Our job is to trust
And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us. (1 John 5:14 KJV)
People can be tempted to abandon their faith in God over a prayer He “failed” to answer, or, more realistically put, a wish He failed to grant. This can lead to the thinking that if we didn’t get what we asked God for, that means that God didn’t answer our prayers. That He heard us and just kind of stared blankly back down at us.
If that was the way God actually is, if that was the God I serve, my faith would be shaken, too! Thankfully, God is nothing like that. God always answers prayer, always. Sometimes the answer is an immediate “yes,” sometimes it’s a “wait,” and sometimes—and this is the important bit—it’s a “no.”
So even when God says “no” to me, I’ve learned to not allow it to shake my faith in Him. When we ask God for something, of course, we don’t ever want God to say “no.” If we don’t want it, we don’t ask for it. We want God to say “yes” every time. Or at the very least we want Him to say “wait.” But sometimes “no” is the answer. The best answer.
It can be hard to understand why but understanding why was never our job. Our job is to trust that God knows best. Sometimes that takes more faith than anything else, to trust rather than to understand, and through everything to trust and understand that He has heard—when He says “yes,” when He says “wait,” and when He says “no.” [1]
God does not delay to hear our prayers because He has no mind to give; but that, by enlarging our desires, He may give us the more largely. - Anselm of Canterbury
[1] Anchor Unanswered Prayer
