By J.R. Miller
In one of our hymns there is a line which runs, "Teach me the patience of unanswered prayer." The writer's thought is patience in waiting when our prayer seems not to be answered. The answer may be only delayed. Sometimes it takes a long time for God to give us the answer we seek. We can think of several possible reasons.
Perhaps the thing we seek cannot be prepared for us at once. God does not work unnecessary miracles. The economy of supernatural acts is to be noted in our Lord's life. He had all power and could do anything. Nature's limitations set no trammels for him. He could have changed water into wine whenever he wished to do so--but he did it only once. He could have make bread from stones--but he never did. He wrought a number of miracles--but he did thousands of deeds of common kindness when there was no necessity for supernatural acts. Some of the prayers we make, could be answered at once only by miracle. It is not the will of God to give us the answer in that way, and so he requires us to wait while he prepares it for us in a natural way.
If you want an oak tree to grow on your lawn and pray for it, God will not cause it to spring up overnight. He will bid you drop an acorn in the place where you want to have the tree, and it will grow as trees always grow and your prayer will be answered--but not fully for a long time. You will need the patience of unanswered prayer.
A young man has a desire to do great things. He has high ideals and is ambitious to achieve noble things. God may be willing to give him what he wishes--but not instantaneously. The young man needs to have his mental faculties developed and trained in order that he may be able to accomplish the great things he desires to do. Long after, in the years of maturity, he may achieve the thing he prayed in youth to be able to do. But now the prayer offered so importunately seems not to be answered. Really, however, it is answered as soon as God could answer it. We need the patience of unanswered prayer while we do not seem to be receiving at all the thing we long for and ask for.
You pray to have the Christian graces in your life. You want to have joy, patience, gentleness, humility, mercifulness. But these heavenly qualities cannot be put into your life at once; they have to grow from small beginnings to perfection--but "first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear,"--but that requires a long time. It needs "the patience of unanswered prayer" in your heart, that you may not be discouraged while you wait.
Another reason for slowness in the answering of prayer, may be in ourselves. We are not yet ready to receive the thing we seek. There must be a work done in us, a work of preparation before the thing we seek can be given to us. A young man has a strong desire to go into a certain calling or business and prays earnestly and persistently that the way may be opened for him. But he has not now the qualification to make him successful in that business. Only by a long experience, can he be made ready for it. His prayer may seem long to be unanswered--but it needs only patience and continuance in work and prayer combined. Prayer without work would never be answered. Many prayers wait for answer for something that must be done first in us.
Our prayers for spiritual blessings cannot be answered until a great work has been wrought in us. You want to be holy. You are weary of sinning and grieving God. Months pass and somehow your prayer seems to have no answer. The trouble is, it can be answered only in your own heart. The evil there must be driven out. You pray to be made gentle. God loves to answer such a prayer--but the answer can come only through a long, slow discipline in which your old nature must be softened. You must have patience, for this great lesson is long and cannot be learned in a day. It never can come into any life as an immediate answer to prayer. It takes some people a whole lifetime to learn always to be kind, always to be gentle. But it is worth while to give even the longest lifetime to the learning of such a lesson.
But why should we pray at all--when we must win the answer by our own striving? Only with divine help can such prayers ever be answered. We cannot alone make ourselves gentle, or kind, or humble. These are among the things which we cannot do apart from Christ. There is a legend of an ancient church in England, which tells that while a new building was being erected, there came among the workmen a stranger and began to help them. This man always took, unasked, the hardest tasks. When a beam had been lifted to its place and was found too short, the men tried in every way to remedy the defect--but in vain. Night closed in, leaving them in great perplexity--but in the morning the beam was in its place, lengthened to the exact dimensions required. The strange workman was gone--but now the men understood that it was the Master himself who had been working with them unrecognized, supplying their lack of wisdom and strength. The legend has its teaching for us. We are not toiling unhelped at our work. We are not seeking the blessings of grace unaided. While we pray for new gifts and strive to attain them, Christ is with us, unseen, and our prayers shall not be unanswered nor our longings be unattained.
Another reason that prayers seem to remain unanswered, may be that the answers we desire and expect, would not be the wisest and best. Those who were praying and waiting for the Messiah before Jesus came, never received the answer they were looking for. They expected a Messiah who would be an earthly conqueror. Their prayers were unanswered, though the Messiah came. Many people pray for certain things which they think would be great blessings to them if they would receive them. God is willing to grant them the best gifts of his love. He does not reject their prayers. But the things they plead for would not be the good they seek. If they were granted to them, they would be only empty husks, not the corn their hunger craves. Not receiving what they so eagerly longed for, and have pleaded for so earnestly--they suppose they have prayed in vain, that God has not listened to their requests. Meanwhile, the real good which their hearts needed, has been coming to them continually, coming in what they regarded as unanswered prayers.
Christian life is full of just such experiences as these. We do not know what really the things are, which we need most. Our vision is limited. We are swayed by the physical. We think a certain thing, if we had it, would make us almost perfectly happy; and that if it is not given to us, no matter what other good things we may receive, we cannot be happy. So we pray with great earnestness and importunity that God will grant to us this thing which seems so essential to us. Yet we do not surely know that the thing, so desired, will prove to us the blessing which we think it will be. Many people have felt the same concerning desires they had, and have received them only to be bitterly disappointed. They found only ashes where they expected to find delicious fruit. Or they shrank from a great sorrow which they saw coming toward them, and prayed that its coming might be averted. The prayer was not granted. The sorrow came with its apparent desolation. But out of it came in the end--the greatest good for which they will praise God in eternity.
No doubt we shall some time thank God that many ardent prayers of ours were not granted. One man earnestly longed to enter a certain business and prayed that he might be allowed to do so. But his desire was not granted. Later he was led into another line of life in which he found an opportunity for large prosperity and for great usefulness.
In a beautiful home a little child lay very sick. The young parents had once been active Christians--but in their first wedded happiness they had given up Christ, and had now no place in their home for God. Their happiness seemed complete when the baby came. Radiant were the days that followed. Their joy knew no bounds. Then the baby fell very sick. In their alarm the parents sought the offices of religion, and earnest and continued prayer were offered by the little one's bedside. Great physicians consulted together and all that science could do was done. But the baby died. "God did not answer our prayers," the parents said, and they complained bitterly.
Years afterward the father wrote these words to a friend: "I believe now that if God had granted my ardent prayers for the life of my beautiful first born son when he was taken sick at nine months old, I never would have been the man I am now; I would have remained the godless man I had then become. But when I stood with my despairing wife beside our dead baby, even feeling bitter toward God because he had not heard our cries, I remembered how I had departed from God--and returned to him with penitence and confession. The death of my boy brought me back to Christ." The prayers seemed unanswered. At least the answer came not as the father wished--but God's way was better. The boy's life was not spared--but the father was saved.
There are many who tell us that their prayers are unanswered, who, if they knew the whole story of these prayers, would see that God showed his love and wisdom far more wondrously in denying their requests--than if he had given them just what they pleaded for so earnestly. The prayers were really answered--but in God's way--not in their way--and God's way was better. God is too good to give us a stone, however earnestly we cry to him for it, thinking it is bread. Instead, he will disappoint us by giving us bread.
One of the blessings we need therefore to pray for continually, is "the patience of unanswered prayer," that we may be saved from impatience, as our prayers seem so long in being answered; or from disappointment, when they seem not to be answered at all. No true prayer ever is unanswered. It may bring no apparent answer at once--but it still waits before God and is not forgotten. The answer may come in some other form. When Paul prayed that his distressing "thorn in the flesh" might be removed, his request was not granted--but instead he received more grace. That is, to compensate for the pain that he must keep--he would have more of Christ. Many times pain is the price God's children have to pay for spiritual strength. We may be sure at least--that the prayers are never unanswered. They bring answers in some form at least.
