I have known Roger and Lillian
since my childhood. They met
and were married in our church but went through long, hard
struggles and lived separately for years. Their story is a wonderful
example of what can be given through prayer.
I owe the foundation of my faith to the school I went to from ten
to eighteen. We had assembly every morning –we called it
Prayers. We sang a psalm and a hymn. That is when I learned
many psalms by heart, and they meant a great deal to me. We
said the Lord’s Prayer together, but as this was done every day, it
became a habit. Still, through those years a firm trust in God and
belief in Jesus grew in my heart.
I left school when I was eighteen. On the last morning at
Prayers, the headmistress read Psalm 91, especially for the
graduating class. She said, “Take it with you through life.” I have
turned to it again and again in times of struggle.
During her university years, Lillian attended a church where there
was a lively youth group. Through the sermons and discussions they
began to think seriously about discipleship: what does it mean to
believe
the words of Jesus, and to act on them? Soon they were
involved in social work, trying to help the poor in various ways,
though realizing that even the best efforts did little to change the
gross injustices inherent in the “system.”
It was then that Lillian met my uncle, Hardy, who was studying in
England, and talked to him about her frustration. He said, “You
cannot change the system or the ways of the world. You can only
change yourself.”
Hardy’s words made a strong impression on Lillian and others in
her church. As she later recognized, they also contained a vital key
to winning the longest battle of her life: struggling to remain loyal
and loving to the man she married.
In June 1937, Roger and I were married. But our marriage went
through one conflict and crisis after another on account of his
homosexuality. The church was a great support to me in those
times when he was away for long periods. When distressing letters came from him, I got discouraged and sometimes gave up
praying for him. But I always came back to it, as it was the only
thing I could do to help him. I knew that everything is possible
with God, and that someday my husband might be restored to
me and to the church.
I can never cease to feel what a miracle it was when Roger
came back in his old age. I loved being with him; he was so different. He was humble and simple in his thinking. He loved those
around him very deeply, and they loved him. He was very close
to God, especially in the last months before his death at the age
of ninety-one. I think of him every day and will always treasure
the time I had with him. I think he was closer to the kingdom
than I am. Too late I think of things I could have done, see where
I failed in love. But God is faithful and keeps his promises.
Amy Carmichael grew up in Ireland
in the late 1800s and went
to India as a missionary. Adopting that country as her home, she
never returned to Ireland but devoted the rest of her life to rescuing children from temple prostitution. With a handful of Indian
women, she saved hundreds of female babies from their certain
fate – a life of sexual slavery at the hands of Hindu priests – and
raised them communally in Dohnavur, a settlement she founded for
this purpose.
Amy loved her mother’s bright blue eyes, and as a little girl she
was not happy with her own brown ones. So she decided to pray
for blue eyes, and in her childlike trust was perfectly convinced that
God would answer her prayer the way she hoped. But it did not
happen:
Without a shadow of a doubt that my eyes would be blue in the
morning, I had gone to sleep, and the minute I woke I went to
the looking-glass, full of eager expectation, and saw – brown
eyes. I don’t remember how the words came, “Isn’t
no
an answer?” Perhaps my mother, whose blue eyes had made me so
much want to change my brown ones, said something of the
sort.
Much later in her life, among the brown-eyed women of India, she
realized the gift God had given her. Blue eyes would have marked
her immediately as a foreigner and blocked her way to the hearts
of many people.
For most of us, of course, the issue of “unanswered” prayer has
little to do with such a childlike wish. The things we pray for as
adults are pressing needs – or so we think. As I see it, the primary
question is whether we are ready to accept God’s leading in our
lives. Is our attitude really “thy will be done”? In a sense, we should
not even worry whether God answers our petitions or not, but
ought to be comforted by the fact that he knows our needs and has
heard our request. He may not answer us the way we want, but
perhaps in a much better and more wonderful way.
In the Bible our relationship with God is often compared to that
of a father with his children. Like a parent, God can give us one of
three answers, the same ones we give our own children: yes, no, or
not now. As parents, we don’t always say yes. Just as frequently we
say no, or not now. Why should God treat us any differently?
Deborah, a childhood acquaintance now in her fifties, recently
reflected on the many occasions in her life when God answered her
prayers in unexpected ways, as in this instance:
Sometimes we are slow to see that a prayer has been answered,
because the answer is not what we expect. All four of our children
were born after I was thirty-six, and each time the doctors told
me that there was a high risk of having a handicapped child. Our
first three were normal, healthy children, but before our fourth
was born, there were several signs that not all was well. When
Joanna arrived, I was relieved to see how beautiful she was, but
knew she was very weak and obviously not normal. We had
prayed for her through my entire pregnancy, and we continued
to do so even after her birth, hoping for a miracle. But Joanna
did not get stronger and healthier. She was found to have
Prader-Willi Syndrome, a rare condition in which the child is
mentally hindered in most areas –though often quite
advanced in language skills – and prone to behavioral difficulties, such as an insatiable appetite, which generally leads to morbid obesity. Joanna’s diagnosis was hard enough to accept
as it was, but then a nurse made it even worse. She said, “You
would have been better off with a Down child.”
I was rebellious, full of questions. Why me? What have I
done to deserve this? And in spite of loving her, there were
moments when I felt she was a burden on our family. Only slowly
has it dawned on me that Joanna is less a burden than a gift,
especially in her way of helping me learn about patience and
love. It is not by scales falling from my eyes, not through just one
incident, that I have come to this acceptance of Joanna. The
process has been slow and sometimes painful. We are told that
love is patient and kind – and I am neither. But Joanna is. Maybe
the answer to my many prayers is this: even if God did not
change my child, he has changed me.
Genuine prayer is an opening
of the heart and mind for God’s
will to be done in our lives. As Martin Luther King put it: “The idea
that man expects God to do everything leads inevitably to a callous
misuse of prayer. For if God does everything, man then asks him for
anything, and God becomes little more than a ‘cosmic bellhop’ who
is summoned for every trivial need.”
In striving for greater humility, it is always fruitful to examine our
personal lives for whatever obstacles might be preventing God’s will
from becoming reality in our lives. But to do this we must really
believe that he is a better judge of what we need, because he knows us
better than we know ourselves. That is the essence of trust: not only
hoping, but
knowing
that God will find the best answers for us.
I asked for power that I might achieve;
He made me meek that I might obey.
I asked for health that I might do greater things;
I was given grace that I might do better things.
I asked for riches that I might be happy;
I was given poverty that I might be wise.
I asked for strength that I might have the praise of men;
I was given weakness that I might feel the need of God.
I asked for all things that I might enjoy life;
I was given life that I might enjoy all things.
I received nothing that I asked for, but all that I hoped for;
My prayer was answered.
Anonymous
Sometimes it seems that God creates certain circumstances in a
person’s life so that he can use us for his purposes. But then we
have to be willing to be used. Like Fara in the previous chapter,
Connie is a single woman whose prayers were not answered in the
way she had hoped.
I prayed many times for marriage because of the words in the
gospel: ask for whatever you want, and it will be given. I firmly
believed that God would give me marriage, and many times I felt
sure that he had heard me. Later, however, I would feel let down
because nothing happened.
It has taken me years (perhaps I am spiritually dull) but I have
finally discovered that when I forgot all about my hopes for a husband and reached out to others, my emptiness was overcome.
No prayer goes up to heaven that is not heard and answered. We
may not always see the answer – it may not be obvious, or we may
have missed it because we were looking elsewhere – but that does
not mean it isn’t there.
What happens to all those prayers when not only are they not
“answered,” but things get far worse than anyone ever anticipated? Surely the prayers have sustained me, are sustaining me.
Perhaps there will be unexpected answers to these prayers, answers I may not even be aware of for years. But they are not
wasted. They are not lost. I do not know where they have gone,
but I believe God holds them, hand outstretched to receive them
like precious pearls.
Madeleine L’Engle
Without going into
the age-old question of why an almighty God
allows his children to go through pain and suffering, I venture to
say that such times can bring us closer to him. Through suffering,
either our own or that of someone we love, we can experience God,
but it depends entirely on whether we are inwardly receptive to
what he wants to give us. Because we tend to pray most intensely
in times of sickness or impending death – for an illness to be cured,
or a life saved – the disappointment or frustration we sense when
we feel our prayers are not answered is intensified too. Many
religious writers tell us the reason prayers are not answered is our
lack of faith, and this may be so. Yet the Bible tells us that death is
the last enemy, a clear reminder that until the kingdom comes on
earth – until our world is completely won for God – the course of
our lives simply will remain subject to powers of death and darkness, no matter how faithful we are.
Christa, a thirty-year-old mother of two, has grappled with this
reality ever since her husband abandoned her over a year ago:
I have sometimes wondered how we should pray when, humanly
seen, the answer to our prayers looks all but impossible. It seems
that, if we are always praying for a certain outcome, such as the
return of a loved one or a miraculous cure for cancer, we only set
ourselves up for disappointment. But if we simply pray for God’s
will to be done, and trust that he loves us, we can be at peace
and know that the right thing will happen. And we should remember what is of eternal value. In my case this may mean that,
even more than praying for my husband to return, I pray that
God has mercy on his soul and brings him to repentance.
The Gospel of Luke records the words of Jesus: “Ask, and it will be
given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and the door will be
opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks
finds, and to him who knocks the door will be opened.” God always
opens doors, even if they are not the ones we would have chosen.
At the same time we should not forget the wonderful words of
Scripture: “For what father among you, if his son asks for a fish,
will give him a serpent, or if he asks for an egg, will give him a
scorpion? If you then who are evil, know how to give good gifts to
your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the
Holy Spirit to those who ask him!” What tremendous words – and
what an encouragement for those times when we feel God has not
heard us!
The Gospel of Matthew records similar words of Jesus: “Seek first
the kingdom of God and its righteousness, and then all other things
will be given to you.” About this promise C.S. Lewis writes: “Infinite comfort in the second part; inexorable demand in the first.
Hopeless if it were to be done by your own endeavors…God must
do it.”
This is an invaluable inner direction for our prayer life, for we
focus too easily on our personal desires, and our prayer requests
are insignificant when we see them in the light of the significance
of God’s kingdom. Kierkegaard writes, “Prayer does not change
God. It changes him who prays.” All the more then, we ought to
remember the importance of the still small voice, the value of inner quiet, and the necessity of a listening heart. For without these,
he cannot change us.
When Jesus sent out his disciples
, he gave them the power and
authority to perform miracles. Demons were driven out, the sick
were healed, and the dead were raised. Today, many people, even
among Christians, find these stories fantastic and either dismiss
them outright or explain them away. All the same I believe that
miracles are real, and that they play a greater part in our lives than
we recognize. And further, I believe we do not sufficiently acknowledge God’s intervention in our lives. Even when we do, the passage
of time often causes us to forget how wonderfully God has answered our prayers, and we are left remembering only those times
when we felt disappointed.