What About Unanswered Prayer?

Recently I reviewed my prayer journal; it was not an encouraging experience.  Few of my prayer requests had been answered; translated:  my 'deadline date' for God to respond, had passed.   Frankly I was disappointed, soon frustrated; very frustrated!

And so I picked up a prayer classic:  Harry Emerson Fosdick's The Meaning Of Prayer, turning to Chapter VII -- "Unanswered Prayer."   For starters Fosdick reminds us:  "...the complaint about unanswered prayer is nothing new."  Consider the heart-cry of Habakkuk:  "...O Jehovah, how long shall I cry and thou wilt not hear...:  (Habakkuk 1:1)  And then Fosdick goes on to present gems of insight related to prayers unanswered; i.e. the agony of reaching out to God, but hearing "nothing" from God. 
     

• "...our petitions seem to us to be denied and we give up praying...when the fact may be that God is suggesting to us all the time ways in which we could answer our own requests. Many a man asks for a thing, and God's answer is wisdom sufficient to get the thing..." (p. 118)
• "...Men often call their petitions unanswered because in their impatience they do not give God time...Many of our greatest desires demand time, patience, persistent search, long waiting as conditions of their fulfillment..."  (p. 119)
• "...Some things God cannot give to a man until the man has prepared and proved his spirit by persistent prayer.  Such praying cleans the house, cleanses the windows, hangs the curtains, sets the table, opens the door..." (p. 129) 
• "...consider how utterly unfitted we are to substitute our wish for God's will, and what appalling results would follow if all our requests were answered...:If [God answered] all our desires according to our requests we should be ruined..."  (p. 116)

I've discovered the truth of that last gem from Fosdick painfully, but undeniably.  I remember a time in my life when I prayed boldly for an old girl-friend to come back to me, after rejecting me.   To be candid:  I made quite a scene -- wagging my finger at God – insisting He restore the love of my life.   But there was one problem: I wasn’t alone.  You see as a young pastor I was boarding in a church member’s house; to be precise:  Link and Estelle Bazzle’s house.  And so on more than on occasion, Estelle saw me making demands of God.   But Estelle was also praying, sensing my praying wasn’t praying at all; it was demanding.  And so Estelle confronted me one day -- gently, compassionately -- Estelle confronted me.   “Paul” Estelle said: “I think its time to stop wagging your finger at God.”

Not bad counsel:  it’s time to stop wagging your finger at God.  I mean wherever we’re demanding of God, not praying to God, it’s time to ‘back off’ and ‘let go.’  For though we’re to be bold in prayer, we’re to never be presumptuous in prayer – yielding to God and God alone.   For in the end:  God only knows.  God only knows what’s needed for us, healthy for us...best for us.

The promise of "the best" is echoed by Adoniram Judson, the famed American Baptist missionary.  At the end of Judson's life, Judson came to an amazing insight; after "ups and downs," "good days and bad days," gladness and grief, Judson concluded: "...I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came; at some time -- no matter at how distant a day--somehow, in some shape -- probably the last I should have devised -- it came..."   

And so pray sincerely, earnestly.  Know your answer will come, at some time, in some shape.  But probably not as you expect or devise!.