Unanswered Prayer

Prayer that seems to receive no response from God is not an unusual issue! The psalmists in the Bible frequently commented on God’s apparent silence (Psalm 83:1, for example), and even Jesus went through the experience of feeling utterly forsaken on the cross, as He cried out with the some of the first words of Psalm 22, which say: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Far from deliverance are the words of my groaning. O my God, I cry by day, but You do not answer; and by night, but I have no rest’.

Jesus truly knows how we feel when prayer seems to be unanswered.

However, our not hearing an answer from God does not mean that He’s not listening. Our relationship with Him is essentially one of faith, which requires our walking in the assurance of God’s word, before it is seen as fact. This can be hard, but waiting on God for an answer, particularly when praying for healing, can also be a precious opportunity to grow in our knowledge of truth about Him and, more likely, the truth about ourselves. This may be in areas such as unbelief, unforgiveness or unreality about the root issues of the problem. These truths are revealed not to condemn us, but to challenge us in places that could be giving the enemy an opportunity to resist the healing that God has for us.

I’m sure that Daniel was impatient to receive an answer to his prayer for explanation of the vision which he had received, but he was probably very surprised at the reason given to him for the delay in receiving God’s response.

Our part on the journey of wholeness and freedom is to humble ourselves before God, make our requests known with persistence (Luke 18:7), walk in the truths that He reveals, and wait for Him to respond how and when He decides it’s appropriate to answer the essence of our prayer.