanswered prayer? Do they really bring you peace?

You have asked the “whatever”, your prayer was based ON faith in God, WITH faith in God, and you had NO doubt He was capable of accomplishing what you were asking… but He did not move the mountain. When He did not answer according to your “whatever” and you are left wondering why… do the “preacher” answers really square with with what you went through?

I will have to say… they don’t for me.

And I wish… deep inside… I had an answer to the why…

a real answer.

So, Here is the only thing I know.

I trust God and that is my motto.

Trust is not always knowing all the details and its not having all the answers.

In fact if you are trusting, it means you do not have all the answers, you just know that the one you are trusting will do the right thing. The one you are trusting in will come through for you. He is on your side. Even when things do not turn out the way you’ve asked them to.

I trust God,

He always does the right thing.

I think we have missed something when it comes to this verse because the “answers” we hear and read concerning it do not square with the way things happen in our lives. We may never know what it is we are missing in the interpretation of this verse and that is ok…

because here is what we know…

God is trustworthy…

and our motto needs to be

In God we trust.

Yes,

In God we Trust.

And trust exists in the realm of unanswered whys.