When God Disappoints You...

"And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose."

(Romans 8: 28, NASB)

 

 



One of the hardest things for a believer in Christ to go through is learning to wait on God`s timing for answers to prayer. Personally, words fail to express the inner turmoil, emotional pain, disappointment this has brought into my life to see prayers go unanswered for many, many years. It certainly tests the limits of one`s faith to the point that you will question whether God even cares about the issues in your life that matters. It is so difficult to watch seconds turn to minutes, minutes into hours, hours into days, days into weeks, weeks into months, months into years, years into decades and still no answer comes from Lord above. Yet, one writer puts it this way, "Waiting doesn't diminish us any more than waiting diminishes an expecting mother; we are enlarged in the waiting." These words sound good to read or hear, but are they really of any help or comfort? To begin with, the author's anology of a pregnant mother expecting the birth of her child in relation to waiting is certainly lacking. For after nine months she gives birth to an expected son or daughter. So perhaps this anology would be best suited to someone who gets a positive answer to his or her prayer after a short duration of time. However, for someone who has waited for decades for an answer to their prayers, this gives no real help at all but compounds the problem. For the author's quote comes across to such a person's plight as mockery.

But then another question could be asked, what if God does answer, and the answer is a flat out "no." wouldn't that be a great devastingly disappointment to the one who waited so long for an answer to his or her prayer. I cannot begin to explain the heartache this would bring to the one who waited on God for answer that he or she wished they never got! Or even just as bad, still not receiving an answer to one's prayer in light of realizing that even if god were to answer, it would be too late anyway. For example, I have prayed for a wife and a career in teaching God's Word for many years to the point now that I am a middle aged man at 45 years old. How then can God restore the years that the locusts have eaten away. For I can never relive those years again. No direction or help has ever been given to me by God since I graduated from NBBI in 2005.  (See Psalm 62: 1, 5; Isaiah 40: 31)(To Be Continued...)

Be still my soul, thy God doth undertake

To guide the future as He has the past.

Thy hope, thy confidence let nothing shake,

All now mysterious shall be bright at last.

 

-- K. von Schlegel