Why am I posting? Dunnoz. Nothing to post actually haha.
Well, I dont have anything to say so there. Haze is unhealthy people, stay at home, dont go to school.
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I thought today's devotion in school was refreshing compared to the usual mundane stuff. Look out of the window and see the cross.
Though we are not perfect, though we may fall sometimes, God loves us all the same.
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Ahh, now I remember what I wanted to post. Heh theres gotta be a reason for clicking the 'new post' button =p.
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Well, I dont have anything to say so there. Haze is unhealthy people, stay at home, dont go to school.
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I thought today's devotion in school was refreshing compared to the usual mundane stuff. Look out of the window and see the cross.
Though we are not perfect, though we may fall sometimes, God loves us all the same.
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Ahh, now I remember what I wanted to post. Heh theres gotta be a reason for clicking the 'new post' button =p.
Dealing with Unanswered Prayers
This week, we watched together as a real-life rescue drama unfolded before our eyes thanks to the wonder of cable television. One by one, 33 men trapped about half a mile below ground for more than two months emerged from the copper and gold mine they once feared would become their tomb. It wasn’t just the family and friends of the rescued miners who shed tears of joy when their loved ones emerged from the rescue capsules. Viewers, too, rejoiced over this modern miracle.
The rescue of trapped miners in Chile answered many prayers and re-united families.
The successful recovery surely answered a host of fervent prayers. One of the miners, an evangelical, buoyed the spirits of the other men by leading a Bible study. He corresponded with a Baptist pastor above ground who encouraged the men with a note. The pastor, Marcelo Leiva, told Baptist Press what he said to José Henríquez:
I encouraged him for remaining days of confinement. That he would remember the promises of the Lord, to have hope and confidence, and that he would also convey to the other 32 miners the message that the same God who has guarded them is the One who is going to guide them in the rescue. And so the anxiety can be dissipated with prayer and confidence in God.
According to Henríquez, the trapped miner, two men professed new faith in Jesus Christ during their confinement. When one of the miners’ wives learned her husband had become a Christian, she, too, found faith in Jesus. Indeed, God answered prayers not only for physical but also for spiritual deliverance. His gracious provision demonstrated that he hears the cries of his people in distress.
But what about when he doesn’t appear to provide? Do you remember four years ago when news broke that rescuers had discovered 12 men trapped in a West Virginia mine? Turns out it was false hope. Only one man survived.
“We have got some of us . . . saying . . . that we don’t even know if there is a Lord anymore,” the cousin of one dead miner said. “We had a miracle, and it was taken away from us.”
I’m worried the same dynamic of dashed hopes will play out in a church I know and love. While I was celebrating the rescue of miners in Chile, I learned that a family friend died of cancer. This summer he traveled some distance to hear me preach and encouraged me afterward. At the time he didn’t know anything was wrong. But now he’s dead of a fast-moving cancer. Members of his church prayed with confidence that he would be healed. They were sure God would answer by removing the cancer. He didn’t. How will this disappointment affect their faith?
The Bible includes several prayers that God does not appear to answer. The prayers fall into several different categories. In the case of the reluctant prophet Jonah, he pleaded with God out of his selfish, angry sin.
O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster. Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live (Jonah 4:2-3).
But God would not indulge Jonah’s sin by granting his request for death. God graciously declined to give Jonah what he wanted, the death his sin deserved.
Jesus, as he agonized while lying prostrate in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayed that he would escape an agonizing death. “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will,” Jesus prayed in Matthew 26:39. “My Father, if this cannot pass unless I drink it, your will be done” (Matt. 26:42). The Father did not spare his beloved Son death on the Cross. Rather, he provided Jesus the strength he needed in order to fulfill the the Father’s will. This way God answered Jesus’ prayers.
We might also consider the apostle Paul’s prayer in 2 Corinthians 12. Three times Paul pleaded with the Lord that he would remove the thorn in his flesh, the messenger of Satan who harassed him. But the Lord did not respond in the way Paul requested. God said, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). In this way the Lord provided far greater than Paul could originally have expected. The power of Christ rested upon him as he boasted in his weakness, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. “For when I am weak, then I am strong,” Paul said in 2 Corinthians 2:10.
As we can see from these and many other examples, God always answers our prayers. But he does not always answer them in the way or timing that we desire. Indeed, we may never learn the how and why of God’s will. Our faith is tested as we struggle to find contentment in God’s will, whatever may come. Reflecting on the challenge of “unanswered” prayer, J. I. Packer and Carolyn Nystrom write in Praying: Finding Our Way Through Duty to Delight:
In all of this our difficulties arise from the unawareness of the limits of our own spiritual wisdom, as well as our failure to realize that God does not limit himself by those limits of ours when he answers our prayers for help in time of need.
God intends for prayer to bolster our faith. But our faith won’t grow unless we confess that our perspective is limited and trust God to do his will. God is good. All the time. And he is using the circumstances of our life to conform us into the image of his Son (Rom. 8:29), “who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). If Jesus could endure such horror on our behalf, what can we not endure when sustained by the Holy Spirit through prayer? “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? (Rom. 8:32)
Collin Hansen serves as editorial director for The Gospel Coalition. He is the co-author of A God-Sized Vision: Revival Stories That Stretch and Stir.
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